ZAKI'S CORNER with Zaki Hasan | News | Reviews | Pop Culture | Politics

Also From The Onion...

2012-01-26T13:58:00.000-08:00

I'm normally loath to doing two Onion pieces in a row, but this one was just too hilarious not to post:

Time Traveler From The Year 1998 Warns Nation Not To Elect Newt Gingrich

WASHINGTON—Saying he came bearing an important message from the past, a stranger from the year 1998 appeared on the Capitol steps Thursday and urged voters not to elect Newt Gingrich president in 2012. "In the late 20th century, Newt Gingrich is a complete disgrace!" said the time-traveling man, warning Americans that 14 years in the not-so-distant past, Gingrich becomes the only speaker in the history of the House of Representatives to be found guilty on ethics charges, and is later forced to resign. "In my time, he shuts down the federal government for 28 days because his feelings get hurt over having to sit at the back of Air Force One. Gingrich gets our president impeached for lying about marital infidelities when, at the same time, Gingrich himself is engaged in his own extramarital affairs. And for God's sake, he divorced his first wife after she was diagnosed with cancer. Won't anyone listen to me?!?" When asked about Donald Trump, the time-traveler said he had no information on the man, as no one from 1998 cared about a "washed-up fake millionaire.

From The Onion...

2012-01-25T09:18:00.000-08:00

Romneymania Sweeps America

From the piece:

"It's amazing to hear your deepest convictions articulated so poignantly by a politician," said out-of-work Denver resident Austin Matthews, 36, admitting he had never before encountered a candidate—or any human being, for that matter—who had connected with him on such a basic emotional level. "He comes right out and says that any acknowledgment of income inequality in the United States is driven solely by bitterness and envy from the lower classes and shouldn't even be discussed publicly. It's like he's tapped directly into the soul of everyday Americans."

Newt on the March

2012-01-24T15:25:00.000-08:00

That the last few weeks have seen Newt Gingrich's presidential ambitions morph from also-ran to frontrunner status is yet another indication of how barren the GOP cupboard has become of viable national candidates, and also how empty Republican rhetoric about family values is when weighed against the prospect of nominating someone the base thinks will unseat the Big Bad Barack (he won't, but that's a separate conversation, obviously). Nonetheless, nowhere is this disconnect more apparent than Gingrich's blowout win in South Carolina last weekend, which many are chalking up to the former speaker's "Screw the media" tour de force during CNN's debate last week after being asked about his marital indiscretions. Jon Stewart's near-meltdown as he ponders the yawning chasm between rhetoric and reality makes for another brilliant segment on last night's Daily Show. Enjoy:

When Action Wasn't Enough

2012-01-23T11:30:00.000-08:00

I was thirteen when Last Action Hero, 1993's unintentional disaster movie headlined by Arnold Schwarzenegger, hit the big screen, and my clearest memory of it is the hubristic marketing by home studio Sony that positioned it as a worthy rival to halt the impending unstoppable force that was Steven Spielberg's first Jurassic Park. On the one had there's realistic, CGI dinosaurs on a scale that's never before been attempted, and on the other, there's Arnold being Arnold in something with a kid and a magic movie ticket. Sure, which would you watch? Even back then, when Schwarzenegger was one of the preeminent stars in the world, and I wasn't even in high school, it still struck me as a bonehead move.

For those of us paying attention back then, it wasn't too surprising when the tale of the box office tape ended the way it did. By the end of summer '93, Jurassic Park had become one of the biggest successes in history, while Last Action Hero instead became one of the biggest punchlines of all time, with row upon row of Mattel's tie-in action figures warming pegs long after the movie had limped out of theaters. In fact, more than just underperforming at the turnstile, Last Action Hero was also its star's first big comedown from the upper echelons of global box office he'd occupied for much of the 1980s and into the '90s -- peaking with the stratospheric success of Terminator 2 two years prior. This was a descent which continued unabated (with brief hiccups for True Lies and Terminator 3) for the next decade.

Having re-watched Last Action Hero fairly recently on cable, I had the same reaction I did back then, which was a sustained "???" for much of its running time. Despite the fact that Predator and Die Hard director John McTiernan helmed, and there was script work from Lethal Weapon's Shane Black, I was baffled by the multitude of creative decisions that just refused to hang together, and I felt sure there was a great untold story about its making just waiting to be unleashed. Well, in a fortuitous bit of timing, that story has now presented itself via Empire's exhaustive investigation into the train wreck that was the production of Last Action Hero. It's a fascinating, warts-and-all look back at cinema's "ultimate cautionary tale," and any film buff would be well served by giving a read.

Nostalgia Theater: The Second G.I. Joe

2012-01-20T15:51:00.000-08:00

This week we look back at the animated adventures of everyone's favorite "Real American Hero" action figures -- but not the ones you probably remember. It's easy to forget now, a quarter-century after the fact, just how impactful it was when G.I. Joe first came to television. Based on Hasbro's toys and created by Marvel & Sunbow Productions, Joe (along with their Transformers animated series) was one of the early examples of how the '80s transmogrified televised kidvid into an expansive lineup of animated half hour commercials. Debuting with a syndicated five-part miniseries in 1983 and a second mini the next year, the regular series started in September of '85 and aired until the next fall, with an impressive ninety-five episodes tallied when all was said and done.

But while Marvel/Sunbow ceased production after a G.I. Joe animated movie in '86, the toyline was still going strong, and so, after a layover of three years and after receiving a bargain basement bid from animation house DiC, Hasbro traded down from Sunbow for the next round of animated Joe in 1989. By then, DiC had already built a reputation as a low rent studio that could be counted on to crank out production, quality be damned (its repertoire included such toy-based 'toons as Mask and Hasbro's COPS), and its take on G.I. Joe did little to dispel that well-cemented notion.

Although it served as a continuation of the previous show (with its initial five-parter, "Operation: Dragonfire," picking up directly where the animated movie had left off), there was an overall cheapness to the proceedings, from the character designs, which dispensed with comic artist Russ Heath's designs, to the synthesized underscore, which marked a sharp detour from the library of orchestral music the Sunbow show had always relied. Still, while the DiC series was a qualitative step down in nearly every way, it did have a theme song that, while no patch on the original theme by Robert Walsh, is still catchy in its own way. Here's the intro from the '89 Joe's first year:

DiC's G.I. Joe lasted two seasons and 44 episodes, which isn't quite up to the mark set by its predecessor, but is still an achievement for animation. The show ended in 1991, followed by the Marvel comic folding in '93, and the toyline following suit shortly thereafter, making the second G.I. Joe series an artifact of the early '90s that's forgotten by all but the most devout of Joe-philes. However, Shout! Factory, who released the entirety of the Sunbow series in '09 in the ramp-up to the live action feature's release, have now put the first of DiC's two seasons out on platters, allowing this series to be rediscovered. Whether that's for good or for ill, I leave entirely up to you to determine...

PACs Americana

2012-01-19T09:56:00.000-08:00

We've spent plenty of space here lamenting the state of election law in the aftermath of the "Citizens United" ruling in early '10, and while many have failed to grasp the frightening extent of how financial influence on elections was unleashed by the Supreme Court, Stephen Colbert has done a brilliant job of making this point again and again, first with the formation of the Colbert SuperPAC last year, and now by handing control of said PAC to Jon Stewart (with whom he is in no way coordinating) while Colbert "explores" a presidential run in South Carolina. Watch this clip from Tuesday's Daily Show to see Stewart and Colbert push, pull, and otherwise contort the boundaries of the post-Citizens United lay of the land, demonstrating the inherent (and entirely legal!) absurdities of current election law in the process:

Nostalgia Theater: CHiPs Edition

2012-01-13T13:31:00.000-08:00

L-R: Erik Estrada, Robert Pine, Larry Wilcox

For this week's dose of Nostalgia Theater, we motorbike our way back to the late 1970s, when the televisual tastes of the masses were so malnourished that an hourlong drama about glorified traffic cops was able to not only last, but last and last for an improbable six seasons. That's right. You knew this day was coming. It's time to talk CHiPs. For anyone who grew up during its broadcast and syndication heyday during the '70s and '80s, I have a feeling the following theme music (composed by John Carl Parker for the second season and beyond, replacing Parker's original opening from year one) is indelibly branded on their psyche:

Premiering in fall of 1977, CHiPs (a slang reference to the California Highway Patrol that, in eight years of Golden State living, I've never heard anyone actually use)was a police procedural that primarily revolved around the workaday lives of two Los Angeles motorcycle cops -- buttoned-down, straight-laced Jon Baker (Larry Wilcox) and "cool" partner Frank "Ponch" Poncharello (Erik Estrada) as they deal with speeders, collisions, and wrecks. Also of note in the cast to readers here, Robert Pine, father of current Captain Kirk Chris Pine, played the duo's friend and CO, Joe Getraer.

I realize what I mention above isn't much of anything to hang an entire series on, and I'd love to say there was more to it, but there really wasn't. Nonetheless, some of the clearest memories I have from my childhood are of setting the timer to record CHiPs eps that were coming on after my bedtime (this was in Saudi Arabia where, for some reason, shows wouldn't start at round times like "8" or "8:30", so all you could do was cross your fingers, set it for "8:43" or whatever, and hope you got a majority the next morning).

Anyway, whether because of the teeth-grinding urgency of the premise or the pin-up generating heat of Estrada, CHiPs was an inexplicable marketing force for a little while there (I even owned a "Ponch" figure that came pre-posed on a drag-and-release motorcycle), and it filled enough of a void with viewers to soldier on into the '80s, ending one year after Wilcox left over a simmering feud with Estrada, whose popularity ballooned -- then deflated. The show even benefitted from another TV trend of the '80s and '90s: the reunion movie (though a bit more belatedly than some of its kin). Here's a promo spot for CHiPs '99, a real thing that aired on TNT in 1998:

There was some talk a few years back about some kind of a remake of the property, with That '70s Show's Wilmer Valderrama stepping into Estrada's uniform as the big screen Ponch, but I think it's probably for the best that it's never materialized. This is one of those shows that, more than anything, puts a stick pin in a specific moment in time, and any appeal is purely as an artifact of that time. Proving my point, Fox put the first and second seasons of CHiPs out on DVD a few years back, but stopped there due to the response not justifying hurdling the various clearances that would allow further releases.

A Lifetime of Bondage

2012-01-11T15:22:00.000-08:00

It's crazy to me that it's already been ten years since James Bond's last big anniversary celebration, when 2002's Die Another Day marked not only forty years of big screen Bonding, but also the twentieth official film in the longest-lived film series of all time. Given that we're now into the fiftieth year since Dr. No launched Ian Fleming's literary super-spy onto the big screen, and with a new 007 adventure starring Bond-of-record Daniel Craig set to assault theaters this November, it should come as a surprise to precisely no one that the folks at EON Productions, primary purveyors of all things Bond since the very beginning, had something special up their sleeve to make the occasion appropriately festive.

To wit, the just-announced Bond 50 blu-ray set, collecting each and every one of the twenty-two James Bond opuses from Dr. No to 2008's Quantum of Solace in one box. While this isn't 007's first appearance on blu, it is the first time every single movie is being put out with a hi-def spit-and-polish. As longtime readers here should well know, I've been a Bond diehard practically my whole life, and while I've seen each and every one of these flicks more times than I feel comfortable admitting on more formats than I can keep track of, just looking at this box has my mouth watering. The set is due out this fall, but you can lock in your pre-order via Amazon here (and help support this site in the process).

I have every intention of acknowledging the Bond half centennial with more features here throughout the year, but in the meantime, check out the trailer for the big box after the jump and feel your pulse start to quicken.

Monkey Love

2012-01-10T14:55:00.000-08:00

Since the release of Rise of the Planet of the Apes last summer and its out-of-the-blue ascent up the box office charts, there's been much discussion about whether actor Andy Serkis might merit a nod for Best Supporting Actor in this year's Academy Awards, which would be the first such recognition for a role that was entirely performance captured. Well, with Oscar-nominating season now upon us in earnest, Rise star James Franco makes the case for why the Academy should have Serkis' back on this one.

Wreathing Wrath

2012-01-09T13:07:00.000-08:00

Last week, the wife and I got an evening to ourselves unencumbered by the wee ones, and being an old and boring married couple, we took the opportunity to browse the shelves at our local Barnes & Noble. There, I happened upon a book called Obsessed With Star Trek, which uses a little electronic doodad embedded in its pages to quiz readers on a thousand-plus pieces of trivia culled from the many reams of Trek obscura. I picked it up, paged through it absentmindedly, and two minutes later I'd managed a perfect score on the ten-or-so random queries it had lobbed my way. Afterwards, I glanced up just in time to see a sudden, horrifying realization dance across my wife's eyes: she'd married a Trekkie.

So, yes, as that lengthy preamble should make clear, I'm a Star Trek fan. I have been for most of my life. Needless to say, that's not exactly a credential I brandish openly or even proudly, but it is an abiding fandom all the same, and it's one that kicked into gear fully and irretrievably upon watching The Best Star Trek Ever -- 1982's Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan -- for the first time in 1988. By now it's become such conventional wisdom that it borders on cliché that Wrath of Khan is tops among the many movie Treks (with even the franchise-changing reboot movie from '09, which I wholeheartedly embraced, coming in a distant second). But remember, many clichés become that way because they are, in fact, true and that's certainly the case with Khan.

As I said during my run of Star Trek retro reviews a few year back, "...what's perhaps most extraordinary about Wrath of Khan...is how thoroughly it chucks the 'bigger is better' mentality that usually governs your typical blockbuster...In crafting their sequel, [producer Harve] Bennett and [director Nicholas] Meyer zeroed in on the very human core of Star Trek." Even with all the time-tripping antics of Abrams' Trek 2.0, which effectively cuts the continuity chord from all that came before, Star Trek II still manages to retain its emotional depth and power. In fact, it even gains some depth thanks to the events depicted in the new film.

So, what is it about Wrath of Khan that makes it such an evergreen -- both as a Trek experience and as a standalone lo these thirty (!!) years after it first hit theater screens? As part of an ongoing series of columns on the memorable celluloid endeavors from '82, Ain't It Cool contributor Nordling tackles this very question, and has emerged with a thoroughly engaging and very spot-on articulation of Khan's enduring, multi-faceted appeal. Here's one excerpt from his piece, wherein he reflects on one of the most memorable, important parts of the story (which should be considered spoiler territory if you *gasp* haven't seen it yet):

Spock’s sacrifice should resonate with anyone who has ever lost a friend to tragedy. “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.” “Or the one.” It’s a moment of great nobility for the character, and part of me has always wondered what it would have been like if the character simply never returned to the franchise...Knowing that Spock does come back takes some of the sting out of it, but if you watch the movie without that baggage it becomes one of the best goodbyes from any long-standing genre character in science fiction history.

Needless to say, I love this flick unabashedly, and in his lengthy meditation -- which delves even deeper than the extract above -- Nordling bullseyes so many reasons why. He goes on to explain quite well why Khan represented the kind of lightning-in-a-bottle that, try as they might, the franchise has never been able to recapture (as was made painfully obvious with 2002's paint-by-numbers repurposing of its story beats for the Next Generation crew's farewell film, Star Trek Nemesis). This is a great read that's well worth your time -- and it should prompt those of you who already love the movie to pop it in again, and those of you've never seen it to finally give it a toss.

"The Elephant in the Room"

2012-01-08T09:07:00.000-08:00

I've noted a few times the inherent contradiction, in my view, in Muslims identifying as Republican in today's political climate. Not because there aren't areas of overlap for practicing Muslims with certain conservative principles the Republican platform traditionally supports, but more because of the increasingly mainstream anti-Islam and anti-Muslim views espoused not just by GOP rank-and-filers, but party leaders and elites (including, in some shape or form, every one of the leading presidential contenders). As I said in August of '10 (in my first Huffington Post pickup, FYI):

How much more of this stuff do you have to see? After years of systematic marginalization, after the bastardized transitive property that saw Obama labeled as a Muslim and thus intrinsically evil, is the ginned-up Cordoba Controversy that the GOP has cynically run with -- and the rampant Islamophobia that's followed in its wake -- enough to finally convince you that the Republican Party's so-called "Big Tent" doesn't have very much room for you?

Well, in yet another example of how the Big Tent stretches only so far, we have this vid from The Daily Show chronicling one Muslim Republican's windmill-tilting crusade in Florida to proudly brandish his party credentials -- whether they like it or not. I actually followed this story when it was first happened last fall, and even then I thought it was tailor-made for the Daily Show treatment, so this one's been a long time coming for me:

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Nostalgia Theater: Manimal Edition

2012-01-06T11:27:00.000-08:00

Back in November I laid into '80s artifact Automan, as well as its purveyor, one Glen A. Larson, promising more looks back at Larson's atrocious output from the era. Well, adding further proof to my longstanding contention that Larson did for science fiction television in the '70s and '80s what the Hindenburg did for airship travel, comes another unfortunate dropping from the early-'80s: Manimal. In case the title doesn't make it clear, it was about a man...who becomes animals. Come on, folks. Keep up.

At this point, my running theory is that Larson came up with his ideas title first, concept later. In fact, I could easily see him dreaming this one up while his feet were resting on the very same ottoman that provided him the inspiration for Automan (which premiered two months later). Manimal starred Brit actor Simon MacCorkindale as the mysterious, debonaire Dr. Jonathan Chase, somehow possessed of the ability to transform into a menagerie of different animals. We're introduced to him via the narration at the tail-end of this awesomely cheese-tastic intro sequence:

How to gloss over the completely unlikely premise of your TV show in two easy steps: 1) Start with a bunch of mystical hugger-mugger about Africa and Tibet. 2) Enlist William Conrad to the do the voiceover.

Of note to nerds, the cast also featured Melody Anderson, whose lasting claim to fame other than this comes from her turn as the love interest in the equally cheese-tastic Dino De Laurentiis production of Flash Gordon (De Laurentiis, by the way, was for sci-fi movies what Larson was for sci-fi TV), and character actor Reni Santoni, best known for playing Dirty Harry's first partner in the '70s, and for peeing on Jerry Seinfeld's couch in the '90s.

In case you're wondering how they pulled off all those transformation effects given '80s effects and '80s budgets, well, I'll let you watch the clip below and draw your own conclusions:

Not one of the finer efforts from the late special effects guru Stan Winston, unfortunately. In an indication that sometimes good taste won out even back then, Manimal premiered on NBC in late September of 1983, and was done-and-gone after eight short episodes, faring no better than the other Larson superhero series that year. That would have been the end of that, except for the fact that it found an amazing afterlife internationally (which doesn't say much for tastes outside the US, I suppose). I saw it for the first time in the late '80s while living overseas, so this thing clearly had a very long tail (no pun intended).
Interestingly, cancellation didn't mean the end for Dr. Jonathan Chase, as MacCorkindale reprised the role in a late-'90s episode of another Larson cheese-fest, Night Man. Ah, but that's going to have to wait for another Nostalgia Theater at some later time. Meanwhile, if you're looking to relive the manic thrill-a-minute excitement of Manimal on DVD, you're out of luck. Despite occasional rumors of an impending release, it seems even its owners at Fox have decided to keep this cat in the bag.

From The Onion...

2012-01-04T14:15:00.000-08:00

Given that the new year marks the beginning of what I fully expect to be a fun time hereabouts vis-a-vis coverage of the upcoming election, and given the opening of festivities with last night's Iowa Caucuses, this one seemed the perfect way with which to inaugurate this year's posting activities:

Obama Openly Asks Nation Why On Earth He Would Want To Serve For Another Term

From the piece:

"My fellow Americans, I come to you today to ask, why?" Obama said to 1,200 people gathered inside a gymnasium at Taylor Allderdice High School. "Why can't our congressional leaders work together to create jobs? Why can't Wall Street ever be held accountable? And most important, why on God's green earth would I voluntarily subject myself to this nonsense for another four years?"

"I'm dead serious," the president continued, saying that any reasonable person would have walked away the moment the Senate minority leader announced his main priority—above creating jobs and improving American health care—was to make Obama a one-term president. "I'm asking if anybody out there can come up with even one reason why I'd want to endure this unmitigated shit show for another minute, let alone through 2016. What's in it for me, exactly? Can anyone answer that? Anyone at all?"

Read the rest here.

Nostalgia Theater: T.J. Hooker Edition

2011-12-30T09:21:00.000-08:00

We close out this year's bumper crop of Nostalgia Theater entries with a look back at this 1982-1986 series that proved the enduring star power of Captain Kirk even several hundred light years away from the cozy confines of the U.S.S. Enterprise.

T.J. Hooker was a show about William Shatner as a cop. And that's it.

Oh, there was some backstory shoved in there about T.J. (Thomas Jefferson) being a detective who returns to the beat and trains recruits, solving crimes and tossing off witty one-liners with his young, hip partner Adrian Zmed and his young, blond partner Heather Locklear, but let's be honest. That was all just window dressing for the show's central conceit: Shatner, Shatner, and more Shatner. I mentioned last week that hourlongs during this era weren't exactly challenging, and this is a good example of how a show could coast through four seasons just by dressing a charismatic star up as a policeman (a similar feat would occur in the '90s with Walker: Texas Ranger -- minus the charisma).

T.J. Hooker also marked my very first exposure to its larger-than-life star, imprinting itself on me during my formative years. When I saw Star Trek: The Motion Picture afterwards, my brother had me convinced that it was actually T.J. Hooker in space. "That's Captain Hooker," he said, elaborating that, "he's an astronaut now." I'd love to say the lesson here is that my brother was kind of a jerk, but I think the real lesson is that I was a bit of a dullard as a kid. Like so many of its ilk, Hooker has been left by the wayside today, with reruns exceptionally rare, and only a single DVD release to mark its existence. Here's the title sequence from the second season (with score by X-Files' composer Mark Snow), offering a window into a simpler time, when all of America thrilled to the exploits of William Shatner. As a cop.

Broken Break

2011-12-27T15:49:00.000-08:00

With last week marking all grades and grading completed and submitted from fall semester, I was hoping the additional time in my daily sched would allow for a quick rush of new posts to close out the year strong. Instead, the opposite has turned out to be true. I've found that a) my time isn't quite as plentiful as I'd anticipated, and b) I want to use those few moments I do have to do anything but sit in front of a monitor. I guess that's all a long way of saying that the content here may not be quite as free-flowing in the next few days as we've come to expect. I caught a couple of movies in the last few days I'd still like to get reviews out for before the end of the year, and there's still a few odds-and-ends I need to get to, so let's see how things go.

In the meantime, here's an interesting HuffPo piece by Paul Stoller that echoes the mix of feelings I think many educators like myself experience in this interregnum between our teaching cycles.

Plinkett Cracks Crystal Skull

2011-12-25T09:27:00.000-08:00

Pretty much the minute I finished watching Mike Stoklasa's incisive and hilarious feature-length takedown of the last Star Wars prequel at the beginning of the year, my thoughts immediately turned -- as did those of many others -- to wondering whether/when he'd get around to tackling Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, a film that engendered at least as much disappointment among many as the prequels. Stoklasa duly obliged me and the rest of the online commentariat late last week, deploying his "Mr. Plinkett" persona once again for an hour-long video commentary on the much-loathed Indy IV.

Unfortunately, in a weird meta commentary on the film itself, the review seems to coast on goodwill from the previous vids, offering some very cogent points and some genuine laughs, but also a little too indulgent with a hint of obviousness. Some of the rationales offered don't really hold up (do we really like Indiana Jones because he murders people?), and I dunno, the stuff about Karen Allen just seems kind of mean. Also unfortunate, the serial killer bits that bugged me before are dialed up to an uncomfortable degree (there's an Olsen Twins riff I could have lived a long, comfortable life without ever needing to see). Still worth checking out, but be ready to skip through the extraneous stuff.

I've put part one below, and part two after the jump, but the embeds are giving some issues. If they don't work for you, just click over to Red Letter Media and give 'em a watch there.

Nostalgia Theater: The Equalizer Edition

2011-12-23T11:46:00.000-08:00

My post last Sunday singing the praises of CBS' urban vigilante series Person of Interest got me thinking of another very-similar skein that aired on CBS and enjoyed a decent amount of popularity during its mid-to-late '80s run, but has been mostly forgotten today. The Equalizer starred late British thesp Edward Woodward in the role of Robert McCall, a former intelligence operative (at some nameless agency) who grows disgruntled with the life of a spy and, seeking to make amends for his shadowed past, heads to New York, where he offers his particular skill set (think: Liam Neeson in Taken) to anyone in trouble who needs balance restored to their lives (i.e. "equalized").

Running 1985-'89 and lasting for 88 episodes, The Equalizer arrived at a point in TV history when we really started to see the transition away from more wholesome programs the entire family could conceivably watch (Starsky & Hutch, CHiPs) into series that pushed the boundaries, both in terms of style and content, of what the medium could get away with. In a sense, this is a show, like Miami Vice and Wise Guy and other trailblazers of the era, that forged the path utilized by many of today's dramas, but which has itself been left by the wayside by all but the most pugnacious of '80s devotees (further marking it as an artifact of its time, McCall's son was played by none other than the the decade's go-to bully: William Zabka).

One of the most memorable elements of The Equalizer's mystique was (and, based on the number of YouTube captures out there, remains) the opening title sequence, with a trendy synth score by The Police's Stewart Copeland. In a hellish image of New York City ripped from our collective nightmares, robbers, murderers and rapists besiege the town's desperate denizens until the titular hero makes his presence known, awash in shadow and light. However quaint and even, yep, cheesy, it might seem in today's age of The Wire or even CSI, The Equalizer intro nonetheless remains a terrific time capsule of when television began to take full advantage of the dialectical dance between music and editing:

The first season of The Equalizer hit DVD a few years ago in early '08 but sadly, proving out my earlier point about how far back into our collective memory it's receded despite its boundary-pushing reputation at the time, the sales simply weren't there to justify further releases. Still, there have been rumblings of a new, rebooted feature version of the show, with Russell Crowe mentioned as a possible movie McCall, and word coming last week that Denzel Washington is being eyed for what would clearly be a very different take on the character. Regardless, if the pub from a possible movie ends up allowing the rest of the series to hit platters, that's one injustice we can say has been equalized.

Zaki's Review: Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol

2011-12-21T14:50:00.000-08:00

As I alluded to last week, I got off to bit of a rocky start with the Mission: Impossible movie series, with my initial outrage at how the first film in 1996 blowtorched the legacy of the TV show whose name it appropriated turning to apathy at how little of its name the 2000 sequel managed to embody. Thus, it really wasn't until 2006 and director JJ Abrams' Mission: Impossible III that I was willing to board the Tom Cruise-starring spy franchise, appreciating how it modernized key facets of its brand while preserving those things that made it unique (a maneuver Abrams repeated three years later with his canny Star Trek restart).

Sadly, despite marking a considerable qualitative step up, that third Mission underperformed in relation to its two predecessors, and so, when it came time to embark on the fourth installment (which dispenses with Roman numerals in favor of a sub-head -- the cinematic equivalent of fudging your birthdate to seem younger), the mission placed in front of studio and star was to convince audiences that this fifteen-year old series still had something fresh to offer, and that Cruise could still put butts in seats even after a stream of bad publicity over the years accumulated like barnacles on his once-spotless superstar bona fides.

Like alter-ego Ethan Hunt, Cruise drafted an array of faces new and familiar to help him accomplish this. The good news starts with the fact that Abrams returned (in a producing capacity) to help shepherd the story, and the better news comes in the unexpected choice of director Brad Bird, making an impressive live action entrée after a career spent crafting some of the finest animation ever produced, from early (read: good) Simpsons to The Iron Giant to The Incredibles. The resultant mix gives us the strongest entry yet in the Mission: Impossible movie catalogue.

Starting with a cameo by one of Abrams' Lost alums that gets the McGuffin moving (literally, in this case), things quickly take off, pausing only briefly for a title sequence that nicely homages the TV show's intro each week with a montage of context-free clips from that episode, cut to Lalo Schifrin's propulsive music. Hunt's team this time consists of returning Mission-eer Benji (Simon Pegg, upgraded to field duty after being "lab guy" in M:I - III) and new-to-us agent Jane Carter (Paula Patton), with their job to stop a formerly high-ranked Russian official-turned-zealot (Michael Nyqvist) hoping to start a nuclear war to bring about peace (whaddya want, I said he's a zealot).

Also entering partway through the proceedings is data analyst William Brandt. If the fact that Brandt is played by two-time Oscar nominee Jeremy Renner isn't clue enough that there's more to his character than meets the eye, there's also the early scuttlebutt that pegged Renner as a potential vehicle to allow Cruise a graceful segue out of future Missions. But while Renner shows enough charisma and leading man chops that he could doubtless make a sterling replacement for Cruise, he'd still be hard-pressed to match the journeyman's job the series' signature star does here.

After so many years, this character (who was a cipher for the first two films and didn't really get a personality until movie three) has become a very comfortable fit for Cruise, who seems to be having an absolute blast putting Hunt through his paces, whether jumping off a building onto a van, exchanging blow-after-blow with the main baddie while cascading across the shifting levels of a moving parking garage or, in the unmistakeable highlight for sheer spectacle alone, dangling several miles above the ground off Dubai's Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest building*.

In fact, in what's become something of an annoying trend for me in recent action movies, Cruise takes such a sustained level of pounding throughout that by the end he's received enough impacts to the head that he should have been rendered comatose several over times by now. I had a similar complaint with the latest Die Hard (which I also enjoyed, by the way) and how Bruce Willis' ostensibly-human John McClane engaged in the kind of death-defying antics that would have left anyone else either a fine mist or a thick paste. Still, in an offering like this, that's one of those "yeah, okay" conceits we just end up having to roll with. And roll with it we do.

As we saw last year, a director making the switch over from animation to live action doesn't always come off nearly as smooth, and Bird's work here is one of the strongest directorial "debuts" I've ever seen. Thanks to his confidence behind the wheel, Ghost Protocol is a polished, consummate piece of pop entertainment. It's fun in the right places, funny in the right places, and the skillful dispatching of returned and recruited personnel onscreen and off points the way to several more entries in this series before it ever need worry about self-destructing. A

* Many scenes, including the Dubai stuff, were shot in IMAX and take full advantage of the format's jumbo-sized aspect ratio. While it plays well enough on standard screens, this is one of those instances where the added premium for the bigger screen is well worth the price.

Zaki's Review: Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

2011-12-20T12:16:00.000-08:00

The business of franchise-building is never easy.

When all the hard work and sweat of crafting a solid enough first installment to warrant a sequel finally pays off -- as it did both critically and commercially for Warner Bros.' Sherlock Holmes reboot in '09 -- the filmmakers inevitably find themselves at a crossroads, having to determine whether the next entry should go deeper, plying the audience's investment in the characters and setting to mine more potent thematic and emotional ground, or broader, with surface characteristics they responded to previously accentuated and amplified. For this series' second try, A Game of Shadows, some modest attempt is made for the former, but it's mostly content to remain the latter. I suspect one's enjoyment of the proceedings will depend greatly on how comfortable they are with that apportioning.

I enjoyed the first go at the reinvented Holmes quite a bit upon its release two years ago, calling it "a fresh reinvention of the concept for modern sensibilities." I also noted with appreciation how strategically similar it was to its Warner studiomate, the currently-unfolding, soon-ending Batman series, where the initial installment was used primarily to set up the character and world, and the big gun villain held in reserve for next time (see: Joker, The). In laying the pipe for this franchise, director Guy Ritchie was clearly emulating the Christopher Nolan model by first establishing Robert Downey's quirky, action hero portrayal of Arthur Conan Doyle's famed detective and the new, hunkier Dr. Watson embodied by Jude Law.

It wasn't until that film's closing moments that we were teased with an impending face-off between Holmes and the villainous James Moriarty, unassuming academician by day, world-beating megalomaniac by night. While A Game of Shadows does deliver that promised showdown (with Mad Men actor Jared Harris recruited to play the part), it's done a disservice by a drawn-out, laborious build-up. The scheme Moriarty concocts to set France and Germany at war with one another and then supply both sides with weapons of his own making nears Bondian levels of grandiosity, and is so labyrinthine, with so many digressions, that it builds little of the interest we need in order to give a care about its outcome -- especially when the logical part of our brain already knows no such war actually occurred.

Given the performers involved, it's no surprise things most most excel when they're allowed simply to play off of one another. This time around, returning stars Downey and Law (and, briefly, Rachel McAdams) are joined by Noomi Rapace as a mysterious Gypsy fortune-teller who inadvertently becomes intertwined with the pair's investigation, and Stephen Fry as Holmes' older brother Mycroft. Both actors bring much international acclaim and recognition with them (Rapace for her lead role in the original adaptations of Stieg Larsson's Dragon Tattoo novels, Fry for being Stephen Fry), but they're not done many favors by Kieran & Michele Mulroney's script, which piles on the bombastic action set pieces, but neglects the character beats to help place them in a context beyond the purely sensory.

Harris, an unexpected and inspired choice to embody Moriarty, brings much menace to the part without ever becoming a caricature. The too-few scenes in which he squares off with Downey have a fascinating quality of static kineticism as these two avowed enemies trade gentlemanly bon mots and witticisms with one another even as each plots to quash the other. Unfortunately, the ideological collision of the two masterminds is something I wish Ritchie would have applied more heat to early on, as it simmers on low for too long, and is left undercooked by the time the figurative chess match they've engaged in for two films is literalized (in a pay-off that should be familiar to anyone who's read Doyle's "The Final Solution," the only story where the two actually meet).

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows doesn't go nearly as deep as I would have liked, but is a mostly-diverting concoction that, thankfully isn't as broad as it could very well have ended up. Working in its favor, the byplay between Downey and Law remains amusing (though the homoerotic innuendo, woven throughout thanks to Holmes' disquiet at losing his long-suffering pal to *gasp* marriage, has been ladled on a bit thick), and while Downey himself treads dangerously close to making his mannered, borderline-autistic take on the character as much of a self-parody as Johnny Depp's Jack Sparrow has become after four Pirates of the Caribbean entries, there's still enough in evidence of what made the first one work to make the decision to see the follow-up elementary. Almost. B-

New Details, New Trailer For New Dark Knight

2011-12-19T15:03:00.000-08:00

While dissecting the very cool teaser poster for The Dark Knight Rises last week, I noted that its image bore some resemblance to a similarly iconic comic book moment that ended with the Batman's back broken, and wondered whether that's where this movie was headed. Well, today we have what amounts to tacit confirmation of my conjecture via Bleeding Cool, conveying the word of one "well tried and certainly trusted individual" purporting to have the inside scoop:

...we’ve been told – amongst a few other things that we hope to make sense of and share in the near future – that The Dark Knight Rises gives Bane the opportunity to break Batman’s back...Our source cracked wise about the various “rumours” surrounding Bane in the film, expressing some amount of disbelief that people thought the back-breaking might, somehow, not be featured.

Time will only tell if this is smoke and fire, or smoke and mirrors. In the meantime though, check out the first full trailer for The Dark Knight Rises, which gives us our first sense of the ideological conflict that pulls the Batman back into the center of the action after several years in exile (Hi, Anne Hathaway!), as well offering a sense of the size and scope of what's planned for this trilogy's last at-Bat. This was a pleasant surprise in front of Mission: Impossible last week, and I'm sure you'll agree that it does its job well:

Interesting Person

2011-12-18T09:37:00.000-08:00

If you follow me on Twitter, you already know that one of the new TV shows I've wholeheartedly embraced this past fall season has been CBS' Person of Interest. The twisty premise of the skein, produced by JJ Abrams and created by Dark Knight co-writer Jonathan Nolan (brother of Christopher), hinges on a mysterious computer outputting a single social security number every week that's connected to some unknown crime that is likely to occur in the near future. The number represents either a perpetrator or a victim, and it's up to the vigilante duo of The Passion's Jim Caviezel (the brawn) and Lost's Micheal Emerson (the brains), to follow the clues and prevent said crime from happening.

If that description sounds either perplexing or simply uninteresting, I can't say I blame you. In truth, it's one of those premises that risks falling all over itself by being too-clever by half. The brilliance of the show, however, lies in how it takes that conceit and repurposes it into the latticework upon which to hang what is one of the more involving, cerebral techno thrillers to emerge in quite awhile. More than that, it's essentially a superhero series in disguise, with Caviezel, as mysterious, ass-kicking former Special Ops agent John Reese, the "Batman" of this diad, and Emerson, enigmatic genius Harold Finch, the "Alfred" directing traffic from behind an array of digital display screens.

While it's had the same growing pains as any new show striving to find its footing during its first year, what I've most appreciated is how the creatives have striven to balance the "procedural" side of its identity -- Reese and Finch get the number, work to solve the case -- with its role as a "mythology" series -- the parcelling-out of the backstories of the leads in dribs and drabs, revealing the tragic histories that lead up to their first meeting with one another in the pilot episode (which you can watch online, along with the rest of the episodes thus far). In a piece at i09, Jane Anders makes the case for why the series is so consistently compelling an experience, warts-and-all:

...Person of Interest is not a masterpiece, by any means. The dialogue is frequently somewhat wooden. Some of the episodes have definitely been better than others, and there has been some lazy plotting here and there. The hero, Reese, is probably the least interesting character on the show, except when he's intimidating thugs, and we've learned a lot of boring stuff about his backstory. Reese, played by Jim Caviezel, has one facial expression most of the time. The show is still definitely finding its feet.

But it's fun to watch, which is more than you can say for a lot of other shows that have come along recently. And as an exploration of vigilantism and how a lone hero uses his unusual power — fairly standard superhero themes — it's actually pretty fascinating. The power of knowing what crimes are going to happen before they happen allows Reese and Finch to help people, and at least sometimes to stop bad things from happening, but it also causes them to make mistakes and do more harm than good.

Read the rest of Anders' thoughts here. Although it ended its midseason run this past week, the series has benefitted greatly from CBS' continued ratings fortunes (especially for the net's library of procedurals), and as a result has been picked up for the remainder of the year. Oddly though even with its ratings success it's flown mostly under the radar, with many in its potential audience it as just another cookie cutter entry in that same list of procedurals. To think of it as such is a shame, as its pedigree, cast, and execution have all helped make Person of Interest a thinking person's action show, that rarest of entities in today's TV landscape.

Nostalgia Theater: Mission: Impossible Edition

2011-12-16T15:08:00.000-08:00

Peter Graves, flanked by (L-R) Greg Morris, Leonard Nimoy, and Peter Lupus

I caught a screening of the new Mission: Impossible movie earlier today, and hope to have a review up shortly, but in the meantime, I wanted to use this Nostalgia Theater entry to take a fond look back at the TV show that got the whole brand rolling. A unique merger of the spy genre that had exploded in popularity in the post-Bond '60s with the tried-and-true procedurals that were fixtures of the primetime landscape even then, Mission: Impossible premiered on CBS in 1966 and ran for seven seasons.

Although it initially starred Steven Hill as no-nonsense "Impossible Missions Force" leader Dan Briggs during the first season, it really wasn't until the late Peter Graves took over the lead in year two, as slick, silver-haired Jim Phelps that Mission: Impossible gained itself a signature star who, together with Lalo Schifrin's signature theme music, helped give the show much of the iconic resonance it retains to this day. Here's the intro from one of the second season episodes:

Graves remained with the series for the remainder of its run, but the rest of the cast was always in flux, with Martin Landau, Barbara Bain, Leonard Nimoy, Lesley Anne Warren, and Sam Elliott, among others, all putting in tenures of various durations toiling on the team. While some of these ensembles worked together better than others (my personal favorite is the Graves-Landau-Bain era), like most procedurals, what kept Mission: Impossible plugging along was its absolute fidelity to its established formula, which, rather than being an impediment, was one of its strongest points.

Like clockwork, every episode would start with the IM leader being given an assignment by way of microfilm or other secreted recording, then choosing the right team for the task (always whichever actors happened to populate the cast that season), and the rest of the hour then followed said team as they executed said assignment to perfection. No sidetracking or character development. In that strict adherence to formula, one can see the influence on later procedurals like Law & Order (which starred, for a long time, original Mission lead Steven Hill).

The first Mission: Impossible ended in 1973, but it was brought back to TV in 1988 (during a brief trend that saw TV classics such as Leave it to Beaver, Dragnet, and Adam-12 being revived -- to varying degrees of success). Peter Graves, reprising Phelps, was the only original star to return in a regular capacity to the new Mission, and it only lasted two seasons. Oddly enough, in an indication of what a stylistic black hole much of the '80s was (fashion-wise and synthesizer-wise), this version seems more dated today than the original one does:

After the new show ended its brief, two season run, it wasn't until 1996 and Brian De Palma's blockbuster Mission: Impossible feature that the brand reared its head again in a big way, with Tom Cruise as newly-invented IM agent Ethan Hunt, and Jim Phelps now played by actor Jon Voight. While opinions are divided as to the relative quality of that first film, it earned an eternal black mark with me thanks its third act twist reveal that the previously heroic Phelps was actually the main baddie, who betrayed and murdered his colleagues in furtherance of a secret, villainous agenda.

For folks like me, who'd watched and loved the show(s) growing up, it was a gut punch that didn't make a lick of narrative sense. New audiences wouldn't have any idea who Phelps was anyway, and the only ones who'd recognize the name would just be irked by the perplexing decision to turn him bad. Indeed, the story goes that the late Greg Morris -- the only actor to appear as a lead in all seven seasons of the original show -- was so disgusted by this turn of events during a preview screening that he walked out in disgust. I don't blame him at all.

Still, my antipathy for that first movie notwithstanding (and we'll talk about the rest in greater detail soon), the lasting impact of Geller's creation on our collective cultural landscape is evident in the fact that forty-five years after it first premiered, we're still talking about it. Both the '60s and '80s Mission: Impossible series are now available on DVD, and thanks to the age of Netflix, the original is also available to watch in its entirety online. If you haven't seen it until now, it's a mission that's well worth accepting.

A New Lowe

2011-12-14T13:59:00.000-08:00

Serving as the perfect punctuation point to my last post, here's Jon Stewart and The Daily Show's take on the Lowe's/All-American Muslim non-controversy, with the show's resident Muslim correspondent Aasif Mandvi offering some helpful context:

All-American Muslim Not Worth The Fuss

2011-12-14T11:15:00.000-08:00

Remember the overheated bloviating last year about Park51 (a.k.a. the "Ground Zero Mosque")? Nearly all of 2011 had passed without a similar Muslim-related controversy du jour to take up media bandwidth, but based on the last few days, it looks like one has manifested just in time to beat the buzzer with reality series All-American Muslim. I watched the first episode of the skein -- chronicling the day-to-day struggle of some Muslim families in Dearborn, MI -- when it aired last month, and it didn't really do anything for me, so I didn't bother commenting on it (though a quote from me did make into this post by Zahid Lilani).

My "meh" reaction to the program comes, I think, from my general dislike of the omnipresent desire among many to turn religions into demographics, and compartmentalizing a far-ranging faith group that includes so much diversity into a single reality cast and labeling it "All-American" just seems counter-intuitive to me. I've long held that the best way to demonstrate how "All-American" Muslims are is to just do it without hanging a lampshade on it. Muslim lawyers on lawyer shows, and it's no big deal. Muslim cops on cop shows, and it's no big deal. Because, guess what? It's no big deal.

Regardless, that's just my take. It's not like I have any great love for the reality genre to begin with, and if folks find something worthwhile in the series and can expand their experience through it, fantastic. Beyond that, demonstrating my continued naïveté, I really didn't think it was a big enough deal to dwell on, and was content to let it drift off my radar. Ah, but that was before the usual suspects of America's "Islamphobia First" crowd chimed in, accusing the show of trafficking in all the old favorites, like "stealth jihad," "creeping sharia," "sharia jihad," and, of course, "creeping stealth."

Once a group of nutbars calling themselves the Florida Family Association started orchestrating a boycott campaign aimed at All-American Muslim's advertisers, things really got interesting. First, Lowe's Hardware pulled its spots due to the show's supposed "controversial" subject matter, and once that became the story, things swiftly went south from there. Needless to say, there's a whole lot that's wrong here, from the cluelessness of those protesting, to the fact that Lowe's (and presumably at least a few others) were so easily cowed by said cluelessness, to the brain donors who are proudly showing their support for the hardware chain in what is quite possibly the worst way possible.

But while many in the Muslim community are upset, some righteously so, some perhaps a little too much so, I don't see any of this as a bad thing. If it's an open and honest discussion about Islam's tenets and values these folks are after, fair enough. Let's have that conversation. Personally, I'd rather someone -- whether person or corporation -- be absolutely clear and open with their prejudices and preconceptions. It clarifies where they stand and, accordingly, where I stand in relation to them. As far as I'm concerned, the only downside to this controversy is that it's in regards to a pretty average show that doesn't warrant nearly the amount of noise it's generated.

G.I. Joe 2 Looks Great

2011-12-13T07:32:00.000-08:00

Holy crap, how the heck did this happen?

As you know, I wasn't a big fan of 2009's movie, G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, so I was extremely wary when a sequel was announced. That initial skepticism turned to optimism, however, when Zombieland writers Paul Wernick & Rhett Reese were drafted to craft the script, followed immediately by more skepticism when it looked like director Stephen Sommers would return. This turned back into optimism when Sommers exited, and then skepticism again when director Jon Chu -- he of several dance movies and that Justin Bieber flick from earlier this year -- was announced as the project's new helmer. So, that's pretty much where we'd left things as of last February.

Well, that calculus changed somewhat yesterday, thanks to the first teaser trailer for the follow-up feature, G.I. Joe: Retaliation. With most of the original cast jettisoned, and returning stars Channing Tatum and Ray Park teaming with the Rock and Bruce Willis for what amounts to an "in-continuity" reboot, I have to admit to being very pleasantly surprised by what I see so far. The set pieces are grandiose without being over-the-top, same with the stuntwork, and they've nailed down an even more impressive cast. Did I mention Bruce Willis? I'm not ready to file this one in the "win" column just yet, but given how much ill will there was going in, the fact that they've put out a decent trailer is practically half the battle.

Check out the new vid after the jump and tell me if it's got you sold:

Broken Bat

2011-12-12T11:13:00.000-08:00

Things were quiet for awhile, but the promo machine has now begun to gear up for The Dark Knight Rises, as we start the countdown clock for its highly-anticipated release next summer. There's this week's release of the film's prologue in front of select IMAX screenings of the new Mission: Impossible movie, and there's also the new, very sweet teaser poster showcasing lead baddie Bane, played by Tom Hardy.

(Click the pic for a crazy big version)

In addition to being an effective, iconic image in its own right, the poster also gets some mileage by calling back to a signature moment from Bane's debut storyline, the early-'90s Knightfall epic, wherein the brilliant, steroid-enhanced villain orchestrated a weeks-long psychological and physical campaign against Batman that culminated in his breaking the hero's back (he got better, natch). Not sure if that's where Christopher Nolan is going with this trilogy-capper, but it sure does evoke that same imagery, as seen below.

Given the dregs the previous run of Batman movies plumbed, I'm exceedingly disappointed to see this run of Bat-flicks ending, and a little worried about where the franchise will go next. Still, Nolan sure has the wind at his back for this one, and if the consistency of his output is any kind of guide, I'm confident he'll close things out strong. As an aside, has it really already been six years since Batman Begins?

1000!

2011-12-12T10:20:00.000-08:00

Time once more to mark another meaningless Internet milestone -- though as meaningless milestones go, this one is slightly more meaningful than most. That's right, I've hit 1000 followers for this site via Networked Blogs. The last few years have been very good to me in terms of the personal and professional dividends this site has reaped, whether we're talking about my Huffington Post work or Geek Wisdom, but knowing there's four digits worth of folks out there who find value in my brain droppings is the biggest ego boost I could ask for. Thanks again to everyone who'se been reading, enjoying, and spreading the word over the years. Here's to more big things in the near and far future.

Let's make sure we preserve this moment for posterity:

Exactly nine months ago, I said I'd bust out the confetti and streamers when we hit a grand, but I can't think of a better way to mark this momentous occasion than by watching a cartoon George C. Scott get hit in the groin with a football:

Nostalgia Theater: Animated Apes Edition

2011-12-09T15:00:00.000-08:00

In the lead-up to the theatrical release of Rise of the Planet of the Apes last August, I spent a week's worth of posts taking a fond walk back through the misty history of the original Apes film and its many theatrical offspring, but I only briefly touched on the ways those damn, dirty apes made their mark on the small screen. Well, with Rise making its home vid debut come Tuesday, this installment of Nostalgia Theater offered the perfect opportunity to re-revisit one of those selfsame small screen excursions.

By 1975, Planet of the Apes' time as a dominant force in pop culture was beginning to wane. The movie series had wrapped two years prior, and while a live action show premiered with a lot of hype behind it the previous fall, a combination of unambitious stories and overambitious scheduling doomed the series -- starring Apes movie icon Roddy McDowall -- to a here-and-gone 14 episode run. Still, though the primetime version died a quick death on CBS, that didn't dissuade NBC from taking another shot, this time in cartoon form. Thus was born the final entry in the original Apes onslaught: Return to the Planet of the Apes.
Seriously, is that creepy or what? I was eight years old when I first saw that intro. It scared the crap out of me, and I loved it. Although I was already somewhat familiar with the barebones concept of the film before then, it was this 'toon that served as the entree to an entire lifetime of immersion in Ape-dom for me. It may have been hobbled by too many too-obvious animation shortcuts, but here we are twenty-four years later talking about its impact, so clearly it did its job on me.

Following generically bland astronauts Bill Hudson, Jeff Allen, and Judy Franklin after they're flung 2000 years into the future and crash land on a mysterious yadda yadda where they eventually find a group of yaddas who are hunted by talking yadda yaddas, Return didn't bother to stray too far from the template, right down to the inclusion of characters like Cornelius, Zira, and Dr. Zaius, with the major exception (other than the mute humans being referred to as "humanoids" -- not sure why they did that) being that the apes' society was significantly more advanced than the one in the films, with cars, televisions, telephones, etc.

Produced by the animation house of DePatie-Freleng (creators of the Pink Panther, the Inspector, etc.), the show was plagued by its low budget and, consequently, severely limited animation, but it did benefit from some nice storyboards and designs by Jonny Quest creator Doug Wildey, and a fairly mature storyline (considering the audience and the era -- and notwithstanding the dragons, sea serpents, and one King Kong-sized gorilla). Also, unlike the other TV show, the animated Apes actually saw its status quo change through the course of its run, practically unheard of for kidvid...which may also explain why it didn't really last very long.

Return to the Planet of the Apes premiered in September of '75 and aired thirteen original episodes until the next fall, so while it did manage to outlast its TV predecessor in terms of time aired, it still came up one short as far as actual episodes produced. While the broader arc of the whether our astronaut heroes' would ever make it off the apes' planet and return home was never resolved, the series did come to a reasonable conclusion that saw its plot threads pay off to satisfaction, and it's definitely a worth entry in the canon of Apes entries -- certainly far worthier than the '01 revisitation that flamed out even faster than this one.

Return to the Planet of the Apes is currently available on DVD both as a standalone two-disc set, and also as part of the big ass monkey head I wrote about here (and ended up buying anyway, despite all my protestations to the contrary). If you're coming into the series cold, you may want to pass on that big head in favor of the cheaper option before giving it a go. It's got just as much "hit" as it does "miss," but depending on where your headspace happens to be at, you may be surprised how much you end up enjoying it. Maybe.

Green Felt, Red Scare

2011-12-06T11:24:00.001-08:00

I had some fun yesterday with the outrage in some far right circles over the Muppets' supposed furtherance of a sinister, secret agenda of Communist indoctrination of our kiddies. As it turns out, though, I may just have backed the wrong horse on this one. Based on this clip from his show last night, it sure looks like Conan O'Brien has found the smoking gun of Marxist Muppetry:

From The Onion...

2011-12-06T10:39:00.001-08:00

This is funny until you realize just how true it is, then it just becomes sad.

In Major Gaffe, Obama Forgets To Dumb It Down

CINCINNATI—In a serious miscalculation that may prove devastating to his bid for a second term, President Barack Obama neglected Tuesday to simplify a statement to the point where it could readily be grasped by anyone with the vocabulary of an 8-year-old. "Instead of saying, 'There are many global variables at work here, and unless they all fall into place, we could find ourselves back in a recession,' he should have just said, 'Times are hard. We gotta be strong,'" said Washington Post political correspondent Brian Meltzer, noting that Obama's statement during a speech on job creation was met with dumbfounded looks and audible gasps from the crowd. "Americans are so used to meaningless homespun homilies, they don't know what to do when they're treated like thinking adults. The president has to understand that if he goes out there throwing around words like 'currency' and 'economy,' he'll end up being branded an elitist." In an attempt to correct the error, Obama concluded his speech with the words "Jobs good. No jobs bad. God bless America."

Captain Power Comes to DVD

2011-12-06T09:58:00.001-08:00

Last April, I posted a Nostalgia Theater entry wherein I waxed fondly about a piece of forgotten '80s kidvid called Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future, and mentioned that an official release appeared to be in the offing sometime soon (with the news breaking almost immediately after I dropped twenty-five bucks on a bootleg. There's a lesson in there somewhere....)

Anyway, that day is now upon us, with today marking the DVD debut of the series in a spiffy set with a barrel full of of all-new features. Aside from the show finally getting its due in platter form, it's been especially cool for me to see the wave of renewed attention and reminiscences it's prompted, such as this piece by Zach Smith that echoes so many of my thoughts about the show and its era. Says he:

As a kid, Captain Power was one of the thousand cuts of weirdness that doomed me to become whatever the hell it is I am today. It brought home themes of darkness and struggle to the formerly-happy world of children’s entertainment, and offered the idea that perhaps being a good guy wasn’t so much about some vague conception of “good,” but about doing the right thing when the odds against you were overwhelming.

Bottom line, this is a great series that deserves a fresh look (or, likely for most, a first look). While there have been stirrings for many years now about some kind of reboot/revival/whatever, those rarely amount to much, but I hope this release can help make that happen.

Not Easy Being Green

2011-12-05T10:28:00.001-08:00

I took my two oldest kids to see Disney's new Muppets movie yesterday, and we all had a grand old time. They laughed, they smiled, they sang. It was fun for them, nostalgic for me. Ah, but little did I realize that what I was actually doing was unwittingly subjecting my kids to the latest Communist scheme by Big Hollywood to turn our wee ones into unwitting peons of the Proletariat. Yep, it's true.

That's the word, anyway, from Dan Gainor, repping the Media Research Center (a conservative thinktank, natch), in conversation with Fox Business Channel's Eric Bolling (who I have to say has made a pretty good showing this year of out Glenn Beck-ing Glenn Beck). According to Gainor, it's pretty easy to draw a straight line between Kermit the Frog and the "Occupy" movement:

This is what they're teaching our kids. You wonder why we've got a bunch of Occupy Wall Street people walking around all around the country, they've been indoctrinated, literally, for years by this kind of stuff...Whether it was Captain Planet or Nickelodeon's Big Green Help, or The Day After Tomorrow, the Al Gore-influenced movie, all of that is what they're teaching, is that corporations is bad, the oil industry is bad, and ultimately what they're telling kids is what they told you in the movie The Matrix: that mankind is a virus on poor old mother Earth.

There's a lot of "yikes" there, but I think what I love most is how anything that encourages kids to take care of the planet they live on is deemed "indoctrination." What's the alternative? "Hey, kids! F*** the planet! Take what you can, when you can! USA! USA!" Of course, what's even more amusing in Gainor's "liberal Hollywood" booga-booga is that if there's an environmentalist message in The Muppets, it's buried so deep within the subtext that I don't think the writers have even thought of it yet.

Check out the full Bolling-Gainor vid here, in its eye-rolling entirety (courtesy of Media Matters).

Political Realities

2011-12-05T10:12:00.001-08:00

From this past weekend's SNL. Fred Armisen's Obama impression is still pretty bad, but the underlying message is the very embodiment of "funny because it's true."

Nostalgia Theater: The Fugitive Edition

2011-12-02T11:42:00.001-08:00

Picking up from last time's conversation about TV shows that have been turned into movies then turned back into TV shows, here's another strong entry in that particular programming niche that also came and went before its time. Beginning its life in the 1960s as the brainchild of creator Roy Huggins and producer Quinn Martin, The Fugitive was that most archetypal of "quest" series, with its deceptively simple premise -- a falsely accused man on the run from the authorities, desperate to track down the key to proving his innocence -- serving as the thematic template for countless others that followed in its wake (Kung Fu being one example, and TV's Incredible Hulk another).

The original version, starring David Jannsen as Dr. Richard Kimble, the titular "fugitive" wrongly convicted for his wife's murder, and Barry Morse as Lt. Phillip Gerard, the detective who dogs his heels, ran for four seasons between 1963 and 1967, with its finale remaining one of the highest rated TV episodes of all time. The concept was then revisited in 1993's The Fugitive feature film, with Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones as hunted and pursuer, respectively (and Jones winning a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his troubles). While the film's ending precluded any sequels, that didn't stop them from trying by having Jones reprise his role of Deputy Samuel Gerard in 1998's US Marshals, which isn't terrible, but is no patch on its predecessor.

When Marshals failed to ignite a franchise of its own, producer Arnold Kopelson, who shepherded the two features to the screen, gave the concept another go a few years later with a new series that re-envisioned Richard Kimble's pursuit in the age of the Internet and 24-hour news. Tim Daly (in his first post-Wings series) essayed the title role, with Mykelti Williamson as Gerard, now a Chicago detective. It also featured Avatar's Stephen Lang as the infamous "One-Armed Man" Kimble hunts across the country. Here's the opening title sequence (with theme by movie composer, James Newton Howard) below, as well as a promo trailer:

There was actually an intense bidding war for this series (which boasted one of the most elaborate, expensive pilots until that time) before it finally landed at CBS. When it debuted with much pomp and circumstance on October 6, 2000, every expectation -- by the network, the entertainment press, and me -- was that The Fugitive, powered by brand recognition and the quality of the show itself, would be a tentpole program for the network. Instead, a less-than-expected audience tuned in to sample the debut, and viewership quickly dropped off from there. Ironically, the show that was given the plum post-Fugitive slot on Friday nights without any real expectations was a little procedural called CSI -- whatever happened to that one, anyway?

As far as The Fugitive, I'm still not entirely sure why the audience for it never materialized, though I'd guess there was a feeling among many that the story had already been told to satisfaction -- twice. Had they tuned in though, they would have found a consistently engrossing drama that effectively married pathos and propulsion, and wove in a conspiracy that gave the whole thing a very X-Files feel. Daly, one of my fave underrated actors, was particularly effective at conveying the tremendous toll of the good doctor's life on the run. Although CBS picked it up for a full season of twenty-three episodes as a show of faith, the ratings just couldn't justify the cost, leading ultimately to its cancellation next spring.

In the end, the show closed out its first and only season with a two-part episode that upped the stakes considerably for our erstwhile hero, with a climactic showdown between the emotionally-wrecked Kimble, the increasingly-erratic Gerard, and the One-Armed Man that ticked down to one of the most frustrating cliffhangers of all time. By all accounts, the producers were rolling the dice that the unresolved plotline would prompt the net to offer some manner of reprieve, but sadly such was not to be. Instead, unlike its two prior iterations, this take on The Fugitive never reached an actual resolution, and May 25, 2001 was the day the running (forcibly) stopped.

While the 1960s version of the The Fugitive has been released in its entirety on DVD (with a complete set currently forthcoming), its successor hasn't been so lucky, consigned to the "Cancelled Series" scrap pile and, like last week's The Untouchables, forgotten by all but aficionados. Airing juuust before complete TV seasons on DVD became commonplace, 2000's The Fugitive has never hit the platter format (except for a repackaging of the first two eps for overseas consumption -- which the trailer above is promoting) in the ten years since its demise, and with its frustrating lack of resolution serving as a rather large impediment to it finding a new audience, I doubt it ever will -- which is a real shame.

Smallville - The Complete Series: Myth, Metaphor, and the Man of Steel

2011-11-29T09:00:00.000-08:00

I thought I'd said everything I needed to say about Smallville in May when discussing the series' long-in-coming finale, but after spending most of the last week digging into the complete series set containing all ten seasons of the proto-Superman skein I'm struck by how, despite the many, many concerns I've voiced with the series' sloppy storytelling techniques and narrative cul-de-sacs throughout its run, none of that particularly mattered to me. Instead, we're left with the towering achievement of the series itself: 218 episodes of a series that stayed aloft for an entire decade when its whole raison d'être was pointedly about not being aloft, and which can now be viewed not as piecemeal distillates of a tale that may or may not reach its fruition, but instead one long story with a specific beginning, middle, and end, demonstrating the power of this character to reinvent himself for every generation.

In a sense, it's a bit like looking back at one's high school years. Yes, in the moment there's plenty of angst and anguish, but with the distance of time and the perspective that comes from knowing we wouldn't be where we are today if not for every experience we had before, it becomes easier to look back on the good times. And so it is with Smallville. Knowing that, despite the many fits and starts on the road there, Tom Welling's Boy of Steel "graduated" at series' end just as he was meant to, we can overlook season four's go-nowhere "Lana Lang is a witch" thread, or the inanity of "Jimmy Olsen, and his younger brother Jimmy Olsen" in season eight, and instead focus on the positives, like the brilliant pilot episode that neatly set the stage for everything to come, or season two's "Rosetta," with the late Christopher Reeve passing the Super-torch to Welling.

A few weeks ago I spent quite a bit of space dissecting whether it's Clark Kent or his costumed alter-ego who constitutes the "real" identity of the iconic hero, with no firm answer emerging, but Smallville spent perhaps more time than any other take on the Superman legend by really digging into that dichotomy. Even more than that, however, the key to its longevity may well lie in how it plied the metaphorical underpinnings of that question to maximum effect, with Clark's journey from farmboy to journalist to superhero -- and all the false starts encompassed therein -- playing in parallel to the same struggles all of us go through as we make that uneasy transition from adolescence to adulthood.

It's this thematic through-line of identity-in-transition that's woven into the very design of Warner Bros.' beautiful box set for the show -- a true love letter to longtime fans -- which has the set's 62 discs housed in two yearbook-style cases, one for the first five years (the "Smallville" era) and one for the latter five (when it became essentially the "Metropolis" years). The assortment of brand new special features includes in-depth looks at each season's individual arcs ("Supergirl" in year 7, "Zod" in year 9, etc.) and how they played out against the broader arc of the entire show. I may have had some grumbles with choices the creatives made over the years, but after making my way through the featurettes, I couldn't help but gain a deeper appreciation for the many ways they stepped right.

Indeed, it's been especially interesting for me to re-watch the early episodes chronicling Clark's high school trials and tribulations for the first time since they originally aired in fall of '01, when I was just four years out of high school myself. Now here I am ten years older, and where I used to relate to the awkwardness of teenaged Clark, today, with three little ones of my own, I look at John Schneider's portrayal of Clark's adopted father Jonathan Kent, and wonder how he makes this whole parenting thing look so easy. To me, that's the true test of a work of art: how well it transcends its moment, and whether we can find new points of entry depending on which stage of our life we happen to be in when experiencing it.

Another aspect one can appreciate far more given the benefit of a decade's hindsight is the remarkable work actor Michael Rosenbaum's did in his extended run as Lex Luthor, whose descent into the criminal mastermind/arch-nemesis role that he's long since been damned to was given a deeply tragic undercurrent unlike any he has been portrayed with previously. Though the relationship between the two eternal rivals has varied greatly depending on which telling one chooses to embrace, by keeping its focus on "Lex & Clark" instead of "Luthor & Superman," Smallville's approach will prove perhaps the most resonant and memorable of all in the long-run.

While it was at times impossibly flawed, those flaws don't amount to much when weighed against what the show succeeded at doing. Its conceptualization of Clark Kent, Lex Luthor, Lois Lane, et al, will likely remain touchstones for everyone who came of age with the show, and that's something that can never be taken away from it. In that sense, just as Lois & Clark did for audiences in the '90s, and the Christopher Reeve and George Reeves iterations did during their respective eras, Smallville has been a crucial a part of the ongoing cultural evolution of the Superman story, with the elasticity of the myth showing why the character continues to play such an integral role in the cultural firmament.

"Conscious Cynicism"

2011-11-28T10:51:00.001-08:00

Anyone who's been following the Republican primary process this electoral go-round knows that it's taken on the characteristics of a slow motion car crash, with bets being placed prior to every debate whether one of the candidates or the audience will deliver the most cringe-inducing viral video moment. As he's been doing evermore frequently of late, David Frum (one of my favorite sensible conservatives), again ponders the question of what happened to the Republican party in a lengthy new piece for New York magazine. Taking aim at the essential intellectual disconnect at the heart of current conservative orthodoxy, he says:

Some liberals suspect that the conservative changes of mind since 2008 are opportunistic and cynical. It’s true that cynicism is never entirely absent from politics: I won’t soon forget the lupine smile that played about the lips of the leader of one prominent conservative institution as he told me, “Our donors truly think the apocalypse has arrived.” Yet conscious cynicism is much rarer than you might suppose. Few of us have the self-knowledge and emotional discipline to say one thing while meaning another. If we say something often enough, we come to believe it. We don’t usually delude others until after we have first deluded ourselves.

Some of the smartest and most sophisticated people I know—canny investors, erudite authors—sincerely and passionately believe that President Barack Obama has gone far beyond conventional American liberalism and is willfully and relentlessly driving the United States down the road to socialism. No counterevidence will dissuade them from this belief: not record-high corporate profits, not almost 500,000 job losses in the public sector, not the lowest tax rates since the Truman administration. It is not easy to fit this belief alongside the equally strongly held belief that the president is a pitiful, bumbling amateur, dazed and overwhelmed by a job too big for him—and yet that is done too.

Check out the rest -- and oh, there's so much more -- at the link.

Frank Miller and the Conan Doctrine

2011-11-27T12:48:00.001-08:00

We've been having some fun (okay, a lot of fun) with comic creator Frank Miller lately, what with his rampant Islamophobia and his hilarious, Walt Kowalski-esque response to Occupy Wall Street. But two pieces I read recently -- one about Miller and one not -- unintentionally piggybacked off one another to help paint a very revealing portrait of the Manichean views that drive Miller and his ideological fellow travelers, and also how such thinking has hogtied the Republican primary process thanks to the expectations of today's GOP voters.

In digging into Miller's Occupy comments, Rick Moody at The Guardian argues (as I and others have previously) that anyone who's taken a real look at Miller's work over the years shouldn't be too surprised by their viciousness, nor the fact that he made them. Moody then goes one further and argues that the entire machinery of mainstream filmmaking (here in the States, anyway) is geared towards fostering and perpetuating similar such simplistic appraisals of complex issues:

Miller's hard-right, pro-military point of view is not only accounted for in his own work, but in the larger project of mainstream Hollywood cinema. American movies, in the main, often agree with Frank Miller, that endless war against a ruthless enemy is good, and military service is good, that killing makes you a man, that capitalism must prevail, that if you would just get a job (preferably a corporate job, for all honest work is corporate) you would quit complaining. American movies say these things, but they are more polite about it, lest they should offend.

Moody goes on to show that he's got no love for the superhero movie genre, and obviously that's grist for a further conversation down the line, but meanwhile, in a completely unrelated piece that's eerily simpatico with this thesis, Kevin Drum refers to the very worldview elucidated above in his discussion of the Tea Party crowd, labeling it the Conan Doctrine (that's Conan as in "Barbarian," not "O'Brien") for how it can be encapsulated entirely by the Ah-nuld's proclamation in 1982's Conan the Barbarian that the best thing in life is, "To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women."

Nostalgia Theater: The Untouchables Edition

2011-11-25T09:27:00.001-08:00

One of the most valuable currencies in Hollywood is the power of brand recognition. This is at least partially to blame for the long-lived trend of taking old TV shows and turning them into feature films. Pre-existing awareness of a title means that much less time the studio has to spend fostering said awareness from the ground up. Of course, the brand itself doesn't mean anything if what we end up with is no good, which is why, for every flick like Maverick or The A-Team that takes its premise and really does something fun and engaging, we get forgettable crap like The Dukes of Hazzard and Wild Wild West.

Another trend we've seen, albeit less frequently, is when a TV property is translated to film, then subsequently reverse-engineered back to the small screen. The most recent example of this phenomenon is ABC's Charlie's Angels reboot this fall (developed by Smallville's Al Gough and Miles Millars), which has the distinction of being the first casualty of the 2011 season. But rather than spend this "Nostalgia Theater" mocking also-rans, I wanted to look at an entry in the TV-movie-TV sub-subgenre that grabbed ahold of the ball and ran with it creatively (though not so much commercially -- we'll get to that in a second): the 1990s revival of The Untouchables.

(That's the first part of the first ep -- I'm sure you can follow the breadcrumbs from there.)

Freely adapted from Brian De Palma's 1987 feature, itself adapted from the iconic Robert Stack TV series of the 1950s, The Untouchables premiered in January of 1993 and starred Tom Amandes as go-getter G-Man Eliot Ness and William Forsythe as his eternal nemesis Al Capone, running for two seasons of first-run. The '93 model Untouchables also featured John Rhys-Davies (as a version of Sean Connery's Oscar-winning "Malone" character from the film), as well as former Superboy John Newton and future JAG David James Elliott as member's of Ness' team of crime-busters.

And while Amandes and the rest of the various white hats all did a good job, this really ended up being a showcase for Forsythe's devious, calculating, surprisingly sympathetic take on Capone, whose background was fleshed out and given far more development than in either previous version of the story, and whose rivalry with Ness was woven tightly into a battle of wits and wills that had real potential to play out over the series' life into something truly epic. Unfortunately, that life was cut drastically short due to a number of factors which can all be boiled down to the almighty dollar.

While The Untouchables garnered a lot of eyeball traffic during the first season thanks to it being shopped by distributor Paramount to local stations as a package that would air in conjunction with first season episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, when unhooked from the Trek skein for its second year, it ended up shuffled off to either late, late night or early, early morning by affiliates. And while the period setting and extensive location shooting made for one of the best looking shows of the era, they also made it a very expensive investment for Paramount. Given the smaller audience, the studio decided to cut anchor after the second year.

Sadly, since its cancellation in May of '94, The Untouchables has been almost entirely forgotten (I know of several die-hard fans of the movie who had no idea this even existed). Its too-short, 42 episode lifespan wasn't enough for much of a syndication package, so reruns have been non-existent, and even with practically every other TV series under the sun coming to DVD, no home video offerings are on the horizon either. I do hope it comes to DVD at some point, as the strong cast and strong production values make 1993's The Untouchables a rare, forgotten gem that's extremely worthy of being rediscovered.

Fowl Play

2011-11-24T08:52:00.001-08:00

A few days ago, anti-Muslim nutbar Pamela Geller blazed a new trail in her never-ending battle against truth, justice, and the American way by assailing the Butterball company's complicity in "stealth jihad" for selling halal-certified turkeys (prepared according to Islamic standards) just in time for Thanksgiving (duh-duh-DAH). Muslims: Conquering America one turkey at a time.

In the spirit of the day though, I really am thankful for people like Geller who are so out-and-proud with their stupidity, because they offer an immediate gut-check for all the rest of us over here in "Sane-ville" to know how not to be. And that can't help but be a good thing. So keep on truckin', Pam! Anyway, check out Geller's lunatic screed for all the unintentional hilarity, then read Wajahat Ali's response for humor of the intentional variety.

Cavill on the Cape

2011-11-23T13:57:00.001-08:00

I spent some time a few weeks back engaging in a bit of armchair psychoanalysis vis-a-vis the Clark Kent-Superman dichotomy in a piece that appeared both here and at The Huffington Post, and it's a subject I expect to dig into a bit further when I take a look at the upcoming Smallville complete series set next week.

In the meantime though, Geoff Boucher at "Hero Complex" chatted up incoming big screen Superman Henry Cavill about that very subject while the actor was promoting his currently-in-theaters Immortals. Although Cavill understandably plays coy, he still manages to give some insight into how he views the character(s) and his approache to the material. Click past the jump for some highlights:

On whether it's easier to play Clark or Superman, and which of the two he relates to more:

Both are difficult and easy to play in their respective ways. Essentially, yes, one is a disguise but the one that’s not a disguise is so unreal that brings difficulties of its own with it. I mean, once the shroud is cast off, yeah, there’s that — but he can fly. [Laughs] Overall, there’s no one that’s easier or less easy than the other.

The differences between Superman and his Immortals character, demigod Theseus:

You can imagine how scary and angry Superman would be as a personality if he fell into a broken family where the father cheats or there’s abuse. You can imagine how he would develop as an emotional person. It’d be a bit like the story in “Red Son,” [which transplants Superman's origins from rural Kansas to Communist Russia] he’s not evil but he’s very different because of environment. The upbringing of Theseus is the polar opposite — the absolute negative of — the upbringing that the Kents gave Superman.

On the many different, equally valid interpretations of Superman in different media over the years:

I think it’s great that it does change. It should change and should evolve. I think “The New 52″ stuff is fantastic because it is an evolution of the character. Initially, people will just rail against it and others will love it and they debate it. They care, which is great, but all of it is part of this evolution and in 30 years they will forget. In three decades when someone dares to put a pair of red underpants on the outside [of Superman's costume] again, someone will go crazy and say, ‘What are you doing?! This isn’t Superman anymore!’ It’s all mythology and people take what they want from it ….

You can read the rest of the interview here, including some tidbits on which comic stories Cavill has turned to for research. It all makes for an interesting read, and gives a sense -- perhaps -- of the level of seriousness the filmmakers have invested into reinvigorating the Man of Steel for Man of Steel.

Just Being Frank

2011-11-22T11:31:00.001-08:00

When comic writer/artist Frank Miller let fly his criticism of the Occupy movement a few weeks back, it seemed to split the web in half, with comic professionals and others quickly chiming in with posts expressing either "right on" or "wrong-o" sentiments. Between the Occupy thing and the anti-Muslim thing, I've gotten quite a bit of mileage out of assailing Miller's crackpottery of late, but Colin Smith -- whose excellent blog "Too Busy Thinking About My Comics" has become a regular read for me thanks to his scholarly insights on the funnybook form -- goes further than most by really digging into Miller's oeuvre and tracking the metamorphosis of his views from The Dark Knight Returns in the '80s to his current output. It's a fascinating analysis that paints Miller's political (mental?) descent in stark, vivid terms.

Super Bad

2011-11-21T10:04:00.001-08:00

In the wake of the long-winded, unnecessary debt ceiling fight last summer, it's now looking like the so-called "Super Committee" tasked with crafting substantive deficit reduction measures in its aftermath is barreling straight towards an admission of failure/defeat come their agreed-upon deadline this coming Wednesday. This failure is then set to trigger substantial cuts in defense and Medicare spending (on the order of $1.2 billion annually) come 2013. That trigger -- whose consequences have the potential to be absolutely catastrophic to both areas of expense, and the economy as a whole -- was supposed to be a "fear of God" mechanism that would keep the committee's membership (from both sides of the aisle) on task, but apparently even that wasn't enough to overcome the toxic atmosphere of partisan CYA that pervades Washington these days. This might sound like it's a bad thing, but as Paul Krugman explains, maybe not.

Nostalgia Theater: Automan Edition

2011-11-18T13:18:00.001-08:00

We turn the "Nostalgia Theater" spotlight this week on a true time capsule of the early '80s -- with all that implies -- courtesy of legendary schlock TV purveyor Glen A. Larson. Inspired by the Tron's then-groundbreaking visual effects technology upon that film's 1982 release, Larson, creator of the original Battlestar Galactica and the original Knight Rider, dreamed up a superhero series the following year that could draw in the same throngs that were captivated by the Disney film.

The big miscalculation, of course, was that there were no throngs captivated by Tron, and so the end result was Automan, starring Desi Arnaz, Jr. (whose career I don't think ever recovered from this) and Chuck Wagner as nebbishy computer programmer and high tech superhero, respectively. I could try to sum up the ludicrous idiocy of this thing for you, but I'll make it easier on myself by just having you check out this intro from the pilot, which seems to assume everyone in the audience is the dumbest person on Earth:

And if you're not sold yet, you will be after you watch the title sequence:

So, yeah, this was pretty bad.

Is it any wonder why I consider Larson the biggest reason why sci-fi TV was such a wasteland between the time Star Trek left the air in '69 and when it returned to the air in '87? I mean, really, Jimmy Connors playing tennis, and John Travolta dancing? Were those references current even back then? This thing lasted twelve episodes in 1983 before ABC hit the CTRL-ALT-DELETE, but Larson, who also created Magnum, P.I. with Donald P. Bellisario (which actually holds up pretty well, surprisingly enough), wasn't through with his subpar sci-fi sojourns just yet, and we'll be delving into more of those offerings in the weeks and months ahead.
Automan hasn't been released for home video yet, which I suppose we should all be grateful for.

Occupy Gotham

2011-11-15T11:31:00.001-08:00

Tying in tangentially with my Batman-Occupy post from Sunday (now up at HuffPo), here's a vid that asks the Dark Knight to put his money where his mouth is:

From The Onion...

2011-11-15T11:24:00.001-08:00

With Newtie's recent emergence at the top of GOP polls, this one from last March seemed especially apt:

Even Newt Gingrich A Little Depressed By Prospect Of Him Running For President

One highlight:

While confirming his ardent desire to be president, the former Speaker of the House told reporters the mere fact that American voters were seriously considering Newt Gingrich to be a viable Republican candidate in 2012 was a fairly distressing development that made him question the direction the country was moving in.

It's funny because it's true. Read the rest here.

Brain Freeze

2011-11-14T09:52:00.001-08:00

Governor Rick Perry's debate meltdown last week -- wherein he simply could not bring himself to remember which government agency he'd eliminate as president -- carried a shockwave so destructive to his candidacy that it actually travelled back in time and retroactively dubbed Howard Dean's yell from '04 as his "Rick Perry Moment." Pretty much as soon as the Perry flub occurred, I think all eyes immediately turned towards Saturday Night Live to see how the veteran sketchcom would make sport of it, and they didn't disappoint this past weekend.

The Republican primary process this go-round has been especially bountiful for the show, gifting its writers with a prefab cadre of caricatures who've already done most of the heavy lifting comedy-wise before they even arrive at the scene, and the "oops" heard 'round the world helped make for an all-time great in the already-impressive canon of SNL debate parodies. My favorite bit comes when, after several uncomfortable seconds of Bill Hader's Perry flailing and fumbling, Jason Sudeikis as Mitt Romney pleads with the moderators to ease off: "I want to be president, but not like this."

Occupy: What Would Batman Do?

2011-11-13T08:00:00.001-08:00

I spoke my piece about the disturbing worldview of comic artist Frank Miller a month ago after his graphic novel Holy Terror -- a celebration of bigotry dressed up as a celebration of patriotism -- hit the shelves, and I was happy to let it be at that. But then he went and chimed in on the "Occupy" protests that have been multiplying all over the place, and, well, I just had to wade back into the deep end of the crazy pool. From Miller's blog early last week (with hat-tip to Bleeding Cool for pointing me there):

This is no popular uprising. This is garbage. And goodness knows they’re spewing their garbage – both politically and physically – every which way they can find.

Wake up, pond scum. America is at war against a ruthless enemy.

Maybe, between bouts of self-pity and all the other tasty tidbits of narcissism you’ve been served up in your sheltered, comfy little worlds, you’ve heard terms like al-Qaeda and Islamicism.

And this enemy of mine — not of yours, apparently - must be getting a dark chuckle, if not an outright horselaugh - out of your vain, childish, self-destructive spectacle.

You see what he did there? First, he essentially says that the First Amendment only applies to the speech he agrees with, which is a little nutty, but, in this day and age, not nutty nutty. No, what really brings it across the endzone and spikes the ball is when he says that by allowing the protests to occur, we're letting the terrorists win. FTW, Frank. FTW.

I've already said here that I'm of mixed feelings about the Occupy movement itself, agreeing with the sentiment behind it if not necessarily the way it's being expressed, but what strikes me about Miller's comments is not only how ill-informed he is about the actual issues at play and who's out there on the streets, but also how he's willing to stand so proudly -- defiantly, even -- on that ignorance.

Back when I was in the early planning stages on my Master's thesis, which ended up being about the portrayal of Muslim characters in post-9/11 narrative fiction, I expressed concerns to my advisor that, by tackling another yet Muslim-related paper after having already written several in succession, I risked becoming a single-issue writer. A one-trick pony, if you will.

She assured me that there's a difference between being a single-issue writer and strongly advocating for a particular issue. Well, given the singleminded focus of his recent creative output, and given how he manages to swerve and carom his point straight off the protesters' concerns about economic inequality and somehow make it all about the War on Terror, I'm going to be charitable and say that that Miller is a strong advocate for that particular issue.

Of course, the most ironic part in all this may well be that this screed comes to us from the Batman writer responsible for one of the single most defining moments in the character's long history (posted up-top, from 1987's "Batman: Year One" -- art by David Mazzucchelli), wherein the newly-debuted Dark Knight makes his presence known to Gotham City's corrupt bureaucrats and moneyed elites, pretty clearly signalling in the process precisely where he'd stand on the whole "Occupy" thing.

Here's the same scene via the excellent Batman: Year One animated movie that came out last month:

With how much and how clearly Miller seems to identify with the comic book realities he's spent his life toiling in (so much so that the events of 9/11 moved him to want to do a Batman vs. Bin Laden story rather than "enlist for the real thing," as he exhorts the Occupy protesters to do), I'm surprised he hasn't put himself in the cowl of the character with whom he's most identified and asked, "What would Batman do?"

Shades of Black

2011-11-10T13:51:00.001-08:00

A couple of days ago I was having a conversation with a friend wherein I contrasted the apparent disparity between the wholehearted embrace that's greeted Herman Cain by (some on) the right with the abject disgust these same folks hold for Barack Obama. Far more than disagreement with his policies (which I myself have no shortage of, just to be clear), the venom expressed toward the latter crosses over into the questioning of his very legitimacy -- as both the president and as an American -- and this illegitimacy is couched in any number of blind alleys such as Birtherism, Socialism, or what-have-you.

What's more perplexing, from the perspective of strict conservative dogma if nothing else, is that Obama has seemingly done everything "right" to succeed (insofar as we define succes in our society). Academically, personally, and politically, he's excelled by keeping his nose clean and pressed tightly to the grindstone. But then, per the en vogue invective of right wing opinion-shapers like Ann Coulter or Rush Limbaugh, all that is simply not good enough, and never will be. Given a comparison between Obama and an economically uninformed, socially maladroit, and politically underwhelming candidate whose character, in the face of recent news, is at least in question, Cain nonetheless remains the clear choice for conservatives.

Why? Because, per Coulter, "our blacks are better than their blacks."

In other words, ideology and dogma hold so much sway over conservative orthodoxy that reams of political, fiscal, and social dimensions can be boiled down to one ridiculous point of comparison. While this is ignorant on its face, I also think it constituted an incredibly lucid bit of accidental truth-telling on the part of the showboating Coulter (who, true to form, dug in her heels even further when called out), and it helps illustrate some of the ideological mindset that has the far right so readily commis around a candidate as obviously flawed as Cain. That Coulter provided us with an unplanned peek behind the curtain into the vitriol that drives the conservative thought machine is also propounded by Corey Robin, who elaborated in his post on the subject at Al Jazeera:

The conservative vision of ascent is rougher around the edges. The outsider who becomes a right-wing insider must not sail to power on his SAT's; he must claw his way to power like Tony Soprano. He has to show that he understands the darkness of the American Dream, that you have to fight - and fight dirty - for your position.

That's why Coulter formulates the virtues of Cain as she does: unlike black liberals or Democrats, the black conservative doesn't roll into his opinions; he fights his way into them. He doesn't go with the flow; he stands in the crashing surf, forcing the waves to break. That is his claim to power, his entitlement to rule.

It's a pretty on-point analysis, I think, and well worth a read in its entirety. In the long run, I suppose the real test of how much sway such thinking holds over the current configuration of the Republican base lies in whether Cain weathers his current bout of troubles to improbably emerge with the nomination (which, contrary to his own finger-pointing at a presser on Tuesday, I have to think the Democrats are secretly very much hoping for). Based on the reaction of the Republican crowd at last night's debate when Cain was quizzed on his troubles, as well as the amount of money he's raised since the scandal broke, it's sure not looking good so far.

Heavyweight Herman

2011-11-09T14:24:00.000-08:00

Mike Tyson channels Herman Cain, via Funny or Die. Funny stuff, for sure, but when Iron Mike starts dinging anyone else for their perceived batcrap craziness, you really know we've crossed over into the Looking-Glass world.

Herman Cainâs Campaign Promises with Mike Tyson from Mike Tyson

HIGHLY Recommended Reading

2011-11-09T13:14:00.000-08:00

Tim Dickinson has an exhaustive treatise up at Rolling Stone that's well worth your time, examining the steady transformation of the GOP over the last several decades into a party that stands, first, foremost, and steadfastly for that 1% people are so exorcised about lately. As instructive as it is alarming, one thing that becomes clear upon reading the piece is how the ideological zealotry of Grover Norquist and the policy machinations of Dick Cheney are just two cogs in a political machine-works that almost single-handedly drop-kicked our economy into the sun.

Another Interview With Me

2011-11-08T10:06:00.000-08:00

I meant to post this last week, but better late than never, right? I recently chatted with Illume Magazine's Irfan Rydhan about Geek Wisdom, geek culture, and my role in both. Click over here to read what I had to say.

The Menace of Nostalgia

2011-11-06T07:35:00.000-08:00

When I talked about the impending 3D re-release of Star Wars: Episode I a few weeks ago, my dislike of the film couldn't help but color my "blah" reaction to the poster, and that dislike has colored my reaction to the reissue's trailer as well:

I was actually kind of surprised by my apathetic response to this vid considering how clearly the promo whizzes at Team Lucas are going for the same nostalgic jugular the Star Wars Special Edition trailer attacked when it first hit in fall of '96, right down to using some of the same iconography:

What's interesting to me though is that, while I still feel the chill of nostalgia when I watch the SE trailer, I don't feel anything for The Phantom Menace -- not even for the teaser trailer that had everyone so excited (including me) that people were buying tickets to movies they knew were showing it, only to leave once the trailers were done (not including me):

Of course, when watching the Menace trailer, I now have the benefit of knowing in painful detail everything that was just being hinted at then, so there is that. But while I'm still absolutely uninterested in checking out the re-issue, I also couldn't help but be struck by one of the comments on the new trailer's YouTube page:

Saw it in Anakin's age as a 9 year old in theater and I can't wait to see it again in 3D !!!! Podracing, Gungan City, Droid army, Duel of the Fates ...... now that's some serious 3D material from a galaxy far, far away

There was just something that struck a chord with me about the sentiment there. If this guy was nine when Phantom Menace first dropped, that would make him about 21 now, which is a little older than I was then. Given that, who's to say that my nostalgia is implicitly "right," while his is "wrong"? At the end of it, all our senses of nostalgia, which Star Wars roots nearly all of its appeal in, let's be honest, are based on wanting to recapture and retain some measure of the things that comforted us as children.

And in that sense I'm reminded once again of my twelve-year old nephew, who watched the film as a wee one, without the weight of sixteen years of anticipation, and whose concept of Star Wars is firmly rooted in Episode I and its two successors. "What's wrong with Jar Jar?" said he. Well, nothing, I guess. We can go round and round about what God awful films the prequels are (and we have), but if we can't simply let go and allow this generation to define and enjoy things the way that works for them, then maybe the fault lies not in our Star Wars, but in ourselves.

Second Class

2011-11-04T11:45:00.000-07:00

In other news for Fox prequels, there's movement this morning on a follow-up to this summer's X-Men: First Class, which has had its fortunes linked with Rise of the Planet of the Apes since both films were rushed into production in summer of 2010. With Rise's sequel rumblings now beginning, it wasn't long until they started for the new Class, and writer Simon Kinberg has been drafted to craft the next story for the Marvel mutants' pre-franchise. No word on the timeframe we can expect the sequel in, what its storyline would be, or who else is involved, but as to Kinberg, I'm a little wary because of his role as one of the writers on 2006's abysmal X-Men: The Last Stand. Then again, he also wrote Sherlock Holmes, which I enjoyed quite a bit.

That said, I've watched First Class several times since my initial positive review, and while I'd hate to see it sullied by an unworthy second installment, I'm willing to give this one a little bit more rope given that the exemplary cast, headlined by James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender, are already signed, and director Matthew Vaughn seems like he'd be onboard as well, even spitballing ideas for the sequel around the time First Class was released. With Hugh Jackman's The Wolverine sequel still in the development pipeline with a new director and new release date, it sure looks like Fox intends to get the most out of the X-Men movie rights they've got an iron grip on. Here's hoping they've learned from the franchise's prior missteps.

Apes Sequel Rises

2011-11-04T08:47:00.000-07:00

When I spoke with Rise of the Planet of the Apes writers/producers Rick Jaffa & Amanda Silver last August, the pair was coy about sequel possibilities for Fox's prequel/reboot project, saying no serious discussions had taken place on the subject. Well, the notion of sequelizing Rise took a big a step forward from abstract concept to concrete reality with word of star Andy Serkis, whose motion-captured performance as lead chimp Caesar is the unquestionable centerpiece of the film, signing on for one or more sequels in a deal that will net the Once and Future Gollum a cool seven figures. Also locked in are director Rupert Wyatt and Jaffa & Silver. Notably not locked in are human stars James Franco and Freida Pinto (which, assuming they won't be back, makes me wonder why they didn't just stick with the original ending after all).

Given the franchise's history, I have no doubt an Apes sequel was on the filmmakers' and studio's radar the minute development on Rise began (thus the sequel clauses for the key creatives), but the positive word-of-mouth from critics and auds and a much better-than-expected global tally of $450+ mil and counting prove there's an audience that actually wants to see what happens next on the Monkey Planet (as opposed to the collective shrug that greeted the equally-successful Tim Burton redo in '01). I've already stated my hope that the filmmakers don't go anywhere near the idea of remaking the Heston original, which they agreed with me on, and the early signing of Serkis is a good indication that any sequel(s) will continue the focus on Caesar and the ape revolution, with the plague-driven downfall of humanity either intertwined or playing in parallel.

In terms of what narrative ground I'd like to see them cover, the fifth film in the original Apes cycle, Battle for the Planet of the Apes, for as flawed as I thought it was, had at its center the notion of the apes' loss of innocence -- playing a variation on the Cain & Abel story. I see potential for the next Rise installment to sound similar chords, and more successfully, by giving us a deeper insight into Caear's (pun unintentional) evolution into a military figure. The question I asked back in August was, given his portrayal as a more (pun also unintentional) humanistic leader, and given where we know this whole "Planet of the Apes" thing ends up (Chuck Heston being chased through the cornfield by gorillas on horseback), whether Caear's story is destined to be a tragic one where he fails in his goal of human-ape cooperation. With the pieces being lined up to address that question in earnest, we may be getting an answer soon -- and we may not like what we find.

Secret Identity Crisis

2011-11-03T16:41:00.000-07:00

Whether we're talking about TV shows, movies, or red underoos, there's no shortage of Superman posts on this site, and I think a big reason why I continue to find the character so interesting is his role as a kind of cultural arbiter in our society, with an elastic appeal that makes him ripe for reinvention generation after generation. One of the most important aspects of this appeal -- and also of these reinventions -- is the ongoing tug-of-war, both textual and meta-textual, between his twin roles as "mild mannered reporter" and "strange visitor from another planet."

Unlike DC Comics counterpart Batman, whose "millionaire playboy" act has long been accepted as a public front in service of the masked vigilante, the question of whether Clark Kent or Superman is the "real" persona (bearing in mind, of course, that these are all imaginary stories -- but then, aren't they all?) has remained unsettled for decades, with the answer dependent almost entirely upon which portrayal or which era one chooses to focus on.

The iconic Christopher Reeve depiction of Superman and Clark in the '70s and '80s Superman movies, close to gospel for many and gamely aped by Brandon Routh in 2006's Superman Returns, hinged on the idea that Superman was a brilliant, Olivier-level actor who had erected the "bumbling reporter" facade to draw attention away from what was so obviously apparent to anyone who chose to look past the oversized eyeglasses.

This notion, that milquetoast Clark is actually Superman's sly "screw you" to humanity, remained in place for much of the character's publication history (with Quentin Tarentino spinning screenwriting gold from the metaphor in his Kill Bill duology), and it wasn't until comic writer/artist John Byrne reinvented the Super-wheel with 1986's ground-up The Man of Steel that the paradigm shifted, with cool, confident Clark becoming the "true" identity, and Superman merely the job he does occasionally.

In this sense, Byrne was clearly inspired by the 1950s Adventures of Superman TV series with which he grew up, wherein actor George Reeves played a much more at-ease Clark who could hold his own as a crusading reporter, but who was barely different from his superheroic identity except for the clothes he happened to be wearing at any given time.

The Byrne model, with the "man" retaining primacy over the "Super," was status quo from the late '80s into the late '90s, reflected in Dean Cain's portrayal on TV's Lois & Clark from 1993-'97, and the '90s animated Superman series. In fact, wasn't until Smallville premiered in '01, with its angsty take on Kent's tormented teen years finding a wide new audience, that the dividing line between man and Superman came back into question. The comic books soon followed suit, with subsequent reboots all arriving at different points on the map.

For director Bryan Singer, whose stint guiding the Man of Tomorrow began and ended with Superman Returns, as well as comic writer Mark Waid, who took a crack at rethinking Superman's origins in 2003's Birthright miniseries, the idea presented was that there are actually three different identities at play, with both the costumed Superman and bespectacled Clark serving as disguised reflections of of the real Clark Kent, a.k.a. Kal-El, the star-born orphan raised with Earthly values by Kansas farmers.

Ultimately, regardless of where one chooses to land on the great Clark-Superman divide, it's a question whose answers can offer some very telling insights into our own long-held notions of identity, self, and desire, and it's one that author Elliot S. Maggin, having written two very good prose Superman novels in the '70s in addition to his longterm role as the character's comic book chronicler during that era, tackles to great effect in an essay reposted by, of all places, Forbes.com. Says he:

When the rest of us create a character, that character is as well defined as we can make him. The comic book medium gave birth to our own classical hero because only in a medium that crude, whose end product is that apparently unfinished, can a creator so effectively suggest a concept of such endless potency. Clark is a complete creation of Superman, so complete that he’s effectively real. Clark is a natural born citizen. He votes. He has jealousies and shortcomings. He has opinions, real ones that occasionally diverge from those of Superman. They have altogether different spiritual beliefs, for example. Clark has appropriately nerdy hobbies. He scrapbooks, for heaven’s sakes. He collects his favorite classic TV commercials on DVD. His favorite is the one for the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce where the old man skips out of the retirement home to meet his grandson in the parking lot (“Hey, Boo-boo.”) and rides off for a weekend of gambling and debauchery.

Superman can’t do the stuff Clark can do. Not that he wouldn’t if he didn’t have a sacred duty to perform, but he can’t. So not only is Clark a construct for the purposes of guarding what measure of privacy he requires for his own emotional self-preservation, but Clark is the outlet that allows Superman to do the things that a Superman can’t do in public. Clark can, and that makes him Superman’s saving grace. Clark, the character, doesn’t need Superman, but Superman, the real deal, absolutely needs Clark. That’s why Superman created Clark and not the other way around. He created Clark and re-creates him every day.

From my end of things, having grown up with the '80s-'90s iteration of the hero firmly ensconced in my longterm memory as the take on Superman that's closest to "mine," I tend to gravitate most readily towards the "Clark is who he is, Superman is what he does" school of thinking, as reflected in the John Byrne-Lois & Clark-Superman: Animated trifecta, but I still love the fact that there are so many different and distinct answers one can come away with to what is, on the surface anyway, the same question.

And all of them, as Maggin's treatise above readily demonstrates, manage to shed some light in a very profound way on why the character endures and will likely continue to do so. As I said in my review of Superman Returns five years ago, "Clark Kent isn’t just how Superman relates to us; it’s how we relate to him." With their Man of Steel feature reboot now lensing, I'm anxious to see what angle director Zack Snyder and writer David Goyer will choose to tackle the dichotomy from. In the meantime though, click over to Forbes to read the rest of what Maggin has to say.

The Cain Scrutiny

2011-11-03T13:43:00.000-07:00

As longtime followers of this site know, I've had issues with Herman Cain since practically the moment he entered the presidential field. Between his belligerent statements about Islam & Muslims and his stunning -- even by current GOP standards -- ignorance about current global and political realities, we're left with a very unflattering portrait of a candidate who has, improbably yet predictably enough, ridden the Tea Party wave of conservative dogmatism straight to the top of the Republican field. How long the Cain surge lasts is something only the next few weeks will tell, but the road to the nomination got that much harder when word surfaced of prior sexual misconduct by the candidate two decades ago during his time as head of the National Restaurants Association.

The resulting round robin of media discussion quickly gave rise to the talking point on the right that Cain was being attacked because of his race and his conservatism, and not because he's a politician and a frontrunner, and because sex always sells (see: Clinton, Bill). This in turn led to a rash of comical "so racist they don't even realize how racist they are" screeds from usual suspects like Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter, but the zenith/nadir was surely a video rant posted by noted Birther/attention-seeker Donald Trump yesterday, wherein he took Jon Stewart to task for his racism in making light of the Cain situation on The Daily Show. I tweeted my incredulity at Trump's dissonance-inducing video yesterday, and I figured it was a jump ball as to whether Stewart would address it on his show last night. Luckily for us, he did, and you can check out the embed after the jump.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

James Bond Will Return In...

2011-11-03T08:07:00.000-07:00

Nearly a year since we got word that the twenty-third 007 movie adventure was back from its bankruptcy-induced slumber (and almost three years since the character's last go-round), a press avail by EON Productions early this morning featuring Bond producers Michael Wilson and Barbara Broccolli alongwith star Daniel Craig and new director Same Mendes marked the official unveiling of the film's long-rumored title and long-rumored, very impressive supporting cast. Jump over to Empire for the full blow-by-blow.

Cracked Logic

2011-11-01T11:39:00.000-07:00

One of the cornerstones of this site over the years has been my absolute befuddlement at how canards such as the Ground Zero Mosque or Birtherism or death panels continue to get oxygen even after they've been undermined -- seemingly definitively -- again and again by simple, easily obtained facts. We saw a small example of this phenomenon last week with a hilarious/depressing segment on The Daily Show that lampooned the current anti-science gauntlet that the far right/Tea Party crowd is making its politicos advance through in order to pass presidential muster. If this phenomenon has you feeling a mite perplexed at at people's continued credulity even in the face of verifiable evidence, riding to the rescue come the fine folks at Cracked with their brilliant countdown of "5 Logical Fallacies That Make You Wrong More Than You Think," which offers some insights into the mentalities and pathologies that drive not only the anti-science crowd, but all the rest of us too.

New Interview With Me

2011-10-29T10:22:00.000-07:00

Last summer I was a participant in an online conference entitled "Islam in the Age of New Media," formatted as "60 speeches in 60 minutes," with a diverse array of speakers from across the Muslim media spectrum holding forth about what role Muslims can play in the age of Web 2.0. In addition to myself, other speakers included Reza Aslan, Asma Uddin, Wajahat Ali, and my cousin Shazia Kamal. You can sign up for a free download of the seminar here (my bit comes at the very, very end).

With the first phase of the conference going quite well, the program's organizer, Amir Ahmad Nasr, contacted me earlier this month about having a more in-depth discussion as a way of unpacking and illuminating some of the concepts I brought up in those 60 seconds. We spoke last week, and the video of that convo is now up, which you can check out via the embed below. It's about twenty minutes in length, but I think we got to go both deep and wide on a pretty broad range of issues and, at the risk of sounding immodest, I definitely think it's worth a watch.

Nostalgia Theater: Fake Ghostbusters Edition

2011-10-28T08:46:00.000-07:00

I was finally able to catch the original Ghostbusters flick last night at the very tail end of its re-release (which I previously mentioned here), and with that experience still fresh in my rearview, plus Halloween coming up on Sunday, this one seemed an appropriate pick for this week's NT. When Ghostbusters became a huge theatrical hit in 1984, home studio Columbia Pictures began development almost immediately (as was the custom at the time) on a tie-in animated show. But this isn't about that. No, today we're going to talk about the other Ghostbusters.

Here's the backstory: In 1975, Filmation, one of the preeminent sources of TV kidvid from the '60s into the '80s, had produced a live action Saturday morning show called The Ghost Busters, which starred F-Troop's Forrest Tucker and Larry Storch (along with a guy in a monkey suit) as a team of hapless, well, Ghost Busters. The show came and went inside of 15 episodes, and that would have been that, except for Columbia licensing the name for their completely unrelated movie, and its subsequent success suddenly making the title (if not the property) very valuable. Here's the intro:

Who knew, right?

Anyway, when it came time to turn the Bill Murray-Dan Aykroyd-Harold Ramis movie into a kids' show of its own, Filmation threw up a legal roadblock. The subsequent out-of-court settlement saw Columbia having to distinguish their property from Filmation's, and Filmation walking away with a nice chunk of change (but not the rights to make the movie-based cartoon -- clearly the most valuable prize -- which they inexplicably didn't demand). Thus, on September 8, 1986, Filmation's animated Ghostbusters debuted in syndication, and a mere five days later, Columbia's The Real Ghostbusters (with its title a final jab directed at the routed Filmation), premiered on ABC.

While The Real Ghostbusters found great success with a fairly faithful translation of the film (notwithstanding the different appearances of the main characters, necessitated by animation studio DiC not securing the likenesses of the lead actors), Filmation's Ghostbusters played as a sequel to its live action predecessor, with the sons of original GBs Kong and Eddie, along with gorilla 'buster Tracy, teaming up to battle recurring nemesis Prime Evil (who looked sort of like a cross between Marvel's Doctor Strange and Doctor Doom). I've actually never sat through an entire episode of this series, but I have to admit that it did have a weirdly catchy theme song:

I have a feeling my initial reaction to this show mirrored that of millions of other kids who tuned in, said, "Hey, cool, Ghostbusters!" and then, after several minutes of uncomfortable silence, said, "What the hell is this?" Given that, the tale of the tape here isn't hard to puzzle out: The Real Ghostbusters would go on to run an impressive (especially for an animated series) seven seasons, with 147 episodes produced. Filmation's "fake" Ghostbusters, meanwhile, lasted for one 65-episode season, ending with a whimper in 1987, and two years later, the whole studio was defunct.

With how long The Real Ghostbusters ended up lasting, and how successful it ended up being for all parties involved, it's not too far a stretch to assume that, had the Ghostbusters situation broken differently for Filmation, it could very well have meant the difference between the studio's survival and its actual eventual fate. There are a lot of common sense lessons one can take away from this, but I suppose the most important one is to make sure you have a lawyer who knows what the heck he's doing!

While Filmation's Ghostbusters is now long out-of-print on DVD, it can still be acquired relatively cheaply. Bear in mind though that, if you haven't seen it, all the usual caveat emptor stuff applies.

Thinkin' 'Bout My Generation

2011-10-25T14:29:00.000-07:00

I was reading an article recently -- I forget which, otherwise I'd post the link -- about the differences between how Generation X (folks born between the early '60s and the late-'70s) and the so-called Millenials (people born from the mid-'80s through the mid-'90s) view the world and their future prospects.

As I read up on the markers denoting the two demos, I realized I'd somehow fallen between the cracks of cultural currency -- neither old enough to have any special affinity for Lee Majors and Sonny & Cher, nor young enough to feel nostalgia for Power Rangers and Pokémon. Given the weird generational void I found myself stuck in, I was heartened to read this reflection by Doree Shafrir that sums up where my fellow 'tweeners and I appear to sit:

I was born during Jimmy Carter's presidency, a one-term administration remembered mostly for the Iran hostage crisis, the New York City blackout, and stagflation. The Carter babies—anyone born between his inauguration in January 1977 and Reagan's in January 1981—are now 30 to 34, and, like Carter himself, the weirdly brilliant yet deeply weird born-again Christian peanut farmer, this micro-generation is hard to pin down. We identify with some of Gen X's cynicism and suspicion of authority—watching Pee-Wee Herman proclaim, "I'm a loner, Dottie. A rebel," will do that to a kid—but we were too young to claim Singles and Reality Bites and Slacker as our own (though that didn't stop me from buying the soundtracks). And, while the proud alienation of the Gen X worldview doesn't totally sit right, we certainly don't yearn for the Organization Man-like conformity that the Millennials seem to crave.

Yep, that's pretty much me. She goes on to highlight why we feel the need to categorize generationally at all, which also rings very true:

This urge to define generations is also about a yearning for a collective memory in an increasingly atomized world, at least where my generation is concerned. Indeed, where the Millennials tend to define themselves in terms of the way they live now, people in my cohort find fellowship more in what happened in the past, clinging to cultural totems as though our shared experiences will somehow lead us to better figure out who we are. The Internet is littered with quick-hit nostalgia websites like I'm Remembering, which posts pictures of toys and TV characters and old photos from the '80s and '90s. Certainly, discovering that someone else also had a Cabbage Patch Kid does immediately create a sense of shared history, no matter how superficial. This aligns us more with Gen X, which has also always bonded through nostalgia. Millennials, on the other hand, seem to be always looking forward, imbued with a sense of optimism and hope that to us reads as naive.

Some thoughtful observations. Check out the rest here.

Why Real Steel Works

2011-10-23T09:15:00.000-07:00

I caught Real Steel during its opening weekend a few weeks back, enjoyed it tremendously, and was trying like heck to get a write-up posted here, but time constraints and professional commitments conspired to keep that review out of reach juuuust long enough for it to slip off my radar until now, much to my regret. Suffice it to say, when I first saw the trailer for the robot boxing flick last summer, I had the same "WTF? Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots: The Movie?" reaction I'm guessing most people did, but I was nonetheless lured into the theater by initial positive word of mouth, and in the end I was blown away by how effective and surprisingly emotional it ended up being.

When you stop and think about it, this story of a deadbeat dad, a precocious youngster, and the robot that brings them both together, really shouldn't have worked. At all. I mean, the premise alone makes it sounds like Over the Top with metal men instead of arm wrestling. But more than merely reminding us yet again why lead Hugh Jackman has legitimate acting and star chops, the film, loosely adapted from the Richard Matheson short story "Steel" (which itself previously came to the screen via an episode of The Twilight Zone in the '50s), also demonstrates the peculiar kind of magic that can happen when actual thought is put into making a movie "work" beyond just its opening weekend (are you listening, Michael Bay?)

We get some insight into how deep this thought process went in a brief interview between Brendon Connelly and Steel director Shawn Levy, whose filmography thus far -- composed almost entirely of light, disposable family fare -- prepared me not at all for the immensely satisfying moviegoing experience that would follow. Levy's dissection of how the main robot, Atom, was to be portrayed, and how that impacted the world of the film, tells me that the director is ready for something bigger and better than more Night at the Museum sequels. What lies past the break is all spoilers, so if you haven't seen Real Steel yet, just take my word and watch it first, then read on.

1. When Atom jumps into the air.

Real Steel was never more or less based on the [Richard] Matheson story. It’s always been taking the sport that Matheson envisioned and that desperate protagonist that Matheson drew, that’s always been the case. In that regard, I think we borrow quite a lot from the Matheson story. When I came on, there was a father-son element, but it never really became gratifying. They never really came together. But the biggest new idea that I brought was that, originally, the robot boxing was always controlled by voice or a remote.

Yet Atom had a shadow function.

It was completely separate from his fight moves. But I thought that if the movie is about a boy who thinks that a robot is magic but eventually learns it’s his father who has something special in him, we had a way to use that shadow function in a way that is satisfying. I came up with this idea, of Charlie Kenton’s boxing background making this robot unique. I remember reading the script and saying “I know exactly what this needs”

That fucking shot, that up-in-the-air moment where it pays off, I could give you a whole article on just that. When we were editing trailers I said “Don’t use that shot, I want that to be a surprise” but what happened was, every time people saw that shot, that was their favourite shot in the trailer.

I shot it two ways. In one version, Atom does that move on his own. In that version of the movie, we would be confirming that Atom is magic. Some thought we should do that, but I felt that if we do that and confirm that he is magic, the movie loses its wonder and suddenly skews very young, if the robot is doing things on his own.

2. When Atom is sitting alone by the mirror.

Tom Meyer designed Atom. It is a genius design.

The scene where Atom is sitting with the mirrors, which is one of my favourite scenes in the movie, if I added just one more frame to that, Atom actually moves. Some were like “Put it in!” and others were like “No! No! No!”

The camera is moving, but you can’t quite say whether Atom is or is not looking at himself. I like that line being walked. That was a big question and subject of much debate.

It’s essentially cinematic because there’s no words, the robot, the camera move and just Danny Elfman’s music.

The movie we ended up editing flirts with the possibility of consciousness, and neither confirms nor refutes it.

Honestly, folks, that's what great filmmaking is all about: navigating that razor thin line between implication and explication to allow the audience themselves to share in creating something truly magical. Jump over to Bleeding Cool for the original story.

Nostalgia Theater: Captain America Edition

2011-10-21T13:30:00.000-07:00

Note: I'm working on being more regular with these "Nostalgia Theater" installments and having them good to go every Friday, so bear with me while I get some kind of a system going.

Captain America: The First Avenger hits home video this Tuesday on the heels of its very successful theatrical run last summer, and while the Joe Johnston-directed, Chris Evans-starrer made the notion of bringing Marvel's patriotic hero to the screen seem like a no-brainer, especially in this age of dime-a-dozen cinematic superheroes, there was a time when the pickings were mighty slim if you were looking for a successful comics-to-film translation for the Star-Spangled Avenger.

Although the character's first turn on the big screen came in the form of a Republic movie serial from 1944, the first live action Cap I was ever exposed to came via two 1979 made-for-TV movies/backdoor pilots, which saw a short, notable wave of Marvel-inspired telefilms following the success of the Incredible Hulk TV series on CBS. Of this batch, Spider-Man got himself a short-lived show (which I hope to talk about one of these days), but Cap never made it past two trial runs, and given what lies after the jump, it's probably not hard to see why.

Both of the telefilms starred Reb Brown (who I saw later on an episode of Miami Vice, and who IMDB shows as having a surprisingly full filmography) as Steve Rogers, an artist whose father fought in World War II under the alias "Captain America," and who finds his own strength and reflexes enhanced after being administered the experimental FLAG serum following a road accident. The resultant superpowers prompt Steve to do what anyone else would do in a similar situation: suit up in flag-themed tights, hop on a motorcycle, and start righting some wrongs:

So, yeah. That exists. I especially love the instantly-dated music from famed composer Mike Post, who's created countless memorable TV themes in his time, of which Captain America isn't one. I also like how, between the vertical stars-and-stripes, motorcycle helmet mask, and transparent shield, they didn't even try making the costume accurate to the books, which is made doubly-strange by the character showing up at the very end wearing a slightly more comic-accurate suit. How much more effort would it have taken to have him wear it the whole time?

Anyway, while the first TV movie wasn't particularly well received critically or by audiences when it aired in early '79, it still led to a second go-round the next fall with the same cast, now featuring legendary actor Christopher Lee -- paying for an addition on his house apparently -- as the evil "Miguel." And yes, that's really the bad guy's name. Here's the opening credit sequence for Captain America II: Death Too Soon, which has to take some kind of prize for "Most Pretentious Title For Least Pretension-Worthy Production":

The second time proved not to be the charm, and that spelled fin for Cap in live action until 1990, when Marvel's then-owners New World Pictures partnered with '80s schlock producer Menahem Golan (he of American Ninja and Delta Force fame) for a Captain America feature directed by Albert Pyun, starring Matt Salinger (son of author JD, and who's kept pretty busy himself) as Rogers, and Scott Paulin as the villainous Red Skull (inexplicably portrayed as an Italian fascist instead of a German Nazi) who spends most of his screentime as neither red nor skull.

This one skipped theaters during its domestic run and didn't hit home video until 1992, but I saw it on video a little earlier on a trip to London. While there's not much to recommend it, it does get some points for being somewhat truer (in spirit, at least) to the source material, and for a great, completely out-of-nowhere musical montage smacked right in the middle -- following our hero's awakening from a decades-long slumber in ice and having to adapt to modern life -- that manages to sum up everything that's wrong with this movie and, conversely, everything that's so right. Enjoy:

Favorite part: Cap running in horror when a punk kid asks him for a cigarette. The song, just as an FYI, is by an artist called Southside Johnny, who does a pretty mean impression of Bob Seger. I'd love to tell you that this is some kind of hidden gem, but honestly, despite a decent supporting cast, including Ronny Cox and Ned Beatty, and a fairly likable lead in Salinger, the Pyun Captain America is a mostly terrible movie that certainly didn't have a prayer in the post-Batman world of the 1990s (which was the story of Marvel's theatrical fortunes for most of the decade), and that just about killed it for the First Avenger until, well, The First Avenger.

Hoping no doubt to cash in on a wave of nostalgia/curiosity from the new movie, the Reb Brown and Salinger films have all been made available once again, and can be purchased here and here. Bear in mind though that these releases are aimed almost exclusively at enthusiasts and archivists. I picked up the Brown DVD, containing both flicks on a single disc, earlier this week at the local Wal-Mart, and even at just ten bucks total (or five dollars for each one), I still feel like I overpaid.

Street People

2011-10-19T10:49:00.000-07:00

Last night's Daily Show nicely encapsulated the intellectual divide I'm currently experiencing over the Occupy Wall Street movement. On the one hand, Jon Stewart bullseyed the whiplash-inducing hypocrisy of those who are criticizing the protests...

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

...and then, after the jump, John Oliver nailed what's bugging me about the protests themselves.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Community Minded

2011-10-18T11:49:00.000-07:00

As you already know if you follow my Twitter feed, one of my fave shows right now is Community, NBC's skewed take on the community college experience (which, it's worth pointing out, is nothing like the actual community college experience.) While it's yet to find the mainstream acceptance of an Office or even, God help us, a Two and a Half Men, the show, created and exec produced by Dan Harmon, has nonetheless managed to skate to its third season thanks to a small-but-loyal group of fans who've embraced the quirky comedy's ability to push, pull, and stretch the sitcom format in new, unexpected ways.

This has been accomplished with the help of both topflight writing from Harmon and a tailor-made ensemble that includes star Joel McHale, the hilarious Donald Glover, and the always-dependable Chevy Chase, experiencing a late-career resurgance. Last week's installment, entitled "Remedial Chaos Theory" for the way it saw an unassuming pizza delivery morph into a harrowing journey across alternate timelines, is perhaps one of the best-ever exemplars of the show's cast and concept working at their absolute peak. Meditating on the episode last Friday, /Film's Adam Quigley arrived at much the same conclusion, and went even further in his analysis:

Arrested Development may have thrown down the gauntlet for most intricately layered TV sitcom, but Community has picked that gauntlet up and is running wild with it. I already feel comfortable proclaiming this week’s episode, “Remedial Chaos Theory”, to be the absolute best episode of Community thus far. Yes, better than the Goodfellas tribute “Contemporary American Poultry”. Yes, better than the zombie halloween episode “Epidemiology”. Yes, better even than the everyone’s favorite action parody, “Modern Warfare”.

High praise, no doubt. But what else is one to do when confronted with one of the best half hours of television in the history of the medium?

Part of me wants to declare this the “thesis episode” of the series, and the only reason I hesitate to do so is because the show has yet to reach a point where I know what its limits are. Sometimes that can be a bad quality for a TV series to possess (see: Heroes), but Community has been slyly testing its boundaries for three seasons now, and every time it does it seems to come out of the experiment stronger and more fully realized.

There's much more from Quigley at the link, all worth reading, but long story short: if you haven't made Community a regular part of your DVR queue, you're already way behind the eightball.

Here endeth the lesson.

Shopping Maul

2011-10-16T09:00:00.000-07:00

Following up on Friday's post wherein I questioned the wisdom behind re-releasing the much-reviled Star Wars: Episode I to theaters in spiffy new 3D, Topless Robot has their own take on the decision making process that led to Team Lucas deciding on that poster (with its image of a very tired Yoda -- above -- summing up what I think we all felt when we heard about this). Here's a taste:

Lucasfilm Marketing Executive: Our research team indicates everyone hates The Phantom Menace.
George Lucas: Really?
Lucasfilm Marketing Executive: Very much so.
George Lucas: I had no idea.
Lucasfilm Marketing Executive: ...really?
George Lucas: What don't they like?
Lucasfilm Marketing Executive: Everything, really. Jar Jar. The story. Jake Lloyd. The borderline racist aliens. Natalie Portman macking on a 10-year-old. "Yippee." Jar Jar. Anakin building C-3PO for no reason whatsoever. Midichlorians. All the dull political bullshit. Jar Jar. T--
George Lucas: I think you said Jar Jar a couple of times already.
Lucasfilm Marketing Executive: People really don't like Jar Jar.

For the rest, jump over here. Very, very funny.

On a related tangent, I did a little impromptu market research yesterday and spoke with my nephew, who's twelve now, and he has absolutely no problem with either Jar Jar in particular or The Phantom Menace in general. Indeed, he wonders why anyone would. So maybe this really is a generational divide.

New Video Interview With Yours Truly

2011-10-15T09:30:00.000-07:00

This past Thursday my friend and fellow blogger Amanda Quraishi chatted me up via the new Spreecast video service for a breezy fifteen minute convo about Geek Wisdom, what qualifies me to call myself a geek authority, and some of my fave entries for the book. We experienced a few technical hiccups here and there, but it was still a fun time, and you can check it out in its entirety here.

And if you haven't ordered your copy of Geek Wisdom yet, get on it, willya!

Broken Discourse

2011-10-15T09:15:00.000-07:00

I've often noted how the age of extreme partisan polarization we find ourselves in has so damaged our ability to come together and solve common problems that the resultant breach may simply have become insurmountable. I can't think of a better exemplar of the broken state of our discourse than this week's parting-of-ways between conservative commentator David Frum and NPR's weekly Marketplace radio program. The format of the show was a weekly point-counterpoint, with Frum holding forth on various news topics one week from the conservative perspective, and former Labor Secretary Robert Reich representing the progressive side the following week.

Now, I've said here several times that Frum, though I stridently disagree with many of his political views, is still someone who I'd enjoy a conversation with because he strikes me as someone who views conservatism as a policy prescription as opposed to an ideology. Well, after years of drifting further and further away from what's considered conservative/Republian orthodoxy, Frum felt compelled to hand his walking papers to NPR over the GOP's laserlike focus on cuts, cuts, cuts even at the expensive of longterm prosperity, and his inability to be "the Republican voice" on something he disagrees with. Here's the money quote, from his farewell Marketplace appearance:

RYSSDAL: Let me quote you back to yourself in a post that you made on FrumForum not too long ago. You say: "Under the pressure of the current crisis -- intoxicated by anti-Obama feelings and incited by talk radio and Fox -- Republicans have staked out an extreme position on the role of government." That's where we are in this discussion, right?

FRUM: It's not just the role of government though. We have got a sick patient -- the American economy. And we can see that the patient in the next bed -- the European economy -- he's looking even sicker and there's a real risk of contagion. And what I think we have to do at a moment like this: Have a very, very open creation of money and credit. This is not a moment for government to be cutting back. Here's where Milton Friedman and John Maynard Keynes agreed. They didn't necessarily agree about why to do this medicine, but as to what the medicine was, they did broadly agree. But it's not the medicine that's being prescribed now. The fact is I'm kind of an outlier. And it's a service to the radio audience if they want to hear people explaining effectively why one of the two great parties takes the view that it does -- it needs to have somebody who agrees with that great party. I'm hoping that the party will eventually agree with me, but I can't blink the fact that I don't agree with them on this set of issues.

Responding to Frum's departure from the program, Robert Reich then took to his site and offered some comments of his own, and in the process zeroed in on the larger issue:

Why exactly was it necessary for David Frum to “represent” the views of conservative Republicans?

I don’t feel any obligation to represent liberal Democrats. Over the years I’ve argued, for example, in favor of getting rid of the corporate income tax, creating school vouchers inversely related to family incomes, and extending free-trade agreements — positions not exactly favored by liberal Democrats.

The American public doesn’t want or need to hear “representatives” from the so-called right or left. It wants insight into what’s best for America.

The problem, of course, is that we can't even get each side to agree on what is "best for America." I don't know when it happened, exactly. Maybe it was a rhythmic drip-drip-drip so slow and steady that no one realized it was happening until it already had happened, but the popular notion of what passes for "conservatism" today has been wrested away from the intellectual class that Frum and the late William F. Buckley represent, and is instead governed entirely by the Limbaughs, Hannitys and Becks of this world, who've made politics less about the art of the possible, and more a zero-sum game where one side has to win and the other side has to lose. And the state of our collective conversation is poorer for it.

George Lucas to Fans: You're Welcome.

2011-10-14T12:17:00.000-07:00

Courtesy of Bleeding Cool, here's the release poster for next year's theatrical reissue of Star Wars: Episode I -- now in 3D! -- which seems like more of a threat than a promise, and serves as further proof that George Lucas is playing some kind of elaborate "screw you" mind game with his Star Wars faithful. How else to explain a re-release no one was asking for of a movie no one likes in a format no one wants to pay for? Also, given the stated plan to put these things out in number order at a rate of one-a-year (assuming they get a box office reception that even warrants it), it'll be 2015 before we'd even get to the good stuff, and who knows how many more changes Lucas will have made to the original flicks by then.

And for even more Lucas craziness, jump over to Topless Robot and read their take on the goofy plans now in motion to revive deceased Phantom Menace baddie Darth Maul via the Clone Wars TV show.

Intelligence Failures

2011-10-14T08:20:00.000-07:00

I mentioned a few months ago that my friend Ray Nowosielski was working on a new documentary about the veil of half-truths surrounding the 9/11 attacks, and former CIA chief George Tenet's role in perpetuating it. Since then, he's become a part of the story thanks to revelations that emerged in his and partner John Duffy's interview with former Bush terrorism official Richard Clarke. As the investigation continues to unfold, and with the doco still forthcoming, Ray has a lengthy article, co-written by Rory O'Connor, at Salon that lays out the extent of their findings in exquisite detail. Fascinating stuff.

Zaki's Corner Nominated For Best Blog

2011-10-11T11:09:00.000-07:00

I got some good news to start out my week yesterday from the Brass Crescent Awards, celebrating the best and brightest in the Muslim blogosphere, where this site has once again been nominated in the "Best Blog" category. They even went ahead and compared me to Mark Twain in their descriptor, something which I'm exceedingly grateful for and humbled by (though, to paraphrase the man himself, it's a comparison that's been greatly exaggerated). All this is made even more humbling when I look at the calibre of writers with whom I've been included, as well as those in the other categories. Big thanks to everyone out there who submitted me for consideration, and I hope you'll continue to show your support by casting your votes. Ballots close on November 7, so you can expect plenty more friendly reminders before then.

Assembling the Avengers Trailer

2011-10-11T09:36:00.000-07:00

Here it is, courtesy of Comic Book Resources. The years-long build-up is very nearly reaching its payoff. Watch, enjoy, and realize that May suddenly feels very far away.

Jump over to Apple for all the spiffy hi-def versions.

More Cop Talk

2011-10-11T09:16:00.000-07:00

As you already know if you read this site regularly I'm a pretty big fan of the original RoboCop flick from '87, which is why I've been both cautious and optimistic about MGM's plans to reinvent the property for the big screen. That door has definitely swung much more in the direction of "optimistic" the more I've read about the approach director José Padilha plans/hopes to take with the material. Thanks to a lengthy new interview with Crave Online he once again has me feeling very good about this project's potential chances of cutting through the usual Hollywood noise to become something very interesting. Click past the jump to check out some of the Robo-centric highlights from their conversation:

What are you going to do with a studio budget on ‘Robocop?’

Spend it. [Laughs] Listen, I always try to make the best film I can. If I can have one year to shoot a film, I want one year to shoot a film. If it’s not possible, I’ll try to make as best as I can in the timeframe that I have. I don’t know exactly, because I’ve never done a movie with a huge budget, but I do know that the producers in this film, the studio are filmmakers. It’s the people from Spyglass, Jon Glickman, Roger [Birnbaum] and Adam [Rosenberg]. They make films. They are not only studio execs. They are producers too. So they know how to make a film and it’s very good for me because it’s pragmatic. Once you give me the budget, whatever the budget is, the most important thing to me is that the money spent goes towards the screen. That’s what counts. If I have a beautiful five star trailer, that doesn’t change anything on the screen. It’s better to have more film, more footage, more takes. It’s that that concerns me and the guys that are making Robocop are very wise this way so it’s cool.

It’s interesting you say different period of time. I got the impression from Aronofsky’s take that he was leaning towards modern day and the devices that make us cyborgs now.

Well, some things are constant. A lot of what was great about Robocop, the original one, had to do with the ‘80s. That kind of style of shooting, for one thing, when Robocop was released there was no movie like Robocop. If we do Robocop again, there is at least one.The original 'Robocop' was very much about the corporations of the ‘80s.

Would your take be able to address today’s problems like the banks and mortgage lenders?

[Laughs] Listen, there are the constants and the variables in this world, right? Some things change and some things never change. Corporations controlling people are a constant. It’s the banks now, it’s going to be something else 30 years from now. It was something else before. This is the way economics works. So we’re not making a film about mortgage, that I can tell you.

Will you stick around for ‘Robocop 2 and 3’ to make sure they don’t suck?

That’s funny. Let’s do one first, then we’ll talk about two.

Check out the full interview here.

Charles Napier, RIP

2011-10-07T08:02:00.000-07:00

The best thing I can say about Charles Napier, who passed away Wednesday at the age of 75, is that when I was a kid, I really hated his guts.

Mind you, that's no reflection on the man, who I understand was just lovely, but rather a comment on his capacity as a character actor to continually and consummately embody all manner of weaselly bureaucrats, corporate stooges, and hardbitten army types in a film career spanning four decades. While his name may have been unknown to many, the gravel-voiced, granite-jawed Napier's face was likely a familiar one, having popped up in everything from episodes of The A-Team and Knight Rider to feature films like The Blues Brothers.

The first time I remember seeing him, and the reason for that mad-on alluded to up-top, was in 1985's Rambo: First Blood, Part II playing one of those aforementioned weaselly bureaucrats, Murdock, whose betrayal of our hero at the movie's midpoint propels the action for the remainder of its running time. His character's dialogue may have been simplistic, and his motivation wafer thin, but Napier did his job like a champ, and made the countdown to his inevitable comeuppance an interminable one for those of us sitting in the audience.

In later years, the actor, who also had a brief, memorable turn as the unlucky police officer who gets de-faced by Hannibal Lecter in 1991's Silence of the Lambs, did voice duty as the Ted Turner-esque boss on the short-lived animated sitcom The Critic (an underrated gem), and continued to work regularly in features like the Austin Powers movies and TV shows like Curb Your Enthusiasm until just a few years ago. While he may never have become a household name, he did spend forty-plus years turning in solid, dependable work as one of Hollywood's most reliable utility players, and that's not a bad legacy to leave behind.

Steve Jobs, RIP

2011-10-06T11:41:00.000-07:00

Steve Jobs knew how to part me with my money.

That was one reason why we had an informal rule in my family that when I went into the Apple Store to "browse," it had to be without my wallet or with adult supervision. The very long arm of the Apple founder's influence on society can be seen in everything from me typing this post on a MacBook to the fact that iPods, iPhones, and iPads have achieved a kind of ubiquity that's fundamentally altered our collective conception of technology's role in our lives, and what it's capable of achieving.

With all the testimonials that have hit the media since Jobs' passing last night, with more sure to come in the days and weeks ahead, there's not much for me to say beyond the sadness that, at 56, he still had many years of creativity ahead of him, and the sobering realization that even with all the ingenuity and money at his disposal, cancer was an obstacle even he couldn't overcome. I'm also reminded of an essay I wrote for Geek Wisdom in reference to a quote by late author Isaac Asimov, which seemed applicable enough to post in its entirety below:

“If my doctor told me I had only six months to live, I would't brood. I'd type a little faster." — Isaac Asimov

That Asimov meant what he said is plain to see in the immense library of knowledge and wisdom he imparted to us during his extraordinary lifetime – a library we’ll likely continue to benefit from for time immemorial. But you don’t have to be Isaac Asimov to see the broader point he was making. From the moment we’re born, the clock begins to tick down, daring us to accomplish all that we need to accomplish before that last grain of sand drops through the hourglass. Whether, per Asimov’s hypothetical, we know how much time we have left or not, the knowledge that we’re engaged in a race we’ve been engineered to lose can become reason for despair or a clarion call to action. For anyone who’s ever been driven by the creative impulse – by the all-encompassing need to take what’s inside and put it out there – Asimov’s words don’t merely ring true, they carry the weight of gospel.

I think the above just as easily applies if we sub out "Jobs" for "Asimov." His life -- and death -- serve as a stark reminder for all of just how fleeting a thing life is, and how important it is to make what moments we have matter.

Franco's Rise Fall

2011-10-04T11:59:00.000-07:00

When I first heard that actor James Franco had been cast as the human lead in last summer's Rise of the Planet of the Apes, filling what was essentially the Ricardo Montalban role from the original Apes series' analogue, Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, I was under the impression that Franco, like Montalban before him, would bite the big one before the credits rolled. This is something that was confirmed for me when I tracked down a copy of the shooting script.

However, by the time the movie actually hit theaters, the filmmakers and/or studio clearly had a change of heart, and Franco's Will Rodman bid his hirsute "son" Caesar an emotional goodbye, but still lived to see the credits (though if he made it past said credits is another question entirely, and if you've seen the movie you know what I'm talking about). I always felt like there was a story behind this change, and now we have it, thanks to Fox post-production prexy Ted Gagliano, who tells The Hollywood Reporter...

...the filmmakers originally thought James Franco’s character should die, then changed that decision. He said Franco flew from North Carolina to California over July 4th weekend to shoot an alternative goodbye with the ape Caesar (Andy Serkis).

Picking up that thread, Devin Faraci, one of the first people to break the story on Rise back when it was called Caesar, summarizes the pre-change coda thusly:

The original ending had Franco’s character being shot to death by armed humans who have chased the apes into the forest. The ape horde descends on the people and tears them to pieces, a reversal of the opening scene where Bright Eyes is captured in the jungle.

That's in the draft that I read, which goes on to depict in a far more explicit fashion how mankind's downfall is well and truly in progress. I have to say, for as much as I liked the movie we got, I would have liked the darker ending slightly more. Not just because that's where my filmic tastes tend to gravitate, but also because it's more of a piece with the rest of the Apes series. Regardless, I got to quiz Rise writer/producers Rick Jaffa & Amanda Silver about this very point when I chatted with them in August, and they offered a pretty good insight into how and why their creative process led them where it did.

"The Comments Section"

2011-10-04T09:49:00.000-07:00

From last weekend's Saturday Night Live. Per usual with SNL, the execution is a little bit dodgy, but the concept is bang-on. Jason Sudeikis really is one of the show's secret weapons.

Unholy.

2011-10-02T09:13:00.000-07:00

Growing up in the '80s and '90s, comic artist/writer Frank Miller was an inspirational figure to me. His seminal Batman opus, The Dark Knight Returns, depicting an aged Bruce Wayne reclaiming his cape and cowl to set a post-apocalyptic Gotham City aright once more, was one of those rare pieces of comic literature I felt comfortable handing off to "civilians" to prove that comic books weren't, in fact, for kids. And when you're a kid yourself, all you want is the validation of knowing that the things you love aren't mere childish distractions -- no, they're serious.

Thus, Miller's particular oeuvre -- as defined by the aforementioned Batman and a character-redefining run on Marvel's Daredevil before that -- held a special appeal for me, with both his superhero works and later projects like Sin City and 300 all awash in the mood and shadow and macho posturing and barely-veiled adult innuendos that were proof enough of just how grown up I was (not grown up enough, mind you, to appreciate the inherent irony of pointing to colored picture books as evidence of said maturity).

I bring all this up not to trumpet the maturity I've acquired in the interim (not much, FYI), but merely to contextualize my gut response to Miller's latest work, released last week by new publisher Legendary Comics: the much-delayed/much-anticipated graphic novel Holy Terror. Originally announced in '06 as a Batman vehicle before cooler heads at DC Comics prevailed (though the character's removal does rob the title of its punny significance), this was intended by Miller to serve as a balls-out, take-no-prisoners story of the Caped Crusader launching bloody vengeance against Al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden in a callback to the anti-Nazi, anti-Japanese propaganda that emerged in the '30s and '40s in the midst of World War II.

When I first read the description way back when, it prompted a visceral "Oh geez" from me (as it did from comic writer Grant Morrison -- currently impressing with his new take on Superman -- who considered Miller's project one step removed from "King Kong vs. Bin Laden"). By then though I'd long since resigned myself to the reality that the Miller I'd so admired in my youth no longer existed -- if he'd ever existed at all, that is. The older I got and the more divorced I became from my own certainties and certitudes, the less appeal I found in Miller's nihilistic meditations on a black-and-white world (literalized in his art via Sin City and beyond), where right is right and wrong is wrong and that's it.

What I once saw as so confident and so mature (there's that word again) suddenly -- and rather surprisingly -- struck me as the work of a perpetual adolescent desperate to couch his simplistic worldview in enough naughty words and heaving bosoms to lend it the imprimatur of sophistication. Which brings us, in a very roundabout way, back to Holy Terror. In the interests of full disclosure, I haven't read it, and while I'd normally have set that bar for myself before embarking on such a lengthy discussion, having seen the preview pages and read much of what its creator had to say about his intent, I couldn't bring myself, in good conscience, to plunk down money in support of such an endeavor, even if only for "research" purposes.

Wired writer Spencer Ackerman, whose exposé on the FBI's Islamophobic training program a few weeks ago is still dealing out shockwaves, has a lengthy review up wherein he dissects Miller's screed (which Ackerman describes as "hateful"), and helpfully juxtaposes his stated goals and beliefs with the actual reality of the Al Qaeda threat. Reading through Ackerman's write-up, as well as others like it, I'm saddened by how common Miller's viewpoint is, where tough guy bravado of '80s action movies has become a viable -- even preferred -- alternative to actual reasoned discourse.

Says Ackerman:

Miller’s Holy Terror is a screed against Islam, completely uninterested in any nuance or empathy toward 1.2 billion people he conflates with a few murderous conspiracy theorists. It’s no accident that it’s being released ten years after 9/11. This comic would be unthinkable during the unity that the U.S. felt after the attack.

Instead, it’s a perfect cultural artifact of this dark period in American life, when the FBI teaches its agents that “mainstream” Islam is indistinguishable from terrorism and a community center near Ground Zero gets labeled a “victory mosque.” Call it the artwork of 9/11 decadence, when all that remains of a horror is a carefully nurtured grievance.

This is a mentality also at work in the "Government Sponsored Islamophobia, Addendum" post from my blog two weeks ago (about Ackerman's FBI piece) wherein I copied-and-pasted a Facebook conversation with just such a person -- "R." Like Miller, he too began the thread with "Islam = bad" already written on his mind in Sharpie, and nothing -- not facts, not evidence, not actual experience -- was going to change his mind. And it wasn't just facts and evidence he was rebelling against, but the very notion that there might be other cultures throughout the world who do things differently than we do here in America, and that doesn't render them inherently evil.

That "R" tried immediately to chum the waters with talk of "honor rapes," "hacking off hands," etc. is indicative of a basic flaw in the argument. Believe it or not, it is possible to take a relative view of the world -- the only possible view, I would argue -- while still holding fast to a firm concept of right and wrong. The addendum to the addendum here is that shortly after this conversation played out (and after many, many similar conversations over the years), "R" ended up de-friending me on Facebook. In other words, it was easier to cling to his misconceptions if he didn't have to deal with the fact that I -- a living, breathing counterargument -- existed. It's a fascinating insight, I think, into such thinking, also offering an instructive window into what may be guiding Frank Miller's mindset.

In a week that saw American imam Anwar Al-Awlaki's long journey from supposed moderate to supposed radical end in Yemen with an American drone strike, we see more than ever how hate and anger metastasize inside of us, suffusing horrible acts and horrible words with a veneer of righteousness. When preaching violence against fellow Americans, Al-Awlaki thought he was in the right. And when Miller preaches hate and bigotry that's just as vile in its own way with works such as Holy Terror, he thinks the same thing. While I continue to believe a calm, well thought out argument can be all that's necessary to turn people's thinking around, sometimes they're so indentured to their prejudices there's simply no reaching them. And that's the place we never want to end up.

Freedom of Speech v. Freedom to Hate

2011-10-01T10:36:00.000-07:00

As you know, I've been posting semi-regularly here about the ongoing anti-mosque shenanigans in the small town of Murfreesboro, TN, where a campaign to stop the construction of an Islamic center has led to some pretty shocking displays of hate and ignorance on the part of those opposed. In addition to blatant stuff like vandalism and arson, another venue for this hate and ignorance has been a local paper called The Rutherford Reader, which has dedicated countless paragraphs since this saga first began to a very pronounced, very transparent anti-Muslim agenda on the part of its publisher, and which is being opposed in a campaign by one citizen (not a Muslim, FYI) who's simply had enough of the hate. When I wrote about it last month, I said this was a story that makes you feel pride and shame in equal measure. That's still the case. Here's an update, via Jonathan Meador at Nashville Scene.

Great Right Dopes

2011-09-27T11:52:00.000-07:00

Last Thursday saw yet another in the seemingly ever-flowing stream of GOP presidential debates, which have drawn more attention lately for the belligerent, Rorschach-like reactions from their audiences than for the shenanigans of the contenders. From cheering Rick Perry's tally of executions in Texas to being very okay with the notion of letting a patient die due to lack of health coverage to booing a gay soldier currently serving in Iraq, the fact that these vocalizations are so freely elicited provides a very instructive window into the mindset driving the current model Republican voter.

So driven by blind ideology are they that all notions of decorum have been left by the wayside, making reactions like the above somehow acceptable. Now, this is hardly a new phenomeon, as we saw its roots first branch out during the latter days of the McCain/Palin campaign in '08. But thanks to regular doses of sunshine and water via three years of hateful invective from politicians desperate to assure electoral victories, we're seeing this hate now boiled down to its purest form, all but assuring that the '12 presidential content will be an exceptionally nasty one.

Digging into last week's debate on The Daily Show, and specifically the perceived implosion of presumed frontrunner Perry after a series of unforced errors severely damaged his "electability" index, Jon Stewart points to the continuing desire on the part of GOP voters for that longed-for "dream candidate" (now being manifested in a last ditch "Draft Chris Christie" campaign -- which is already doomed to fail) as an indication that as far as the Republican base is concerned, to paraphrase the Bard, the fault may not lie in their stars, but rather within themselves:

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Bustin' Back in Theaters!

2011-09-26T11:36:00.000-07:00

Not sure if this is a move to test the waters for the long-planned third Ghostbusters flick or merely a reaction to Disney's success with their Lion King re-release these past two weekends, but regardless of the whys-and-wherefores, '80s babies like me got some good news late last week with word that Sony will be re-releasing the original "Who ya gonna call?" classic to 500 screens nationwide next month for three showings on three consecutive Thursdays leading up to Halloween. Having greatly enjoyed the 25th anniversary theatrical reissue of Back to the Future at this same time last year, I have to admit that this news gets my nostalgic heart all aflutter. Yes, I've lost count of the number of times I've seen both of these movies and can practically recite them by heart (yeah, yeah, even the second one that everyone but me seems to hate...), but the chance to see the first one up on the big screen with a crowd of fellow fans is pretty tough to pass up. For more info as it unfolds, including presumably which theaters you need to hit up, click "like" on the official Ghostbusters Facebook page.

Trunkless

2011-09-26T11:05:00.000-07:00

Earlier in the month I wrote a (mostly) humorous piece reflecting on the need for Superman's uniform to be adorned with the red trunks that have been a trademark since the 1930s, in defiance of the newly-trunkless design for the iconic hero in the comic books and the upcoming feature film. Well, clearly I'm not the only one who's spent time meditating on this one. Proving out the adage that you take your wisdom where you find it, Pastor Skye Jethani, writing for the Evangelical Christian website Out of Ur, has found some unexpected -- and surprisingly insightful -- leadership lessons that one can take away from the decision-making surrounding Superman's (lack of) shorts.

Nostalgia Theater: Starman Edition

2011-09-23T10:45:00.000-07:00

We bring back "Nostalgia Theater" this week after a layover of nearly half a year with this little-seen, mostly-forgotten curio from the mid '80s. Starman was a TV series that aired on ABC during the 1986-1987 season, based on the 1984 John Carpenter film of the same name (and not the DC Comics character, also of the same name). The movie, about an alien being who's lost on Earth and trying to find his way back to his homeworld, was clearly an attempt by Carpenter to "do" E.T., which had set the box office alight two years prior -- but with Jeff Bridges instead of a crinkly animatronic puppet as the titular character.

Roadtripping toward his pickup site with the widowed Jenny Hayden (Karen Allen) -- whose late husband he's assumed the shape of by replicating the DNA in a lock of his hair -- while evading the authorities, the Starman learns what it means to be human, forms a romantic bond with Hayden, and eventually leaves Earth (but not before leaving her with a *ahem* special present). In my opinion, it's a perfectly forgettable movie that hasn't retained much significance beyond the fact that it earned Bridges his first "Best Actor" Oscar nom.

At the time, though, it clearly made enough of a mark to prompt the development of this TV sequel, which is where I came in, having seen the show long before I knew a movie existed. Jumping ahead fifteen years (though, y'know, not really), the series picks up with the Starman returning to Earth and assuming the form of deceased journalist Paul Forrester (Robert Hays, best known for his comedic turns in the two Airplane! flicks, but doing a very nice job with the fish-out-of-water thing). Reuniting with the now-teenaged son (Christopher Barnes) conceived at the close of the film, the two set out to track down the missing Jenny while evading the authorities that nip at their heels.

As you can tell from the above description (and the above video -- don't you love opening credit sequences that actually contain exposition...and music?), this was yet another in the long line of "quest shows" that includes The Fugitive, The Incredible Hulk, and Kung Fu as part of its lineage. It's for this reason perhaps that the series never quite caught on, coming and going after 22 episodes. Interestingly, the basic premise -- a stranger from the stars returning to Earth and adapting to human peculiarities while evading the feds -- was lifted liberally by Independence Day creators Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin for their 1997 Fox series The Visitor, starring John Corbett, itself axed after thirteen installments.

Also of note, Starman stars Hays and Barnes (who also played Greg in the two Brady Bunch features) would share another connection many years later thanks to tenures voicing Marvel superheroes Iron Man (previously discusssed here) and Spider-Man, respectively, in the mid-'90s (even teaming up in an episode of the latter's show). As far as Starman goes, while the show has been almost completely forgotten today, and despite its formulaic setup, it had enough heart in its premise that it's worthy of another look. While there's no home video release in the offing, this is a show that's ripe for rediscovery, and I have to think it would find a fairly receptive audience were it made available.

Cop Talk

2011-09-22T13:25:00.000-07:00

Back in march I posted about MGM's planned remake/reboot/restart of their RoboCop franchise (one of the few arrows left in the Lion's quiver beyond 007), with acclaimed Brazilian director José Padilha signing to helm after Darren Aronofsky vacated the big chair. Since then it's been radio silence, but Padilha recently talked up the new Robo to Dutch site, Film1 while promoting his new film Elite Force 2, and here's what he had to say (blame the iffy translation on Google Chrome):

Earlier this year, you announced that the reboot of RoboCop will direct. The original from 1987, directed by Dutch director Paul Verhoeven, with that movie made its debut in Hollywood. How will your vision differ from those of Verhoeven?

I love the sharpness and political tone of RoboCop , and I think that such a film is now urgently needed. But I will not repeat what Verhoeven has done so clearly and strongly. Instead I try to make a film that will address topics that Verhoeven untreated. If you are a man changes into a robot, how do you do that? What is the difference between humans and robots developed? What is free will? What does it mean to lose your free will? Those are the issues that I think.

RoboCop is your first movie in America. Like the political apparatus of Rio de Janeiro, the Hollywood film industry, a system in which not everyone thrives. What is your strategy to survive in Hollywood?

I try to make movies that I like, that I feel and I deal with social problems involved. I will continue to do where I work. If I can develop in Hollywood, then I make a movie with all the means Hollywood. If that fails, then that movie is not.

I think the biggest part of making a new RoboCop work in this day and age is having a director onboard who understands the property's potential for social commentary and critique -- something that elevates it above your standard blood-and-guts actioner. Verhoeven got it, which is why his film still resonates with audiences nearly a quarter-century later, and it sure seems like Padilha gets it too. I just hope the studio system allows him to make the personal film he wants.

Save the Millionaires

2011-09-22T09:03:00.000-07:00

Here's a brilliant segment from last night's Daily Show that takes a wayward comment by a Louisiana congressman about the impoverished state in which he finds himself thanks to his current tax rate (that I also mocked via Twitter earlier in the week) and spins it into comedy gold that lays bare the ridiculousness of the economic arguments being proffered by the GOP:

The Daily Show
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

From The Onion...

2011-09-22T08:53:00.000-07:00

Oh man, so much I relate to about this one:

Cool Dad Raising Daughter On Media That Will Put Her Entirely Out Of Touch With Her Generation

From the article:

Since her early childhood, a period sources said featured a Danger Mouse–themed birthday party that utterly baffled the assembled 6-year-old guests, Campbell's daughter has been fed a steady diet of marginalizing cinematic masterpieces from the world's very best filmmakers.

"Jean-Luc Godard, Stanley Kubrick, Billy Wilder—you simply need to know who these men are if you want to call yourself culturally literate," Campbell said of the three iconic directors whose creations could not have less utility to his daughter as she searches for a way to achieve a sense of belonging among her fellow middle-schoolers. "Sure, she makes a face when I don't let her see some ridiculous movie with CGI robots because it's John Sayles Night and we're watching The Secret Of Roan Inish instead. But I'm giving her a leg up, even if she doesn't know it."

"I'm not unreasonable about this," Campbell added. "If she doesn't want to watch Harold Lloyd shorts tonight, that's no problem. We still have another five or six Prisoner episodes to get through."

Read the rest here.

Government-Sponsored Islamophobia, Addendum

2011-09-19T11:02:00.000-07:00

After last week's story about the FBI offering seminars on how to deal with average American Muslims (i.e. treat them with suspicion, assume they're all sleeper agents, etc.), writer Spencer Ackerman, who first broke the news for Wired, has a piece up on his blog wherein he discusses the negative reaction he's received to his initial report from the "Booga booga! Stealth jihad! Creeping Sharia!" crowd that this kind of thing usually brings out of the woodwork.

Specifically, he talks about the common refrain deployed by the nutbar anti-Muslim contingent when called on their bigotry, couched in some variation of, "Have you read the Koran? You need to!" which is usually deployed by people who have demonstrably not read the Qur'an beyond a few passages, bereft of all context, and who most certainly haven't done any research beyond having their worst impressions confirmed by a few trusted sources and happily leaving it at that.

Says Ackerman:

"Read the Koran!" has become such a ubiquitous and self-righteous exhortation of the Sharia-Panic circle that it's easy to overlook exactly what it means. At its heart, it presumes that a religious text sacred to almost two billion people around the world for 1500 years is... easy to understand.

Put aside for a moment the additional presumption that the Koran is a blueprint for war, something like Mein Kampf. That's noxious enough. But just consider that for centuries, theologians, scholars and believers have grappled with the meaning of the Koran -- constructing reconciliatory arguments about its contradictory passages, incorporating counterevidence, arguing with others who give slightly more weight to this-or-that textual nuance. Whole schools of thought develop -- often heatedly -- about the correct understanding of Islam. And none of that matters.

Because after 9/11, a group of Americans with minimal prior exposure to Islam figured it all out, for all time. They discovered the plot that lurks within the heart of the Koran. They can even quote you passages, like real scholars. The quest for meaning and understanding has reached an endpoint.

Proving out the point about folks becoming self-appointed scholars despite their demonstrable lack of real world experience, with neither facts nor anything else changing their position, there was the thread that unspooled on my Facebook wall in response to my post on the subject after one participant, R (who also spurred this discussion and this discussion), felt the FBI was right-on, full steam ahead. Read past the jump to see the conversation that ensued. As with previous Facebook threads I've posted here, I've gone ahead and redacted all names except my own, but everything else is exactly as it played out.

R
I agree with the FBI. Worlwide, the Islamic faith has not moderated as did Christianity and Judaism before them centuries ago. That is why Islamic states and actors are the cause of so much violence today even on their own people. In the US, Muslims are moderate which speaks more to the influence of US values. and it smart of the FBI to look for fanatics in the US as well. Because fanatics are the ones who go on to shoot up army bases, or try to down planes.

P
R, that is some extraordinary insight into Muslims worldwide! Pray tell how many "Islamic states" you have visited in order to come up with that broad and sweeping generalization?

S
R: perhaps a place to start... http://www.amazon.com/Who-Speaks-Islam-Billion-Muslims/dp/1595620176

Zaki Hasan
Don't mind R, folks. He's like the "wacky neighbor" of my Facebook wall. Whenever anyone drops a mention of Islamophobia, he jets across the hall like Kramer.

R
I've seen the results of the societys created in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, on the world etc etc etc. Little moderation, little peace, little good treatment of their people. I've seen the polls that showed Bin Laden hero worship post 911 in those countries (heck even a decent though minority of respondents in a British Muslim poll). I've seen the literally hundreds at this point of terrorist attacks cheered on by those societies, to the extent they aren't inflicting it on each other.

R
I mean, did i miss the memo where Afhganistan and even Pakistan aren't hell holes?

S
R: have you seen the "Christian" hellholes in South America or the "Hindu" hell holes of India and Nepal? I'm sure if you reflect a little on this issue you will see things differently...

Zaki Hasan
I have to agree with the above comments, R. There are a whole mess of economic and social issues that are directly and more logically attributable as causes of the conditions you describe, which cut across all religious stripes. The only way that "Islam" works as the root, underlying cause of said conditions is if one has already made up their mind.

R
and yet every Muslim dominated country sucks.

Zaki Hasan
Seriously, R...that's just an amazingly ignorant comment.

R
Fundamentalism is incompatible with modern society and a decent culture. This is where the "hasn't matured" enough thing come s in

Zaki Hasan
R, I could get into how terms like "fundamentalism" and even "maturity" are entirely in the eye of the beholder, and meaningless without qualifiers, but I'll simply say that you're speaking with a lot of authority about countries and people you know very little about beyond what you see on the evening news, even as you're being pointed in the direction of facts that will correct your misinterpretations.

Suffice it to say, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, and Afghanistan aren't monolithic, anymore than we are here, or any country anywhere in the world. That's something anyone who's lived in that region will readily tell you, and it's being reiterated for you repeatedly in this very thread. I'd think the actual experiences of people who've lived in the Mid East means more than the prepackaged talking points of the pundit class as they brandish a handful of polls stripped of all context and nuance.

E
Having been to Turkey, I can tell you it's pretty darn moderate and proud of it. The thought of "fundamentalist" in the stereotypical sense scares the vast majority of them to death...and it's a 98% Muslim country with all stipes represented. Istanbul is as modern, secular, and as cosmopolitan as Asia/Eastern Europe gets. The sad thing is that most people don't believe me when I tell them that. Indonesia, the country with the most Muslims in the world, certainly doesn't suck either.

R
I know Zaki. Itt's all relative. Covering women head to toe. Honor rapes. Hacking off hands for theft. IT's culturally relative, right? Eye of the beholder. Supporting bin laden. Murdering 3,000 people in oneshot just because. None of it is condemnable. It's all relative.

R
The comparison by you Zaki of the US and Afghanistan is frankly shameful and beneath you. Would you move your family to Afghanistan? a friedn of mine recently went their for her job and has been shelled repeatedly since she got there. Which i guess is an improvement from pre-2001 when she simply would have been murdered.

Zaki Hasan
R, the question of whether I would want to move my family to Afghanistan is a non-sequitur, since I'm not from there, have no family there, and thus have no connection to the country.

And as far as the "comparison" you're feeling so exorcised about, it was very narrow, and specifically in reference to the rhetorical trap of painting any country/culture with too broad a brush. There's just too much social and political variation from region to region to soesk in absolutes.

Yes, I recognize that we live in a complex world that doesn't lend itself to easy quantification or easy stratification. How "shameful" of me. How "beneath" me. And, of course, this is made doubly ironic by what's been, frankly, a pretty staggering display of broad-brush ignorance of Islam and Muslims by you from the top of this thread right on through to the post above this one.

So you'll forgive me if I find your sudden bout of righteous indignation more than a little hollow.

R
That's not why. I have no connection to say England. But I wouldn't be shocked and horrified at the thought of moving there. Can't say the same about Afghanistan. You'd have to have a screw loose.

R
I call it like I see it. The middle east in particular is largely a mess. Yes know i know the west, jews blah blah blah, 9/11 was a shame but..... I've heard it all before. None of that explains why in the bulk of those countries, women are treated like animals, at best, and the men aren't treated too great either, and those countries are the breeding grounds for the biggest mass murderers in the world today. We cannot face a problem until we recognize it. Same with Nazi Germany "but they had great caberets and they were treated kinda crappy after WWI" wouldn't cut it then, it doesn't cut it now. The best thing that ever happens to Muslim individuals, is to get out of Muslim dominated governments/cultures.

Zaki Hasan
Because, of course, other than religion, Afghanistan and England are a perfect one-to-one comparison. One of those countries hasn't suffered through thirty-plus years of war and hardship.

In fact, that's the promo tagline for Afghan tourism department: "Except for the relative proportion of Muslims-per-capita, EXACTLY like England."

R
The correct answer is "I wouldnt move to Afghanistan because it's a hellhole and my children might be shot for flying a kite." Why is that so hard? and why is it that so many of those countries are suffering civil war, war, oppression, etc. It's not coincidence. Its because of the people who live there and around them. It's like saying "russia would be so much better if only it didn't have so many dictators poor Russia, the US would be just like it if it had dictators" without thinking "Wait a minute, why does one tend to have dictators and strong men and the other doesn't?hmmmmm"RThe cultural relativism gets old. you know? other than Nazi Germany and the US, is there any culture we're allowed to say " that kinda blows. what are they thinking?"

Zaki Hasan
It's not about relativism, R. Look at where this conversation started, and look at where you've dragged it. No one is saying that Afghanistan would be a better place to live right now than England. I know I'm not. The question, per your own framing, is whether that's because it's an "Islamic" country, or because there's a whole mess of other factors that led it to that point.

If you're going to put out a ridiculous hypothetical, at least be intellectually honest and make a comparison that makes a lick of sense. Now, if you were to ask me whether I'd move my family to Saudi Arabia, or Egypt, or Bahrain, or Kuwait, or the UAE -- all of which are more apt comparisons to England in terms of relative prosperity, then I'd say absolutely.

Zaki Hasan
And with that, considering you went all Godwin by invoking Nazi Germany, I'm going to call fin on this discussion.

R
Saudi Arabia, the seat of violent islamic radicalism. That would be a great move. One of the most oppressive regimes on earth.RsAs far as Afgnistan, one of the main problems is they had rulership by one of the most extreme Muslim groups on earth, the Taliban, which was in bed with another of the most extreme groups on earth, Al qaeda. That sounds like a fundamentalist Islamic problem.

R
You should reconsider. Your children would be better off living in countries with actual freedom.

Zaki Hasan
Go home, R. This thread is closed.

R
m sorry i called you on your openess to move to a country like Saudia where women are slaves. Perhaps you need to look in the mirror on your own values and see if you really meant that.e truth is upsetting to you. " The World Economic Forum 2009 Global Gender Gap Report ranked Saudi Arabia 130th out of 134 countries for gender parity. It was the only country to score a zero in the category of political empowerment."

Zaki Hasan
I spent ten years living in Saudi Arabia, so I have actual lived experience to fall back on, while you have a bunch of right wing talking points and statistics. Are there problems there? Yep, same as everywhere else. But you know what? The average person there is just trying to live his or her life and make a comfortable world for their families and children, same as everywhere else.

S
R: my guess is you don't live in a poverty-stricken, crime-infested urban center, where the police are as feared as gangs are, but no matter: what people with your....perspective,..(and the FBI, apparently) fail to realize, is that the people most overwhelmingly likely to report a potential terrorist to the authorities are Muslims, who,despite the contrary nonsensical notion held by some, actually do not want themselves, their families, their friends, their neighbors, their schools, their communities, their towns/cities, their country (by citicenship or denizenship), blown up or harmed in any way

I'm pretty sure the phrase, "there's no talking to some people," was coined in anticipation of this specific conversation. Holy yikes. Now, if you started feeling the urge to run headlong into a wall as you got further in, don't worry, that's probably normal. More than anything though, this conversation offers a fascinating insight into how our thought processes are shaped and concretized by the mediated, talking head culture we find ourselves stuck in, making everyone an "expert" to such an extent that even actual facts and actual experience -- if they paint a contrary picture -- can't break through the iron walls in our own minds. And the result is...this.

Ch-Ch-Changes

2011-09-18T11:23:00.000-07:00

Last time we talked Star Wars here was when I commented on the friggin' God-awful box art for the "Complete Saga" blu-ray set containing all six flicks. Well, ghastly though it is, that didn't stop me from locking in my pre-order, and the discs arrived this past Friday. Of course, as with all things Star Wars these days, while there's been much anticipation for the seminal series to finally make its hi-def debut, there's been just as much teeth-gnashing at the constant tinkering that creator/abusive parent George Lucas has inflicted on his films over the decades (especially the original three), tweaking, nipping and tucking here, there, and everywhere, like a rhinoplasty addict armed with an unlimited budget -- remember that gem up-top?

I've said a few times that I really don't mind all the changes. Ultimately, he can do whatever the heck he wants. I just wish he'd hit "Save As" every once in awhile so we could watch the movies in their unvarnished forms too. I'm out of town right now, so I'll have to wait 'till later in the week to get a full gander at all alternations (one of which I've made my feelings plain on), but as this graphic courtesy of The Geek Twins helpfully illuminates, it's not like Lucas' tendency toward retroactive engineering started with the 1997 "Special Edition" releases and the onset of CGI technology (though that sure launched it into hyperdrive). No, it stretches right back to practically the moment the first Star Wars came to theaters (no "Episode IV" and no "A New Hope").

Click here to check it out.

Spectral Televisions

2011-09-18T10:28:00.000-07:00

The last time Fox TV went into business with DC Comics, we emerged with Human Target, which showed enough promise at the outset -- both creatively and in the Nielsens -- to warrant a second season pickup, but which swiftly went south on both fronts thanks to the dreaded network interference, and was put out to pasture last May. But while Target may have flamed out a lot quicker than anyone involved (and I) would have liked, that isn't stopping the net from going back to the DC well once again, with this week's news that they're developing a weekly skein based on long-running supernatural vigilante The Spectre, who first appeared in 1940 courtesy of Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel (along with artist Bernard Baily).

While the character, hard-bitten police detective Jim Corrigan, whose unjust murder prompts God to revive him as the personification of His wrath, has been around for awhile -- including an acclaimed 1970s run that aroused plenty of controversy for the character's dispensing of some Old Testament-style justice (like turning crooks into blocks of wood and his own arms into chainsaws, or turning crooks into paper and his hands into scissors -- see the pattern?) -- my own Spectral fascination comes from what was at the time and remains to this day one of my all-time favorite comic runs, a terrific, and terribly-underrated, 1992-'97 series written by John Ostrander and primarily illustrated by Tom Mandrake.

During its too-short-yet-just-right 62 issue span, the book seamlessly alternated between the super-heroic and the super-horrific, with plenty of time for high-minded discussions of morality and spirituality, and a sniffle-inducing final issue that's the perfect cap to a near-perfect run. While he's probably too low-key to effectively play on the big screen (where DC can't even get its big guns to work!), the TV format is a no-brainer for this character, who can excel in smaller-scale, introspective stories. Although "in development" doesn't mean much, and could well amount to nothing when all is said and done, this is one project I really hope materializes. If they take even a little bit of a cue from the Ostrander-Mandrake Spectre, it has the potential to be something really special.

3D Deep Sixed?

2011-09-16T12:28:00.000-07:00

Despite the fact that seemingly every big blockbuster that hit theaters this past summer came with an option to view in 3D, the only time I took up that offer was with Transformers 3, which I didn't pay the premium price for (and we all know the kind of experience I had with that, anyway). Based on the dwindling box office returns from 3D screens, it sure seems like I wasn't the only one who's decided to take a pass on the third dimension of cinema, putting to the lie Avatar director James Cameron's conceit that eventually 3D will be the only way we watch movies. As things stands, it sure seems like this is a fad whose time may have passed*, and Daniel Engber at Slate lays out some of possible reasons why.

* Until Avatar 2, that is.