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Showing posts from March, 2006

Just what kind of SF geek ARE you?

Feel the need to find out? Your Ultimate Sci-Fi Profile created with QuizFarm.com Somehow, I'm not surprised to discover this… You scored as Serenity (Firefly) . You like to live your own way and don't enjoy when anyone but a friend tries to tell you should do different. Now if only the Reavers would quit trying to skin you. Serenity (Firefly) 88% Babylon 5 (Babylon 5) 88% Moya (Farscape) 81% Millennium Falcon (Star Wars) 75% Nebuchadnezzar (The Matrix) 75% SG-1 (Stargate) 75% Galactica (Battlestar: Galactica) 69% Bebop (Cowboy Bebop) 56% Deep Space Nine (Star Trek) 50% Andromeda Ascendant (Andromeda) 50% Enterprise D (Star Trek) 44% FBI's X-Files Division (The X-Files) 44%

Who Knew? Elvis really IS King!

The Republicans are opening ANWR to drilling, and the Pres is getting ready to sell off thousands of acres of public park land, but damnit, Graceland is safe! Graceland Being Declared National Landmark I'm sure we can all rest easier tonight knowing that.  

Safe to say, the drought is NOT over

All I have to say is Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector . The quality of potentially good films like Inside Man is diminished simply by opening the same day. Yes, even V suffers a proximity effect. Of course, it will probably make huge money. Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public. H. L. Mencken Truer words may never have been spoken.  

I take it all back

Yes, I mocked plans for V for Vendetta severely last year when I first read about it. What can I say… have you seen the last two Matrix films? All mocking aside, I didn't expect much at the time, but found myself intrigued and looking forward to this one the closer we got to release date. Perhaps it's the sad slate of films we've had to pick from the past couple of months, but this one finally piqued my interest and we went to check it out Friday. All I can say is that I'm glad I was wrong. I found this one entertaining and topical, in that special niche that good SF manages to occupy. There are big ideas played at with heroic and villainous actions performed, all to the tempos of the best action adventures. Striking visuals, entertaining fight scenes, and some pretty decent acting to top it all off. Special kudos to Hugo Weaving for rising to the actor's nightmare challenge of acting behind a mask for the entire movie, and pulling it off admirably. I know Moore

So what would Kerry do?

In my " Let's hear it for George " post the other day, I was asked what I thought Kerry would have done differently if elected. I granted that I didn't know much that he would have done, or could have done, differently, but I did mention a couple of things that I thought would be a good start (no illegal wiretaps and no Donald Rumsfeld, for instance.) I think I can add a couple more items to the list of things I would hope a different President wouldn't be doing in 2006… Bush reaffirms first-strike policy, calls Iran biggest possible threat The idea that "pre-emptive war" is legal (as I've heard it quoted on the news today) is a questionable one, at best, as far as I'm concerned. And the fact that this is part of our national security policy I find nearly as reassuring as our old "we're not taking a nuclear first-strike option off the table" policy during the cold war. And for those of you wondering if the President could really be

We got punk'd

So it turns out that George Clooney's "I'm a Liberal" post on The Huffington Post wasn't REALLY George's post after all… Clooney, Huffington Clash Over Blog Posting Huffington responds here: On George Clooney's Blog Whatever. I agree with Clooney's publicist on this one… they've misrepresented the post as if Clooney is the one who crafted and posted the comments as they stand, and not something cobbled together from selected interviews and statements. (Of course, it might take some of the wind out of Q's "quit whining, George" comment , but that's small comfort.) Nice job, Arianna. You've successfully made all of us quoting "Clooney's" post look like fools. I'm sure the hate-radio mongers are having a grand time mocking this one. I knew there was a reason Huffington has always annoyed me.  

Bitter, table for two?

Entertaining remarks from famous people in the news today… Annie Proulx was apparently less than impressed and more than a little disappointed that Brokeback didn't get Best Picture: Blood on the red carpet Roughly 6,000 film industry voters, most in the Los Angeles area, many living cloistered lives behind wrought-iron gates or in deluxe rest-homes, out of touch not only with the shifting larger culture and the yeasty ferment that is America these days, but also out of touch with their own segregated city, decide which films are good. And rumour has it that Lions Gate inundated the academy voters with DVD copies of Trash - excuse me - Crash a few weeks before the ballot deadline. Next year we can look to the awards for controversial themes on the punishment of adulterers with a branding iron in the shape of the letter A, runaway slaves, and the debate over free silver. I love how she even resorts to the petty "ooh, let's call the movie 'Trash' so everyone knows w

Let's hear it for George!

Clooney, that is… I Am a Liberal. There, I Said It! I've been fascinated/horrified/disgusted by the demonization of the term Liberal in this country and have struggled on and off for ways to express that feeling. Looks like Mr. Clooney's done an admirable job of doing just that for me. Good job, George. And yes, just for the record, I too am a Liberal. Like anybody needed me to point that out.  

Ultraviolet

I've wondered in the past why it is that I so often post about movies I don't like and so seldom about the one's I really DO like. There's a few reasons for that, I've found… The first is generally timing, and that's true for both liked and disliked films. If I don't get to talking about it within a few days of seeing the film, no matter what I felt about it, chances are, I'm not ever going to do it. It just loses relevance for me, I guess. Serenity is a prime example of this. This was one of my favorite movies from last year, got some great reviews, I even managed to get to it opening weekend and had a lot to say about it (mainly talking about the things I liked and why I liked them). But I got busy, didn't get around to it that first week after I saw the movie and, by the next weekend when it virtually disappeared from theatres, I just moved on to other topics. Then there's the fact that, sometimes, there's not as much to say about a movie

Worst title ever?

Maybe a bit extreme, but seriously… Failure to Launch ? Knowing full well from the posters that it had to be a romantic comedy, I had first assumed that something called "failure to launch" would have the main character a pilot or astronaut or something, and the "failure" was an allegory for his emotional problems. I guess I was over-thinking things there. No, he's 35 and lives with his parents so his "failure to launch" is his failure to launch himself out of the nest, I guess? (Now that I think about it, any kind of thinking here could be considered over-thinking.) Even Dani, who likes Matthew McConaughey, Sarah Jessica Parker AND romantic comedies (not necessarily in that order) wants nothing to do with this one. And that's gotta be saying something. Of course, judging from this last month's worth of box office horror , I wouldn't be surprised to see it roll in boat-loads of cash by Monday. God, what a thought. Postscript: 3/13/06 Ok, d

S.O.A.P. 2

OH MY F'ING GOD… From this month's Premiere Magazine: Green Snakes and Sam (Jackson) The incorrigible Samuel L. Jackson on Freedomland and why he wouldn't do Snakes on a Plane unless it was called Snakes on a Plane! Sam says: When I picked up the script and I saw the title, I didn't even read it and I said, "I want to do it." You know, before I opened the first page, Snakes on a Plane. If this is what I think it is, I want to be in this. I want to be on a plane full of poisonous snakes. And I want to see other people on a plane full of poisonous snakes. You say Snakes on a Plane, people who don't like snakes are intrigued. The people who don't like to fly are intrigued. The people who don't like both are totally terrified now. People who just like seeing mayhem are ready for that. They want to see, you know, people enclosed in a big tin tube getting attacked by poisonous snakes. Come on! What could be more exciting than that, you know? What do you

It MUST be a Meme

How else to explain the apparent obsession with the oh-so-obviously named "Snakes on a Plane" (Or, as IMDB lists it… S.O.A.P. Yeah, that makes it better.) Samuel Jackson stars. Here's the Plot Outline from IMDB: On board a flight over the Pacific Ocean, an assassin, bent on killing a passenger who's a witness in protective custody, let loose a crate full of deadly snakes. I first read about this one in Entertainment Weekly sometime last year, when they waxed rhapsodic about the elegance (or something) of that title. Since then, I've seen numerous articles in EW, in Premiere and god-only-knows where else. This weekend, Dani & Tally got on the subject of Snakes on a Plane t-shirts. When I gave them a quizzical look, they couldn't understand how I couldn't be obsessed with the whole idea of snakes on a plane ('how did they get there?' 'what are they doing there?') nor thrilled that Samuel Jackson was staring in this epic in the making. I