“Attack Ships On Fire Off The Shoulder Of Orion …”

Yours truly had a feature on the influence of Philip K. Dick (right) on a whole generation of sci-fi movies published in last Saturday’s Irish Times. It ran a lot like this:

He Saw Things You Wouldn’t Believe

Philip K Dick’s twisted take on the world produced a wealth of ideas that inspired everything from ‘Blade Runner’ to ‘The Adjustment Bureau’, writes Declan Burke

It’s a truth universally acknowledged that a movie adapted from a novel will generally prove inferior to its source material. There are exceptions to that rule, of course, although the most consistent exception is that of Philip K. Dick.
  Some of the most intriguing sci-fi movies of the past three decades have been adapted from, or inspired by, Philip K. Dick’s stories, among them Blade Runner (1982), Total Recall (1990), Minority Report (2002) and A Scanner Darkly (2006). The most recent adaptation, The Adjustment Bureau, is a case in point. Set in contemporary New York, it stars Matt Damon as David Norris (no, really), an aspiring senator (yes, seriously) who meets the vivacious Elise (Emily Blunt). The chemistry between them is immediate and potent, but obstacles to their romance keep cropping up. We quickly learn that said obstacles are being strewn in their path deliberately by an ‘adjustment team’, whose job it is to ensure that the grand plan, or Fate, is not knocked out of kilter by those irritatingly frequent events we ascribe to chance, coincidence or luck.
  When confronted with the truth of reality, and allowed a peek behind the illusion that is our perception of the world, Norris wonders if the ‘adjustment team’ are ‘some kind of angels’. Determined to fight for Elise despite the team’s dire warnings as to what will happen if he doesn’t accept his fate (“All I have are the choices I make, and I choose her,” Norris says), the hero poses the movie’s central question: whatever happened to free will?
  That’s a conundrum that has exercised writers from Kafka to Shakespeare, Dostoevsky to Conrad, and many more besides. Unfortunately, Philip K. Dick’s prose errs on the prosaic side, at best. At worst, it’s akin to reading coal. And yet, as the movies above suggest, Dick was a fount of compellingly original ideas. He was brilliantly flawed, and produced novels and stories of flawed brilliance, to the extent that the blend of sublime concepts and workmanlike prose might have been written by an author with a split personality.
  It’s a perception Dick was keen to cultivate. During a speech given in France during the 1970s, Dick alluded to his parallel existences when he said, “Often people claim to remember past lives; I claim to remember a different, very different, present life.” Such statements lend themselves to the popular perception of Dick as acid-addled guru to the Californian counter-culture of the 1960s. In point of fact, Dick was not a habitual user of psychotropic drugs (amphetamine was his drug of choice), and his own sense of multiple personalities was rooted in a much more poignant event. Philip Kindred Dick was born six weeks premature, as was his twin sister, Jane; Jane died five weeks later. Dick’s life and work were profoundly marked by her absence; until his death, he and his writing were often haunted by a ‘phantom other’.
  These days the politically correct term for sci-fi is speculative fiction, and Dick - along with authors such as Stanislaw Lem, Kurt Vonnegut and Olaf Stapleton - was as much exercised by the metaphysical potential in the sci-fi novel as he was with space travel, shiny gadgets or galaxy-spanning soap operas. In Total Recall (1990), based on Dick’s short story ‘We Can Remember It For You Wholesale’, there is no good reason why the hero, Douglas Quaid, travels to Mars, other than space travel to exotic destinations was expected from writers working in the genre. What truly fascinates Dick in this story is the futuristic concept of implanted memories and virtual existences, which allows the author to explore the very essence of what it means to be an individual human being, the memories - real or otherwise - that constitute our sense of identity.
  That Dick struggled his entire life to establish his own sense of identity, a battle he eventually lost to delusion and paranoia, gives Total Recall a certain poignancy, even if the casting of Arnold Schwarzenegger as the ‘everyman’ Douglas Quaid mitigated against the finer nuances. That the film was taken out of David Cronenberg’s hands and given to Paul Verhoeven didn’t help. Here’s hoping the forthcoming remake, due in 2012 and starring Colin Farrell, will offer a more intuitive reading of the unwitting hero’s psychological frailties.
  The issue of identity was raised again in another adaptation, A Scanner Darkly (2006), directed by Richard Linklater and starring Keanu Reeves as an undercover vice cop who loses his sense of who he is so completely that he winds up investigating himself. A blackly comic tale of sensory distortion and hallucogenic paranoia, the film further benefited from Linklater’s decision to use Rotoscoping animation, a subtly distancing effect which presents the immediately recognisable actors (Reeves, Woody Harrelson, Winona Ryder, Robert Downey Jnr) as avatars of their characters.
  Identity is also central to the theme of Blade Runner (1982), directed by Ridley Scott and based on Dick’s novel ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?’. Its main protagonist, Deckard (Harrison Ford), is a bounty hunter pursuing rogue androids who are virtually indistinguishable from human beings. As in The Adjustment Bureau, Dick here investigates the concept of free will, as the artificially intelligent androids - led by killer Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer) - attempt to live their short lives to their full capacity. What differentiates humanity from androids who can not only think like humans but also experience the full gamut of emotion, and are all too aware of their own mortality? Deckard, who may or may not be an android himself, has no answer.
  Philip K. Dick only ever saw a twenty-minute reel of Blade Runner; he died some weeks before the film was released. The phildickian view of the universe would prove influential, however. Terry Gilliam’s Brazil (1985) owed as much to Phil Dick as it did to George Orwell, while a variety of films, not all of them strictly sci-fi, owe Dick a huge debt: Andrew Nicol’s Gattaca (1997), Alex Proyas’ Dark City (1998), Peter Weir’s The Truman Show (1998), the Wachowski Brothers’ Matrix trilogy (1999 onwards), David Cronenberg’s eXistenZ (1999), Richard Kelly’s Donnie Darko (2001), Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), Duncan Jones’ Moon (2009), and Christopher Nolan’s Inception (2010).
  Philip Kindred Dick died a lonely death, convinced despite his multiplicity of parallel lives that his true nature was unknown and unknowable. With the release of The Adjustment Bureau, however, a remake of Total Recall due next year, a prequel to Blade Runner mooted and a TV series of ‘The Man in the High Castle’ currently in production, Dick’s twisted, complex and layered take on reality appears set to garner him a whole new generation of kindred spirits. - Declan Burke

  This feature was first published in the Irish Times.

On Beating Publishers With A Big Stick; and Ken Bruen’s Movies

First off, let me apologise for the erratic posting that the Three Regular Readers might have noticed here at CAP for the last while. The reasons why are positive, given that I’m swamped right now (yours truly in full-on nervous breakdown mode, right) with actual paying work, which is not something I’ll be complaining about any time in the near future, particularly as Ireland might do well to simply turn itself into one vast begging cap before the IMF finally decides to do the right thing. The other reason is that I’ve been beavering away at a redraft of A GONZO NOIR, aka BAD FOR GOOD, which I should have finished in the next week or so, all things being equal and a fair wind following, etc.
  Incidentally, if there are any bloggers and / or reviewers out there who fancy receiving a Word doc copy of said tome, which may or may not be labouring under the title of THE BABY KILLERS by the time it reaches you, I’d be delighted to provide a RARC (Ridiculously Advanced Review Copy). Please drop me a line at the usual address ...
  Once the redraft is completed, I’ll be turning my attention to other matters, including beating some unfortunate print-on-demand publisher with a big stick until it uncles and agrees to a reasonable price, and sundry other issues. All going well, following wind, etc., I’m hoping a print book version of A GONZO NOIR / BAD FOR GOOD / THE BABY KILLERS will see a shelf near you by April or May. I’m also planning to release it as an e-book, for all you e-reader fans out there. No, please, form an orderly queue, etc. …
  Meantime, and because I’ve been so busy, I’m way behind the curve with the trailers for the two forthcoming movies based on Ken Bruen novels, which hit the interweb last week. The first, LONDON BOULEVARD, starring Colin Farrell and Kiera Knightley, will be released on November 26th, if my information is correct, although I’m giving no one any guarantees on that one. Roll it there, Collette …

  The second movie, BLITZ, starring Jason Statham, is scheduled for a 2011 release, although I can’t be any more precise than that. Collette? In your own time, ma’am …

Sweet Little ’16

Not too long to go now to the centenary of the Easter Rising of 1916, in which a tiny army of Irish rebels led by Padraig Pearse and James Connolly rose up against the might of the British Empire in a bid to slough off the shackles of oppression that had lasted 800 years. It helped, of course, that the mighty British Empire was otherwise engaged at the time, and looking the other way, bogged down as it was in the trenches of France.
  Nonetheless, the Rising failed miserably, unless the objective was to see Dublin’s city centre levelled, and only belatedly became a success after the perfidious Brits, instead of recognising the courage-bordering-on-insanity of the men who took on the British war machine, had most of their leaders executed for treason and then incarcerated the rest in what would become a University of Insurrection at Frongoch in Wales.
  History being, in large part, the science of revisionism, the lead-up to the centenary celebrations of Easter 1916 will be a feast for Irish fans of propaganda. The battle for possession of the Rising will be fought on a number of fronts, most pertinently the silver screen, and it appears that the opening salvo will be sounded by LA-based Marathon Pictures. To wit:

Nicola Charles of LA-based Marathon Pictures has confirmed that principal photography is set in Ireland for the end of April 2010 on Jason Barry’s debut feature ‘Easter Sixteen’. It stars Gary Oldman as James Connolly (The Dark Knight, Leon), Guy Pearce (LA Confidential, Memento) as Patrick Pearse and Ian Hart (Michael Collins, The Butcher Boy) as Thomas Clarke, Chris O’Donnell (Kinsey, Scent of a Woman) as Ross, Elaine Cassidy (Felicia’s Journey, The Others) as Nora, and Anthony La Paglia (The Salton Sea, Sweet and Lowdown) as Spindler.
  Originally from Dublin, Jason Barry has acted in a dozen movies including Titanic. As well as directing he will briefly feature as Roger Casement in the movie.
  “There has been much speculation about the identity of Jason and my first choice for the role of James Connolly,” says producer Nicola Charles. “But for us there has only ever been one actor for this role. Gary Oldman.”

  Which begs the question: why?
  Gary Oldman is a fine actor, as are Guy Pearce and Ian Hart, but – at the risk of sounding parochial – would it have broken their hearts to have an Irish actor or two in amongst the leading lights of the cast? It’s not as if the talent isn’t there – Brendan Gleeson, for example, has put together a cast that includes Colin Farrell, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Cillian Murphy and Gabriel Byrne for his directorial debut, an adaptation of Flann O’Brien’s AT SWIM TWO BIRDS, which is due next year. And it’s not simply a case of the horrors shivering down the spine at the idea of Oldman, Pearce et al mangling the Irish accent, begorrah, as they go about their business (seriously, is the Irish accent really that difficult to get right?). It’s more that the Easter Rising was (my crass interpretation above notwithstanding) a complex, nuanced glorious failure, akin in its own way to the Spartans’ stand at Thermopylae in that the main players knew they were doomed before they began, and words such as ‘complex’, ‘nuanced’ and ‘glorious failure’ don’t play so well in Hollywood.
  On the positive side, one of the writers, Brendan Foley, is a Belfast man, and the director, Jason Barry, was born in Dublin, although the fact that the other writer’s credits include writing the TV spectaculars ‘Forbes 20 Most Expensive Celebrity Weddings’ and ‘America’s Junior Miss 2002’ doesn’t bode well.
  Maybe, as I say, I’m being excessively touchy and parochial about this, but I don’t think I am. Can you imagine the reaction in France, say, were Chris O’Donnell slated to play Georges Danton in an epic about the French Revolution, written by Bartlesby O’Bonkers, whose previous credits included ‘Best Irish Tinkers Wedding Brawls’? Or if Cillian Murphy were mooted to play George Washington in a movie written by the author of ‘One Hundred Great Sweet Sixteen Party Hummer Limousines’?

Ken They Do It? Yes They Ken …

There’s a story about Sir Kenneth of Bruen (right) that may or may not be apocryphal, even though he tells it himself, about the time he did a reading alongside a well-known British author. The lady in question was first up on the podium, and held up a copy of her latest novel, and a copy of Ken’s, which latter was noticeably slimmer than her own doorstop. “That,” she said, indicating her novel, “is what I call value for money.” Cue hoots of laughter, the jape being done in the spirit of joie de vivre, etc. Ken being up next, he held up the same two books, and indicated the well-known British author’s novel. “That,” he said, “is what one of my books looks like before I take out all the crap …”
  Ken’s books are, of course, so stripped down they’re in danger of being done for public indecency. Which may or may not explain why he’s bagged so many movie options recently: the novels are so sparely written, they are – c.f. James M. Cain – practically movie scripts even before some cack-handed screenwriter gets his grubby mitts on them.
  As Gerard Brennan reports over at CSNI – where he scoops me yet again, natch – Ken’s ONCE WERE COPS has just been picked up by yet another Tinseltown outfit, which makes it three novels he’s got in the movie pipeline now: BLITZ, with Jude Law on board; LONDON BOULEVARD, with Colin Farrell and Kiera Knightley; and ONCE WERE COPS. I’m also hearing rumours that an Irish production company have picked up THE GUARDS, and have optioned the entire Jack Taylor series, with a view to committing the battered bard of Galway to celluloid.
  The Big Question: Has the long overdue arrival of the Jack Taylor novels on the movie-making scene come too late for the man who was at one point so hotly tipped to play Taylor, David Soul?
  The Bigger Question: Who should play Jack Taylor in the movies?

UPDATE: a little bird gets in touch all the way from Galway to say that I should keep my shell-like to the ground for news on AMERICAN SKIN getting a movie deal … in, like, the next day or so. Crikey! They’ll have to invent a new Oscar at this rate. “And the Oscar for Best Movie Adapted from a Ken Bruen Novel is …”

Yet More Trouble A-Bruen …

It’s still only Wednesday, and already it’s a good week for Sir Kenneth of Bruen. First off, he’s been nominated in the ITW’s ‘Best Short Story’ category, with the full shortlist looking a lot like this:

BEST SHORT STORY
Between the Dark and the Daylight (Ellery Queen Magazine) by Tom Piccirilli
Last Island South (Ellery Queen Magazine) by John C. Boland
The Edge of Seventeen (The Darker Mask) by Alexandra Sokoloff
The Point Guard (Killer Year Anthology) by Jason Pinter
Time of the Green (Killer Year Anthology) by Ken Bruen

  For all the details on all the categories, clickety-click here. The winners will be announced at ThrillerFest 2009, July 8-11 …
  Meanwhile, more casting details for ‘London Boulevard’ have popped up, with Ray Winstone, David Thewlis and Anna Friel joining Colin Farrell and Keira Knightley. Quoth Variety:

Ray Winstone, David Thewlis and Anna Friel are set to join Keira Knightley and Colin Farrell in ‘London Boulevard.’ William Monahan directs the crime drama this summer in London, with financing coming from Graham King’s GK Films. Drama revolves around a freshly paroled London criminal who becomes involved with a reclusive young actress. Winstone will play a former crime boss. Thewlis will play the reclusive actress’ agoraphobic business manager, while Friel will portray the criminal’s sister.

  Ray Winstone as a former crime boss? Altogether now: “You caaaaaaaaant ...”

Green Light On The BOULEVARD

Kiera Knightley I can take or leave, but Colin Farrell (right, on the set of ‘In Bruges’) starring in the movie adaptation of Sir Kenneth of Bruen’s LONDON BOULEVARD, with William Monahan directing? Nice. Shooting starts this coming summer, apparently – scoot on over to super-scooper Gerard Brennan at CSNI for all the details.
  Meanwhile, a little birdie tells me that this year’s Irish Book Awards will have, for the very first time, a Crime Fiction gong. To wit:

We are delighted to announce the addition of a new category in the 2009 awards, the Ireland AM Crime Fiction Award. Crime fiction ranks among the most vibrant genres in contemporary Irish publishing and the new award, adopted by one of our key media partners, Ireland AM, represents an exciting new addition to the Irish Book Awards.

  The shortlist will be announced in April. There is, unsurprisingly, a twist – the award will be voted upon by TV3’s Ireland AM viewers. So: who’s likely to top the Ireland AM poll of crime novels published by Irish authors in the calendar year 2008? I haven’t read it yet, but – based purely on the frequency of her google alerts – I’m putting a few bob on Tana French’s THE LIKENESS. Then again, Declan Hughes’ THE DYING BREED has just been nominated for a Best Novel Edgar, and Alex Barclay’s BLOOD RUNS COLD was recently featured as an Ireland AM Book of the Month (click here for a video interview with the ravishing Alex ...). And what about Ken Bruen? Or The Artist Formerly Known as Colin Bateman? Or Brian McGilloway? Or ...
  I haven’t a clue who’s going to win it. Any ideas?

Nobody Move, This Is A Review: PRIDE AND GLORY

You’d have thought – at least, I did – that finding himself amidst the combined talents of Edward Norton, Jon Voight and Noah Emmerich would leave Colin Farrell looking a bit thin, but in fact he’s the best thing about Pride and Glory, a good-cop / bad-cop drama set in New York. Farrell plays Jimmy Egan, married into an Irish-American family with a long and proud tradition of service in the NYPD. Son-in-law to Francis Tierney Snr (Voight), brother-in-law to Francis Jnr (Emmerich) and Ray (Norton), all of whom are flawed but noble characters, Jimmy is a dirty cop for whom the shield is little more than a flag of convenience behind which he operates his drug-related scams. Norton is ostensibly the hero of the piece, as he reluctantly takes on a brief to uncover those responsible for the death of two cops, but Farrell steals the show with a charismatic performance of swaggering venality. The story itself is satisfyingly complex, with a number of sub-plots contributing handsomely to the main tale – the fraught relationship between Francis Snr and his less-favoured but conscientious son Ray; the poignant journey taken by Francis Jnr as he tries to cope with the news that his men are incorrigibly corrupt, all the while supporting his wife (Jennifer Ehle) as she battles cancer. The director, Gavin O’Connor (who also co-wrote), maintains a tense atmosphere for the most part, although the movie does drift away from gritty realism into melodrama for the big finale. While there’s little on offer here that you haven’t seen before – and it’s relatively tame by comparison with The Shield and The Wire, both of which are obviously influences – it’s a strong and sturdy drama that will do Farrell’s career no harm at all.

The Popcorn Interlude: IN BRUGES

It boasts an Irish writer-director in Oscar-winner Martin McDonagh and Irish talent in the form of Brendan Gleeson and Colin Farrell, but it’s a Belgian setting and it’s funded by British moolah – is it strictly correct to call IN BRUGES an Irish crime caper movie? On the basis that we never ask where the wonga is coming from to fund the various Irish writers out there, we’ll say a tentative yes, and give IN BRUGES (jump here for the trailer) the traditional ‘four thumbs aloft’ verdict (above, right). Gleeson and Farrell play a pair of odd couple London-based hitmen ordered to Bruges after a botched hit, during which Farrell’s character accidentally kills a young boy, there to await further instructions from their boss, played by Ralph Fiennes. Lob in an art-house Dutch flick filming dwarves, a drug-dealing femme fatale and a jealous boyfriend, and you have the basis for a knowing romp that isn’t afraid to turn dark and twisted. The finale is a little too neatly tied up, and the convenient coincidences come thick and fast, but there are a lot of laugh-out-loud moments, a breakneck pace, a superb performance from Gleeson, a beautiful setting expertly captured by cinematographer Eigil Bryld, and some cracking dialogue (“Retract that bit about my cunt fucking kids!”). Oh, and it also has Townes Van Zandt’s St. John the Gambler on the soundtrack. It wowed ’em at Sundance, and it’ll very probably thrill you too. Wanna see Bren & Col on the red carpet? Roll it there, Collette …

Funky Friday’s Freaky-Deak

Being our slightly jaundiced look back over the Irish crime fiction week that was, to wit: Arlene Hunt’s MISSING PRESUMED DEAD got its paperback release and pole-vaulted into the bestseller list, prompting in no little amount of gadzooking around at chez Hunt: “While sitting here at my desk earlier, chewing the end of a biro to ribbons and pondering the imponderable, namely how in the name of shark-jumping I was going to get John out of the scrape I’d just written him into, my telephone rang. Wearily, blearily, none too cheerily, I got up and went to throttle the offending racket. But gadzooks! Stall the ball! Hold yer horses. For it was news, good news, the sort of news Tuesdays never bring forth. MISSING PRESUMED DEAD is number five in the bestsellers list in Ireland!” Yaaaay! … Meanwhile, no one bothered to tell us that Darren Shan, prodigious and bestselling YA author, is shooting for the adult market when PROCESSION OF THE DEAD is released on February 25 … Ditto for THE INSIDER: THE PRISON DIARIES OF EAMONN BOYCE, which was published by Lilliput back in November. Like, was it something we said, people? Happily, the ever-lovely folk at Hodder Headline Ireland saw fit to pop a copy of Stephen Leather’s latest, DEAD MEN, in the post. It hits the shelves on January 24 … Marshal Zeringue was kind enough to wrassle our humble offering THE BIG O to the ground and Page 99 it until it uncled … Irish Independent columnist Kevin Myers (right) took a pop at gun crime and the Irish political classes, the gist of the piece running thusly: “For we have criminal gun crime for the same reasons that IRA gun crime went on for so long: because our political classes have not been shot, and are too morally inert to have taken the necessary action to have crushed either terrorist or criminal. But just one gangland killing, just one, among the precious 4 and 6 brigade, and by God, policing priorities would soon change. Until then, our political establishment will not really care what happens in working-class housing estates. If it really did, Garda Commissioner Murphy’s head would be on a stake outside Dublin Castle for even daring to promise a mere 2pc drop in crime in exchange for an 11pc increase in resources. Instead, his bonce is still on his shoulders, and the outcry from TDs over the ploddish modesty of his ambitions could have been completely drowned out by the din of tadpoles darning their socks.” Yep, those blummin’ tadpoles, darning while Rome burns … Finally, here’s Oscar-winning director Martin McDonagh introducing the trailer for the upcoming IN BRUGES, which stars Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson and Ralph Fiennes in which looks a lot like an Irish take on an Elmore Leonard-style caper flick. “If I’d grown up on a farm and was retarded, Bruges might impress me. But I didn’t, soooo … it doesn’t.” Maybe not, but the movie impressed Clint at Ain't It Cool News. Roll it there, Collette …

Crime Always Plays: In Which The Irish Crime Flick Comes Of Age

Crikey! Turn your back on Technicolour Talkies of Hibernia for two seconds and all hell breaks loose. First off, the trailer for In Bruges has finally arrived, and the good news is that it looks the dog’s. Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, Ralph Fiennes, all let loose on the unsuspecting populace of Bruges in a hilarious, dark caper movie about two hapless hitmen on the loose … truly our cup runneth over. Elsewhere on TToH, Gavin Burke – for lo! It is he! – tips us off that director Jim Sheridan (My Left Foot, In The Name of the Father) is making a crime flick, Emerald City, based on the Irish mob of Hell’s Kitchen. Looks like the Irish crime flick is finally coming of age, people. Anyhoo, here’s the trailer for In Bruges – and we’re loving the tagline: ‘Shoot first, sightsee later’ …

Looking Good, Feeling Belgian

The Unquiet Man, aka Gavin Burke of Technicolour Talkies of Hibernia, reports that IN BRUGES is to open the Sundance Film Festival on January 17. Directed by Martin McDonagh, who won an Oscar in 2006 for his short SIX-SHOOTER, the movie features a pair of hapless hitmen – Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, right – on sabbatical in the Belgian capital after a hit becomes a miss. Despite the relatively tiny budget of €1m, TToH reports, IN BRUGES also managed to shoehorn one Ralph Fiennes into the cast – and while there’s no trailer available yet, TToH is featuring some handheld footage shot by a bystander while Fiennes was going through his paces. “In the background,” says the Unquiet Man, “and with the right kind of eyes, you can just make out Bigfoot.” Erm – you’re definite that’s not Brendan Gleeson, right?

A Bruges Too Farrell # 119: Annnnnd ... That's A Wrap, Folks

Actually, the exterior shooting on In Bruges wrapped way back in March, and right now they're wrangling over interiors, editing, who gets snapped falling out of the pub looking like a refugee from Knackeragua, etc. - our money (a bent three-shilling piece) is on Col Farrell, naturally, pictured left after an Homeric night's work spent grappling with the ketchup bottle. The movie, which also stars Ralph Fiennes and Brendan Gleeson, is the largest production ever to hit Belgium, according to Focus Features, who've obviously never heard of the Blitzkrieg. Ah well ... the movie, directed by Martin McDonagh, isn't due until 2008, but you can jump over here for regular news updates.