Monday

What better way to start off the week than with a Syfy marathon of Stargate SG-1 running right now, from 8am all the way through to 3pm? Sure, there's that whole "work" thing, but come on. It's Stargate!

Otherwise, your television thrills are limited to an 8pm conflict between new episodes of House on Fox (A teenage girl can't distinguish between fact and fiction "after a wild night out." Am I the only one who feels like this could be either awesome or hideously embarrassing for all involved?) and Heroes on NBC, where Sylar is still trying to take control of Matt's body and Claire has to face off with her father's Sorority Girl Army. And, yes, I did accidentally make that sound more interesting than the actual show. Sorry, everyone.

Tuesday

For those calling in sick, I'd recommend skipping Syfy's Tru Calling marathon (8am through 3pm for those whose love of Dushku overpowers their bad-show gag reflex) and tuning into AMC, which goes dragon crazy with a 12:45 airing of Dragonheart (Dennis Quaid and a dragon voiced by Sean Connery!) followed by a 3pm re-run of Reign of Fire (You could stay tuned for a 5pm Batman Begins and 8pm Terminator 2: Judgment Day as well, if you were feeling particularly lazy).

If you'd rather get a delayed British take on the 40th anniversary of the moon landing, then James May On The Moon (BBC America at 8pm) takes Top Gear's Captain Slow and puts him in the driver's seat for an hour long look back at those heady days where men were men and the Moon seemed an obtainable destination.

Otherwise, click over to ABC for the second episode of V and see whether it still feels like FlashForward meets... Well, the old V, really (The official PR for the episode says "A seeker among the Visitors tracks Erica and Father Jack. Chad seeks redemption by investigating the aliens ahead of his next newscast while law enforcers press Erica for information concerning Dale M…").

Wednesday

Thank God for Mythbusters on the Discovery Channel at 9pm. Without their investigation into whether cars will automatically burst into flames after crashing (Surely we have empirical proof that the answer is no already?), I'd have to find some way to pretend that Glee (Fox at 9) was a scifi show just to have something to write about for today. I figured I could always claim that it was set in an alternate reality where people aren't creeped out by Will Schuester trying to rap.

Thursday
If it's Thursday, then it's time for all the shows to run up against each other again. Sure, you could pretend that the networks aren't showing anything and watch a double bill of Demolition Man and End of Days on AMC (Sly and Arnold! In two of their most underrated - for a reason - movies! It starts at 8pm, if you're tempted), after spending the day watching Syfy's Star Trek: Enterprise marathon (8am through 3pm, as ever), but come on. I know that you can't resist the big shows people are talking about.

On FlashForward (ABC, 8pm), Aaron discovers the truth about his daughter's death, Janis returns to work and Mark and Olivia's martial troubles bring everyone down yet again, man. Things are much more fun over in Mystic Falls where Vampire Diaries (the CW at 8pm) brings a mysterious new teacher, arguments over medallions and, according to the CW, "Damon finally reveals to Stefan the stunning reason he has returned to Mystic Falls." If I watched the show and/or cared, I couldn't wait!

9pm brings the real reason to wrestle over the remote; Fringe on Fox gives Olivia, Broyles and Peter a new reason to be suspicious of Massive Dynamic when the impossibly shady corporation turn out to be involved in a kidnapping case, but Supernatural (The CW) looks much more fun than even Walter Bishop could provide:

Super fan Becky uses Chuck's phone to trick Sam and Dean into attending a Supernatural fan convention, complete with fans dressed up as Sam and Dean. One of the activities is a live action role-playing game, but things quickly turn sour after a real ghost appears on the scene.

Seriously. How could anyone resist that?

Friday

Jericho fans! You have the Syfy marathon of the day (8am through 3pm, which I'm sure you already know by now) to keep you happy during the daylight hours; the rest of us will be watching the original The War Of The Worlds movie on AMC at 10:15am (And avoiding the following Star Trek: Nemesis at 12:15pm, a movie which can best be described by blogger Kevin Church here), instead.

Still, Friday evening starts the weekend off right with the double bill of Batman: The Brave and The Bold ("The Fate of Equinox!" Yes, the exclamation point is part of the title) and Star Wars: The Clone Wars (following last week's surprisingly brutal, "Are Jedi really advocating using flame throwers against living beings what the hell?" episode) on Cartoon Network, starting at 7:30pm (Clone Wars is at 8pm, if you have an aversion of Batman. And if you do, then I'm very, very sorry.)

If you're in the mood for MOR dramas teasing the supernatural, then CBS is the place to be tonight, with new episodes of both Ghost Whisperer (8pm, with Jennifer Love Hewitt "pulled into a murder mystery by a real estate power couple" - Yes, this is what people want to watch, apparently) and Medium (9pm, which at least includes a potentially amusing-for-the-wrong-reasons subplot about posting videos of someone on the internet and "getting into trouble") on offer.

The rest of us, we'll be considering Smallville on the CW at 8pm (It features the Wonder Twins! You know you want to), Stargate Universe on Syfy at 9pm (The crew of the Destiny get a message from their future selves from the past. Or something) and Sanctuary on the same channel at 10pm.

Saturday

If you're not looking forward to Syfy's Ice Twisters at 9pm ("A sci-fi novelist is summoned to help scientists after an experiment in weather manipulation goes awry and produces deadly tornadoes made of ice," apparently), then we'd suggest that AMC's double bill of trilogies is the best way to spend your day. Start with the Mad Max trilogy (Movies starting 1:30, 3:30 and 5:30pm) before a night of The Matrix trilogy (The three movies begin at 8pm, 11pm and 1am on Sunday, respectively). Otherwise, the only thing left is Discovery's Surviving 2012... which is about all the prophecies, and not, sadly, advice on making it through Roland Emmerich's latest.

Sunday

It's the best night of television this week! Who knew, right? Start things off right with Syfy's latest screening of Serenity at 6:30 before switching over midway through - Hopefully missing Alan Tudyk's least favorite scene ever in the process - to catch the premiere of AMC's brand new take on The Prisoner at 8pm. If Ian McKellan and Jim Caviezel can't bring Patrick McGoohan's classic paranoiafest back to life, I'm going to be very depressed.

Of course, the best way to finish the evening off is coming at midnight, with the latest episode of The Venture Bros on Cartoon Network. Can we all just admit that it's the smartest and funniest show on television already?

If you are a process junkie, then the boxset is made for you; along with a lovely booklet full of production sketches, each episode has an additional mini-documentary with interviews from the crew involved, as well as seven episodes with new material added for "Director's Cut" editions (Spoiler: Han doesn't shoot first in any of them). More to the point, just rewatching the series shows how the show has evolved as everyone learns what they can, and can't, get away with; I watched the first few episodes in the set after watching "Landing At Point Rain," the most recent episode of the second season, and the difference is amazing - and, for a second, somewhat damning to the first season in comparison ("Point Rain" featured not just some wonderfully choreographed battle sequences that offered a fluidity and grace that the earlier animation lacked, it was also surprisingly brutal in tone - The clones and Jedi used flamethrowers on their alien opponents and you saw them burning to death, which really leaves the earliest episodes of the show, uncertain about the tone just yet, looking anemic). But to concentrate on how far the show's come is to miss the point, and the fun, of the first season.

Clone Wars season one was full of trial and error, yes, but even when things didn't work, they're still worth watching - even moreso on DVD, when the bad taste of the Jar-Jar-centric "Bombad Jedi" is quickly washed away by the double bill of "Cloak of Darkness" and "Lair of Grievous," both of which move more towards the self-assured tone of the movies. The show's mini-arcs make more sense when viewed together, as well (And episodes like "Storm Over Ryloth," "Innocents of Ryloth" and "Liberty on Ryloth" work better than the feature that introduced the series in the first place). But as much as the writing shifts and grows in quality and confidence throughout the series - Just compare the Ryloth episodes to "Ambush" to see what I mean - so, in a much more subtle way, do the visuals.

Never less than impressive, even from the get-go (Just look at some of the textures used! Or the lighting! Man, it's good stuff), the animators nonetheless manage to tighten things all the way throughout the season by, ironically, loosening up: The "acting" by the characters - especially the facial movements - gets more natural as the show goes on, making it easier to empathize with the characters despite (because of) their impressive and intentional cartoony quality (Again, this is something that's all the more obvious looking at newer episodes like "Point Rain," where Anakin has some great subtle smirking going on, adding to his "Yeah, you're a hero now but you're going to end up Darth Vader because of that assholishness, buddy" thing).

But even outside of the "Watch the show improve" aspect that made the boxset for me - I couldn't help it, I'd seen the shows before - there's a lot to like about The Complete Season One; yes, some of the episodes (Ahem, "Bombad Jedi") are clunkers, but the good outweigh the bad, and there's something to like in all of them. The bonus features, as I've said before, are worth watching (Especially the "Jedi Temple" extras, which I think are BluRay only?), and the format makes the multi-episode arcs much stronger than they were when first broadcast, even without the addition of the extra footage.

In the end, then, there's something in The Complete Season One for almost everyone: Complete nerds like me get to geek out over the evolution of the show and peeks behind the scenes, casual fans who liked the series on television can enjoy the Director's Cut episodes and watching the arcs in one sitting, and newcomers... Well, they just get a pretty good cartoon that's, for the most part, more enjoyable than the prequel trilogy. Me, I'm already waiting for the Complete Season Two boxset to hear how they managed to get away with torching their enemies on Cartoon Network prime time.

Spock
Died: Sacrificing himself by bringing the warp engines back online at the end of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, leading to his dying from exposure to radiation.
Undied: His body was resurrected in Star Trek III: The Search For Spock thanks to the Deus Ex Machina powers of the Genesis Planet, and it turned out that his soul had lived on all along thanks to mind melding with Bones.
Cause of Undeath: Mind-meld and blatant plot ridiculousness in order to keep the fans happy. Admittedly, it was all set up in Star Trek II, but still.
Does It Count As Death?: Well, his soul was alive the entire time in Bones, but his body had enough time to go through a funeral and being shot off into space, so... 50/50? But not really, let's face it.

Ellen Tigh
Died: Poisoned by her husband after (in his eyes) betraying humanity in "Exodus, Part II" at the start of Battlestar Galactica's third season.
Undied: Instantly downloaded into a new body as part of the Fifth Cylon retcon, as revealed in the fourth season's "Sometimes A Great Notion."
Cause of Undeath: Traditional cylon download/rebirth.
Does It Count As Death?: Well, she was instantly reborn, which suggests that she was never actually dead as such, but the whole Fifth Cylon thing muddies the waters... especially when she was reborn as someone who wasn't exactly the Ellen she was when she died. We're going with "Kinda, but not really."

Boba Fett
Died: Falling into the Sarlacc's mouth in Return Of The Jedi.
Undied: Climbing back out of the Sarlacc's mouth in comic sequel Star Wars: Dark Empire.
Cause of Undeath: He was swallowed by apparently never chewed or digested and climbed his way out, apparently.
Does It Count As Death?: If you believe Dark Empire, not in the slightest. George Lucas apparently disagrees, however; it's said that he edited Fett's last appearance in the special edition of Return Of The Jedi to make it clearer that it's meant to be the end of the character.

John Sheridan
Died: Avoiding certain death by nuclear explosion at the end of Babylon 5's third season finale, "Z'ha'dum," by jumping into a pit so deep that it was impossible to survive. Oh, and then there was that nuclear explosion, which presumably would've destroyed the pit and everything within it anyway.
Undied: At the start of the show's fourth season, Sheridan was revealed to be in a limbo between life and death because of his love for Delenn. With the help of - and 20 years worth of lifeforce from - helpful fellow limbo-ite Lorien, he comes back to the land of the living.
Cause of Undeath: As Ewan McGregor in Trainspotting would say, choosing life. Who knew it was that simple?
Does It Count As Death?: Nope. Think of it as getting as far as death's foyer, before deciding to turn back because you'd changed your mind.

Tasha Yar
Died: Wanting out of her Starfleet contract early, Denise Crosby got her character killed at the hands of a gloopy, ooky oil monster in the first season episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation "Skin of Evil."
Undied: Thanks to time travel shenanigans, turns out never to have died in the alternate timeline of third season episode "Yesterday's Enterprise," and then manages to return to the past of the original timeline at the end of the episode in a way that still doesn't make a lot of sense.
Cause of Undeath: Alternate timelines having prevented her from dying in the first place.
Does It Count As Death?: Well, a Tasha Yar definitely died. In fact, as we learn upon the appearance of the second Yar's daughter Sela, the other Tasha was killed unsuccessfully trying to escape from the Romulans, so it looks as if any and all Tashas would end up dead one way or another.

Superman
Died: At the hands of the apparently unstoppable Doomsday in 1993's The Death of Superman storyline.
Undied: Midway through the follow-on The Return of Superman storyline, when it's been revealed that none of the four characters who've taken up the mantle are the real thing.
Cause of Undeath: He woke up. No, really; the audience is pretty much told that he'd never died in the first place, he'd just gone into superhibernation in order to heal from the fight.
Does It Count As Death?: Not at all, but it definitely counted as a moneyspinner for DC Comics, who went on to kill Green Arrow and Green Lantern within the next couple of years, as well as teasing deaths for the Flash and breaking Batman's back.

Bucky
Died: Trapped on a bomb that mentor and Nazi-fighting partner Captain America had managed to jump off of before it exploded, as explained way back in 1963's Avengers series.
Undied: In 2005's "Winter Soldier" storyline of Captain America, where he got reintroduced and prepped to become the new Captain America in 2007.
Cause of Undeath: Turns out that Bucky was, in fact, blown to bits by the exploding bomb... It's just that they were pretty large bits. Large enough to rebuild him into a brainwashed no-good commie assassin who gets put on ice between missions, until he meets Cap, goes rogue, remembers who he is, and then uses his mighty Russian technology for the good of American mankind.
Does It Count As Death?: What's brainwashed Russian assassin for no?

The Flash
Died: Which one? Barry Allen died in 1985's Crisis On Infinite Earths. Wally West disappeared and was, at various times, presumed dead/missing/no-one could make up their mind in 2004's Infinite Crisis, and Bart Allen kicked the bucket in 2007's The Flash: The Fastest Man Alive #13.
Undied: Wally came back in 2007's Justice League of America #10, Barry in 2008's Final Crisis #1 and Bart in 2009's Final Crisis: Legion of Three Worlds #4.
Cause of Undeath: Both Barry and Wally had, it turns out, never died. Barry had been swallowed into the Speed Force, which is the cosmic... thing... that gives all super-speed characters their powers in the DC Universe, while Wally's fate was ultimately (after a couple of failed attempts that were quickly contradicted) decided upon a variation of "He took his family on vacation to an alien planet and didn't tell anyone." Don't ask. Bart, meanwhile, did die, kind of... but his teenage self was trapped in a futuristic lightning rod and then magically released in the 31st century to fight Superboy Prime. Again, it's probably better if you didn't ask.
Does It Count As Death?: No question for either Barry or Wally (No), but Bart... I have no idea. I've read Legion of Three Worlds multiple times, and still don't understand the explanation that's given there; let's just never mention it again and pretend it didn't happen.

Jason Todd
Died: As the result of a real-life phone vote to see if Todd, the second Robin (as in Batman and), should be killed at the hands of the Joker. Seriously, 1988's comic industry, what the hell were you thinking?
Undied: 2004's Batman revealed that Todd was not only not dead, but had magically aged more than most other characters in the DC Universe in his off-panel absence.
Cause of Undeath: Superboy was punching the walls of reality, and things went a bit weird. You know how it is with these superheroes and their punching the walls of reality; history gets rewritten all over the place. Just be glad that Batman didn't end up as Batdinosaur. Although, now that we think about it, that'd be awesome.
Does It Count As Death?: Magically contradicting Schrodinger and his cat, Jason Todd both did and didn't die. His official history has it that he died, and then just came back to life thanks to the punching of reality, meaning that he was still alive. So, while it ultimately doesn't count as permanent death, there was a death in there somewhere.

Jean Grey
Died: In 1980's famous Uncanny X-Men #137, where she sacrifices herself for the good of the universe to stop herself from becoming overwhelmed by the godlike power she possessed that might lead her to eat a couple of planets if she got peckish.
Undied: It's revealed in 1986's Fantastic Four #286 that the Jean Grey who killed herself was never actually Jean Grey at all, but the Phoenix force, who's been cosmically imprinted with Jean's personality. Don't worry; the Phoenix force was already back by that point anyway.
Cause of Undeath: Jean hadn't died (at that point), and the resurrection of the Phoenix force was somewhat implied by the name - The official explanation was that the Phoenix force hadn't actually died either, just lain dormant until someone else (Jean's daughter from an alternate timeline. If you don't already know, don't ask) claimed it.
Does It Count As Death?: Before the retcon and ruined Chris Claremont's X-Men once and for all you bastards, it did. Now? No-one died until years later, when Jean really got the Phoenix power and then ended up dying anyway. Guess there's something unlucky about the name or something.

Both Fringe and FlashForward are seeing ratings in a worrying freefall right now; Meredith has already reported that Fringe was being considered a show in "trouble," but that was before the audience dropped a worrying 23% for this Thursday's episode (In its defense, many people may have been unaware that it was even on; a lot of schedules didn't list the episode, instead telling viewers that it was the seventh game of the World Series). Seeing a less dramatic drop, but still something that's started rumors of a lack of second season renewal, FlashForward slumped even further this week and, as TV By The Numbers showed, continued a speedy decline in the number of viewers each week towards the point of no return.

We already know that Thursday is a packed night of television, but is it so packed that it's going to kill shows we love (or, in the case of FlashForward, like enough to keep watching and hoping for the best)? Or will the success of the V premiere remind networks that Tuesday night is always an option?

[Alexis Rockman via {feuilleton}]

Disney World I
Disney World II
Capitol Hill
Church and White
East 82nd St.
Gateway Arch
Hollywood
Hollywood at Night
Hotelscape
Manifest Destiny
Mount Rushmore
Miami
Vie en Rose
Washington Square

Magical Realism
Air
What It's About: At its heart, Air is a love story between Blythe - a flight attendant who's afraid of flying - and Zayn, who is as much a mystery to himself as everyone else. But Air is much, much weirder, and more interesting, than that: For one thing, Blythe is a natural hyperpraxis pilot, which means that she can travel to places, times and ideas that don't, theoretically, exist... a skill she's honing with the help of Amelia Earhart, who by the way is still alive. For another, there's a war brewing between terrorists over control of the skies, and for a third, certain people may be very interested in that whole "hyperpraxis" thing. A series that's gentle, human, full of wonder and emotion, and at times just beautiful, Air is unlike most comics - and television shows and movies, for that matter - out there.
Where To Start: Two collections are available, Letters From Lost Countries and Flying Machine. Pick both up; the series is great, but the first collection (Letters) stops at a frustratingly bad point, and you need to read the second to fully appreciate what's going on.
Click here for a preview of Air.

Post-Invasion SF
Resurrection
What It's About: We've all seen stories about aliens invading Earth, but what happens after they leave? FlashForward producer and Green Lantern movie scriptwriter Marc Guggenheim's series starts with that idea and spins out a series that's part Y: The Last Man, part Lost and all-over fascinating. Why did the aliens invade? Where did they go? No-one knows yet, but considering they've left behind technology and even one of their own, you can sure that we'll probably find out somewhere down the line... but along the way, you can get sucked into the more down to earth stories of the humans left behind. Even if one of them is former president Bill Clinton, who was revealed to be more alive than everyone thought at the end of the most recent issue.
Where To Start: There's already a collection of the first black and white series out there, but we'd actually recommend waiting until the start of next year, when the 368 page Resurrection Vol 1: Deluxe Edition, featuring the complete first series and the first seven issues of the current series, hits the shelves.
Click here for a preview of Resurrection.

Urban Fantasy
Locke & Key
What It's About: Ignore the punniness of the premise - The Locke family move to the family estate of Keyhouse, wherein there are magic keys that can do various weird and wonderful things, which puts them right in the middle of some bad things that're about to happen - and instead, embrace and enjoy those weird and wonderful things that the keys can do: like open doors that turn people into ghosts or even open their own heads so that you can reach in and take out unpleasant memories. Mixing horror, fantasy, comedy and family drama and featuring moments that are genuinely unsettling, Locke & Key deserves all the praise it's gotten, and a lot more.
Where To Start: There're two collections out already; Welcome To Lovecraft and Head Games. Start at the beginning (Lovecraft), bearing in mind that Head Games is the better, and also the more freaky.
Click here for a preview of Locke & Key.

Nostalgia Done Right
Pluto: Urasawa x Tezuka
What It's About: A reimagining of Osamu Tezuka's Astro Boy (with some nods to his other work thrown in), Naoki Urasawa's Pluto is inventive, dramatic and in almost every single way, a lesson in how to take reboot and update an old concept the right way. Instead of retreading the old status quo, the series centers around robot detective Gesicht, who's investigating the murder of various high profile robots around the world... Murders that may have been committed by another robot. Even if you don't get sucked in by the economy and subtlety of the writing, there's no way you could fail to admire Urasawa's amazing artwork.
Where To Start: Unsurprisingly, Vol. 1. The seventh volume of the series is due in January, but that's still too far away; when you finish the first volume, you'll be hooked and get through the other five in days.
(No preview available, due to licensing issues. Sorry.)

Crime/Romance/SF/Everything
King City
What It's About: I've written before about Brandon Graham's stunning future crime book, but now that it's being re-released in an easier-to-find serialization by Image Comics, I'll use the opportunity to gush again; the bastard child of an orgy that included Moebius, Vaughn Bode, Jamie Hewlett and Osamu Tezuka (and maybe a little Alex Toth, come to think of it), King City is the tale of one thief, his broken heart, his cat that can literally do anything if given the right drugs, werewolves with war trauma, stolen organs, sidekicks in wrestling masks and pretty much all that's good in the world, all wrapped in something that takes noir's cliches and gives them a makeover laced with enough absurdity and love that it all seems new again. The whole thing manages to be both laid back and electrifyingly kinetic, and your heart will break for multiple reasons while reading it. Really, really worth tracking down.
Where To Start: The serialized reissue is on #2, so picking up back issues from the start really shouldn't be a problem. The original Tokyopop release may offer more story in one sitting, but the Image re-release comes with bigger pages and brand new material to accompany the serialized reprint.
Click here for a preview of King City.

Surprisingly, the issue was raised with White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs earlier this week, as Mediaite's Tommy Christopher risked lizard attack by asking whether or not the President had a statement on the issue:

Tommy Christopher: Robert, I have one question and one clarification. First, the new TV series on ABC, "V," a lot of people are talking about how this show draws very strong –

Gibbs: I got to tell you - I'm going to start with this: I don't want to give anybody the impression I have time to watch anything other than what most of you all do each night. So I can't even tell you what that is or what it's about. If that makes me fairly un-cool, I tend to watch more "SpongeBob" than "V."

Tommy Christopher:There have been a lot of news stories about this –

Gibbs: Makes me a hit with one six-year-old, and that really is all that counts.

Tommy Christopher: You haven't seen the news stories about how this show compares your administration to the alien invaders? (Laughter.) Seriously, really, you haven't heard about it?

Q: He couldn't admit it if he had. (Laughter.)

Gibbs: Because there's a chip in the back of my head that requires me - (laughter) - I don't mean to - I honestly - I got to tell you, I spend - I watch a little football on Saturday, a little football on Sunday, and a lot of news every other time.

Q: Get a life. (Laughter.)

Q: (Inaudible).

Gibbs: Pardon me?

Tommy Christopher: Fourteen million people watch it, and the show –

Gibbs: And clearly, me not being one of them. Again, I –

[Cross-talk.] (Laughter.)

Gibbs: Hold on. I'm not entirely sure who I'd check on since I don't watch the show.

Tommy Christopher: Well, check with the President, see if he has a reaction –

Gibbs: I will assume that the President watches –

Tommy Christopher:– comparing him to a space alien.

Gibbs: What's the - which would probably, like, be one of the least worst things he's been called today.

The exchange ended with Gibbs being promised a tape of the show to review from ABC's Jake Tapper, which, if nothing else, should give ABC something new to promote the show with next week: "Officially screened at the White House at request of the President!"

Here's hoping that his often-discussed love for sci-fi will get him through the derivative hour without being too distracted by a cast that includes Firefly, Dollhouse, Lost, The 4400 and Smallville refugees.

White House Is Thus Far Unaware Of Comparisons To ABC's Hit Show ‘V' [Mediaite]

The news broke in The Wall Street Journal, of all places, in a story about toy lines being co-opted by movie studios:

J.J. Abrams, who created the TV show "Lost" and directed this summer's "Star Trek" film, is in discussions to produce a movie about Japanese toy line Micronauts, which Hasbro just acquired.

With Abrams producing, that opens the door for some Kurtzman/Orci involvement, if they could be convinced to jump from the Transformers franchise into another toy universe. We're really keeping our fingers crossed for comic artist and Micronaut lover Paul Pope getting involved on the design side, though.

The Cry Goes Out in Hollywood: 'Get Me Mr. Potato Head's Agent!' [Wall Street Journal]

Based on 70s short story by Richard Matheson, who also wrote I Am Legend, the movie's central premise is simple. A strangely-disfigured man named Arlington offers a strange proposition to a young family. If they press the button on a box he leaves with them, somebody they don't know will die and they will receive $1 million in cash. School teacher Norma and her NASA engineer husband Arthur aren't sure what to do when the mysterious Arlington leaves them to make their decision. Is the box a hoax? If not, is it bad to kill somebody they don't know if it means they'll have enough money to continue their comfortable, middle-class existence?

With Arthur's dreams of becoming an astronaut dashed (he failed the psychological test), and Norma unable to continue getting a discount for their son at the fancy private school where she teaches, money has recently become a source of anxiety for the couple. So Norma decides to press the button, though Arthur is immediately upset that she does it.

Once this fundamental plot point fades into the narrative background, cult auteur Kelly is free to do what he does best: Get weird. He slowly builds a portrait of suburban life haunted by a mystical military-industrial complex ruled by aliens and spies. Another NASA employee's wife is brutally murdered while their daughter cowers upstairs, and Arthur suspects it's because of Norma's button pushing. Meanwhile, people with nosebleeds are spying on the couple, as well as speaking in portentious tones about "going into the light."

Arlington continues to keep them under surveillance, and they discover that he's actually with the NSA. He built the box after being struck by lightning and mysteriously brought back from the dead. And it all has something to do with the Mars probe Voyager that Arthur helped design.

The movie is packed with the memorable, strange imagery that is Kelly's trademark. Boxes made of water hover in the air, a perfect recreation of a low-tech 1970s library becomes a haunting maze, and the NASA sets are lovingly rendered, complete with retro computers and lens flare. And the eponymous box itself is designed like some kind of Cold War objet d'art. Balanced atop a 70s-style wood panel box is a big red button that looks like it could launch nukes.

Kelly manages to weave together mystical moral issues with government conspiracies and godlike alien intelligences, but the result is uneven. It's hard to sympathize with a comfortably middle-class couple who are willing to kill somebody just so they can continue to live in a giant house and send their son to private school. And the moral universe Kelly has created in The Box is woefully black-and-white: Either you push the button and you're bad, or you don't push it and you're good. I kept waiting for Donnie Darko to step out from behind a curtain and yell at everybody for trying to reduce all human problems to the bland binary of "fear" vs. "love."

We also discover that the button is always pushed by wives, which suggests that women are the culprits holding humanity back from achieving the level of moral goodness that the aliens require in order to spare us from annihilation.

Despite these problems, there were flashes of goofy brilliance in The Box. Especially in the woefully short segments where we see Arlington's mysterious laboratory, located in a wind tunnel that the NSA has requisitioned from NASA, we get a glimpse of a truly great science fiction story. Arlington and his "employees" are a more deeply strange and stylized version of characters from Fringe, and that's a good thing. There's an especially great moment when one of Arlington's puppets returns to the alien spy installation at a tiny freeway motel, which is packed with other alien-controlled people and partly papered over with tinfoil. There's even a cheesy motel pool that's been improbably converted into an alien portal.

Kelly is at his best when he's making mind-melting science fiction with allegorical underpinnings, but unfortunately The Box is more like a morality play with a few science fiction characters hanging around in the background. Making matters worse is that the moral here seems like easy, unimaginative misanthropy. Unlike Kelly's previous films, which bristle with complicated hopefulness in the face of horror, The Box paints a simplistically dark picture of humanity. Despite the best of intentions, women keep pressing that button again and again - putting their families in danger, and dooming Earth to a harsh judgment from the godlike aliens.

Why are such complicated characters doomed to be inserted into narrative boxes that only clumsily contain them? Unfortunately, The Box doesn't answer that question.

Make It Impossible

The first rule to come from the director was, make it impossible....

The rules are — what I always say but people forget — the pictures have to be super impossible. I'm only interested in doing the impossible image. That's really hard to explain. But one of the first things I saw in my mind, was the ground opening up. And I realized what that means, when the bottom falls out under your feet.

So far that sounds exactly right as just about every single scientist and critc has said that the general ideas behind these disaster movies are, literally, impossible. But come on — who doesn't want to see people running from frost?

Stick To What You Know: You Can Always Blow Up The White House Again

[If you are going to destroy something] It has to be very original, otherwise you don't do it. I remember at one point [during 2012 production] we were discussing what will happen with the White House [in 2012]. I said, "What should happen? I cannot destroy the White House again." And Harald [Kloser, screenwriter] said, "Well you have to, if you don't destroy it people will have the same question. Just come up with something new." ... I thought I could have this object crashing into the White House, because we knew that in one of the first waves we'd have to put objects in it so you could see how big it was and thought maybe tankers or war ships. Then we came up with image of [the aircraft carrier John F. Kennedy crashing into the White House, which is like] JFK returns to the White House. I was reading about the Kennedy family a lot at the time and thought that was sort of ironic and interesting in a way.

You gotta respect a man who made a career of blowing up the White House, so much that if he doesn't do it we wonder why not? But honestly, we're running out of cities for this guy to destroy, and yet he still manages to crush them differently each time. One has to wonder if he'll be able to come up with more after this last disaster.

The More Characters The Better

Multi characters help you a lot because you can constantly keep the story moving. And people from all walks of life. Every audience member has different people they like in the movie and will follow them. These movies are so expensive that they have to work for pretty much everybody. For young people, for men and women. old people probably like Danny Glover, and Harry and Tony, the Jazz musicians. Kids get wrapped up in our two kids. Create characters so everyone in the audience has an identification figure.

I guess that means my character in 2012 is Woody Harrelson the conspiracy blogger, cause I like cartoons and pickles too. Look at me, I'm bonding with the story! Still I'd like to meet the people that relate to beautiful Vivca Fox, the heart-of-gold stripper who loves dolphins and has a Fighter Pilot for a boyfriend.

Superheroes Aren't Half As Cool As Earthquakes, Tornadoes And Waves

Who wants character-driven movies about confused anti-heroes in a near futuristic world fighting Oscar-winning villains? Not me. Give me Will Smith punching aliens and Bill Pullman's president speech any day.

Look at it like this. I'm a person who doesn't like superhero movies, just personally. I like some of them but I cannot really relate to a superhero. I have trouble with fantasy stories. And famous books — I write my own stuff, a famous book is really not an option for me. There's very little left in big movie genres. It's science fiction or it's disaster movies. And what is the most successful movie of all time? Titanic. And the best part of a disaster movie is: No sequel.

Cut Other Would-Be Disaster Porn Directors Off At The Knees

You have to be a tyrant about getting your end of the world movies made. This is why Emmerich is the King of the B grade blow em up movies, because he'll make it before you. Who wants to wait until 2012 to make 2012? Not this guy.

"First when we had the idea, I said, I'm not going to do it. I don't want to repeat myself. Then we heard inklings that other people were working on something like this, also with the title 2012. Then Harald [the screenwriter] said, "Someone else is going to do it. Don't you want to be the person to do it? Look at your movies: you are perfect for this. Make it your crowning achievement."

Be G-Rated Political *Winky Wink, Nudge Nudge*

If you've seen the five-minute clip from 2012, you know there is a Arnold-esque Governor in the film reassuring the people of California that everything is a-okay, after a mess of earthquakes rocked the town, to which John Cusack yells he's "just an actor, he's reading a script." Suddenly fake Arnold gets creamed with a few lights. Subtle, no? We asked the director if this was on purpose as in The Day After Tomorrow, when actor Kenneth Welsh was cast to be a Cheney look-alike. If you remember Welsh was a bit of a dick about the whole, "we're all gonna die," situation. Which Emmerich later confirmed was a dig at the Bush administration's environmental policies. Emmerich shrugged off our political questions:

"We kind of felt that not every politician should be on the ark. I don't know where these ideas come from. We have terrible fun with what we do."

Which I'm translating as: We lob softball politics at the audience, just so everyone feels good about themselves, for being in on the obvious political joke. I wonder what Emmerich would say his reasoning behind casting Glover as the president before we knew the results of this election. Or was it simply just another near-future "Neato, a black president!" moment?

For Every Wrinkled-Shirted Scientist, You Need At Least One Crazy Prophet

Dennis Quaid, Chiwetel Ejiofor, and Jeffrey Goldblum may have messy hair, messy clothes, big ideas, and know all the facts. But they pale in comparison to their crazy counterparts: the homeless guy with the dog, spouting words of humanity, Woody Harrelson's crazy tree-hugger and the drunken pilot from Independence Day who knew there were aliens all along.

[Woody] came out of the fact that there are a lot of crazy people on the internet that believe a lot of crazy things about 2012, so we thought that we have to have a character like that. And then on the other hand we have to explain what the theories are like Earth Crust Displacement. How do you describe them in scientific terms. And we thought, we can have Woody tell the audience how this all works, with a little you tube.

But Make The Destruction Glamorously Terrible

Say what you will about the exceedingly cheesy work of Roland — you can't deny, when he slaughters millions of tiny CG specks that are supposed to be people, he does it with panache and style. It may be ridiculous, but it's beautiful. Which is why, no matter how cliche or repetitive these movies get, it will make millions opening week, because people want to see the great big wave number two come careening into New York City yet again, but on a big fat splodey screen. When it comes to disaster porn, we're all addicts.

In Men Who Stare At Goats, Ewan McGregor plays Bob Wilton a reporter who's trying to escape from his boring life, so when he gets wind of a secret military program from the 1980s to create "Jedi" soldiers, he follows the story. At first, you think that he's just a very off-beat embedded journalist, following the semi-retired Jedi Lyn Cassady (George Clooney) around, but it becomes clear that Wilton is getting more out of this than just a story: He's becoming Cassady's Padawan and learning to become a Jedi himself.

McGregor, of course, played Obi-Wan Kenobi in the three Star Wars prequels, and the film winks at this fact a few times, when Clooney says McGregor knows nothing about being a Jedi. But actually, in many ways, this is the Star Wars movie I wish McGregor had starred in before — it's about learning the ways of the Jedi, and seeing the contradictions inherent in the phrase "warrior-monk."

In Goats, which is based very loosely on the real-life story of the New Earth Army, we discover that the U.S. Army developed a secret program, following the humiliation of Vietnam, to fight a new way. And this involved developing psychic powers, but also letting in some of the counterculture's spirit of anarchy and playfulness. Drugs, long hair and crazy paintings. Unfortunately, one of the leading Jedi in this organization was secretly aligned with the Dark Side (this is actually explictly said at least once) and he corrupts the organization, tarnishing the other leading Jedis and turning one of them into his henchman of evil. So in the end, McGregor is the movie's Luke Skywalker, learning the Jedi legacy and ultimately helping to restore the light side.

Along the way, Clooney doesn't just teach McGregor how to burst clouds with his mind: he gives McGregor a grounding in the spiritual discipline behind the Jedi way, with a mixture of battiness and sageness that's actually kind of intoxicating.

All of this is played with tongue pretty firmly in cheek, but at the same time, it's made pretty explicit. And the movie is as charming as McGregor, Bridges and Clooney can make it. Bridges, especially, brightens up the screen every time he turns up as Bill Django, the founder of the Jedi organization.

There's a parable, here, of the ways in which America itself has turned away from opportunities to become more peace-loving, more creative, and less exploitative of our natural resources and of each other. And the failure of the "Jedi" program to meld the hippie "peace and love" ethos with the military's buzz-cut culture doesn't just expose the fact that you can't be a soldier and a monk (in our military, anyway.) The culture clash also aims to say something about America, and the ways in which we've betrayed the promise of the 1970s peace movement.

Here's a personal share: I have an alarmingly low tolerance for Baby Boomer nostalgia and, after several years in the Haight Ashbury, my hippie kitsch allergy is at a permanent level of anaphylactic shock. And yet, there is something beautiful and hilarious about the scenes where Bridges transforms his army unit into a group of shaggy-haired, dancing oddballs. And something heartbreaking about seeing the Dark Side destroying the Jedis. Mostly, this is because Jeff Bridges and George Clooney are so much fun to watch, you don't care.

And like I said, Star Wars sits at the center of the movie's themes. At one point, Clooney says that the Jedi program flourished in the 1980s because Ronald Reagan was such a big Star Wars fan. Reagan's Star Wars, of course, was a missile defense program that many scientists claimed was impractical, but Reagan never let go of the idea. Star Wars is so many different things to different people: a glorious war story, a window into one man's personal growth, a parable of controlling your hatred and choosing peace... part of why the original trilogy was so powerful was that it spoke to so many people in so many different ways.

And in a way, Men Who Stare At Goats is as much about the legacy of Star Wars as is it as about the legacy of woo-woo New Age hippie culture. Our culture was so heavily shaped by Star Wars, it opened up different ways of thinking about the way of the warrior, as well as offering some of the most exciting battle scenes ever committed to film. How you view Star Wars says a lot about your outlook on the universe in general.

Goats is often hilarious and sometimes chilling, but it's not a perfect movie. In particular, the pacing is a bit lead-footed at times, and the story loses some of its impact as a result. The movie's mix of absurdity and scary war scenes definitely won't work for everybody — I liked this film quite a bit, but Entertainment Weekly gave it an F. But all in all, I found it an entertaining, thought-provoking ride — of all the oddball films that have come out lately (including The Box and Fourth Kind) I'd say Goats is the most fun, and the most entertaining. Mostly, it's Jeff Bridges and George Clooney obviously having a blast playing another pair of larger-than-life characters, and that's a goat ride I'm always willing to take.

I suppose if Fringe has to do a relatively mythology-free episode, at least it harnesses a little B-movie magic. Last night's episode has shades of The Incredible Melting Man, in which an astronaut returns from space and becomes a monster who needs to consume human flesh to survive. But Fringe took a gory concept and made it creepier with its radiation-sucking cosmonaut turning people to ash. That opening scene was a great little nugget of horror; even though we expect it, it's chilling when the woman comes home and her excitement melts into trepidation, then frightened disbelief as her husband crumbles to ash. When Fringe does monster of the week, it does a solid job.

Scream Queens: I get that this was supposed to evoke classic horror movies, but does it only have to be the women screaming? Men are perfectly capable of emitting a nice, high-pitched wail.

Russian Fringe Science: It makes sense that the Russians would have fringe science (and that it might be even more developed than American fringe science). I hope this isn't just a throwaway mention, and that this somehow comes into play in the coming interdimensional war. And it's interesting that Walter still uses the term "pinko." Is it just because of his 17-year timeout, or does this indicate something about Walter's politics.

Whither Nina Sharp? It's also interesting that, in a Broyles-centric episode, we see neither hide nor cybernetic arm hair of Nina Sharp. Little has been made of Broyles' relationship with Sharp since it was revealed in the season premiere, and now that Broyles is returning to the case that ruined his marriage, he doesn't ask Sharp to use Massive Dynamics' resources. Perhaps he's trying to maintain some illusion that Olivia is the only one in contact with Massive Dynamics', or maybe he only turns to Nina Sharp when he knows she can help with the problem at hand.

Man in Black: As the episode went on, it began to feel less like a standalone episode, and more like we're lining up potential players for the battle ahead. The CIA is less than thrilled that the Fringe Division is poking its nose into the case of the missing cosmonaut. Does the CIA have its own Fringe Science Division? Although, at the end of the episode, a man from the CIA informs Broyles that the cosmonaut was still alive and gave a pointed look at the night sky. I wonder how often the CIA deals with problems by shooting them into space.

Astrid Action: This was a Broyles-heavy episode, so most of our regular cast took a back seat to Lance Reddick. Still, when are we going to see Astrid in the field already?

Walter Moment of the Week: Walter still got to be Walter despite the focus on Broyles. He maligned Russians, played with Tinker Toys, and shared yet another embarrassing memory from Peter's childhood (involving doodles of genitalia no less). But the most truly Walter moment was when we fully realized that Walter thinks of licorice the way some people think of tea cookies and canapes.

Baccarin plays Anna, the leader of the alien Visitors (or Vs) who come to Earth professing peace and friendship and promising healthcare and advanced technology. And of course, it's all too good to be true. Some pundits have been saying her character is meant to be Barack Obama, and Baccarin seemed to be aware of the comparisons. So we asked her if she thinks she's playing our new president, and she says:

I don't think we're saying Anna is President Obama. But she is the leader of her people, and she is coming down to Earth and offering healthcare, and offering cures for diseases, and things that sort of clean out and give people hope, and there are definite parallels to be drawn and our intentions are to create a show that people relate to. And I think this is something that's been on people's minds, even before Obama... finding hope again, and healthcare, and finding a leader, and someone who can save us from the hole we've gotten ourselves into.

Don't expect Baccarin to play to the cheap seats. One thing Baccarin stressed over and over again, in our interview, is that she's going for a subtle portrayal of Anna, and she never plans to become as out-and-out sinister as Diana, the evil alien leader in the original miniseries.

"We're working with Anna being a little more subtle than in the original," says Baccarin. She wants Anna to be "creepy" and "scary" but also have qualities that the audience can relate to. That said, in the next few episodes, we'll get to see Anna "show her true colors a little more."

Baccarin says her goal is to make the audience feel drawn to Anna, even though they know they shouldn't be:

It's really true of all the characters on the show: We walk a fine line. It's way more interesting to question why they feel they want to follow this character. There should be qualities that [the audience] can identify with, that we see them in ourselves. People identify [with Anna] and feel compelled by her, and feel like they want to follow her... and can't understand why they feel drawn to her. [The audience should be saying,] "I don't know, this isn't right that I'm going for it."

This was something the producers had worked out early on, she adds:

We had discussed early on, when I auditioned, [that] she couldn't be robotic or alien. She had to be nurturing and human, to be allowed into people's lives, so that people would trust her... We created this character who's very calm and controlled and nurturing. You don't see her losing her cool, and you don't see what's behind her motivations. It's like having your neighbor turn out not to be who you thought they were.

This subtle approach means that you have to watch Baccarin carefully to catch the little cues she drops in. The way she flutters her eyelashes. The way she lifts one eyebrow, or looks straight at someone, or looks away. Says Baccarin, "Obviously, Anna lives in a very constrained space, in that she is very precise, but there is a lot of freedom of subtlety and nuances."

I asked Baccarin how she felt about playing a villain after playing the more sympathetic Inara on Firefly, and she responded: "It really is fun. I'm not going to call her a villain. I'm going to say that you said that." (She really is good at the slippery politician thing.)

From Anna's perspective, "she is is being the best leader she can be. And if it's at the expense of a couple of humans, so be it."

Baccarin admits she gets asked whether she'll be eating a live hamster — like, pretty much all the time. She says:

We haven't done it in these [first] four episodes, and I'm bracing myself. And so many people ask about it, I think it's imminent. I think we are going to pay homage to those moments, but not maybe do them the same way — so hopefully I won't have to put a hamster down my throat.

Finally, I asked Baccarin how, as an immigrant from Brazil, she feels about taking part in a show that promotes xenophobia and suspicion of visitors. She says you shouldn't read too much into V:

I think we should all be suspicious of aliens. We're not saying be suspicious of people from other cultures, I think we're saying be suspicious of people from outer space. So we're very safe there. There's a lot of ethnic diversity in our world now, and we're not commenting on that all. It's literally about people coming from another world.

V airs on Tuesday nights for the next three weeks, and then goes away until March due to some kind of sporting event.

Our sister site Jalopnik has a stellar collection of movie cars — both official and replicas. These are mostly fan-made, drivable replicas of cars and bikes from science fiction.

Batmobiles

Some of the more ambitious projects are the Batmobiles. You can actually purchase kits to convert various car models into an Adam West-era Batmobile. But some fans prefer to make their Batmobiles the hard way.

It took Leif Garvin of Stockholm 20,000 hours and $1 million to convert a 1973 Lincoln Continental into the Tim Burton Batmobile. It may not be quite as hi-tech as Batman's car, but it does feature a voice recognition system and rear cameras. [via Toxel]

Bob Dullam attracted massive amounts of attention when he showed off his homemade Tumbler from Batman Begins. Dullam made the entire vehicle from scratch, and even made his own Batsuit and props to go with it. [via Superhero Hype]

And frequent builder Grant Hodgson made a Tumbler of his own. [via Jalopnik]

Bob Causey helped Dullam with his Tumbler and decided to create a Batmobile of his own. Causey took on the Batman Forever version, complete with a remote controlled top. [via /Film]

Kaneda's Bike

There are plenty of models of the iconic motorcycle from Akira, but many of those are non-working copies. Neo-Fukuoka, not a fan group but a professional garage, created multiple, working copies of Kaneda's bike, some offered for sale. [via Riding Sun]

But another fan, Matus, is also creating a replica of the bike from scratch, although he hasn't yet progressed to the exterior.

Mad Max Vehichles

Mad Max vehicles are a perennial favorite among vehicle modifiers. There are impressive lists of fan-made Interceptors at Last Interceptor and Mad Max Movies. But one fan stands out above them all. Adrian Bennett didn't just transform a Ford Falcon Coupe into the famous vehicle, he moved himself, his car, and his entire family from England to a tiny Australian town so he could live out his Mad Max fantasies. [via SCI FI Wire]

Other Mad Max vehicles have gotten the fan treatment as well, such as this Yellow Interceptor made by Grant Hodgson (who also did one of the Batman Tumblers):

And Goose's bike by Mike Acebo:

KITT

Knight Rider's KITT is another favorite, and again there are kits you can purchase to give your car KITT's Cylon eye. Of course, the best KITT mods don't just change the outside of the car, but are also incredibly detailed on the inside, such as this converted 1984 Firebird, which speaks in KITT's voice [via Jalopnik:

And this 1992 Firebird:

Frankenstein's Car

The Gator Car from the original Death Race 2000 would have been more fun, but some Russian fans of the Death Race remake took an impressive crack at Frankenstein's car, starting with a Chevy Camaro. [English Russia]

The DeLorean Time Machine

A DeLorean is already a DeLorean with those retrofuturistic gull-wing doors. But add a flux capacitor, a temporal display on the dashboard, and a liberal sprinkling of light-up buttons, and you've got yourself Doc Brown's time machine. [Auto Blog]

Ecto-1

George Barris, who famously designed the original Batmobile among other TV cars, famously made a replica of Ghostbusters' classic car, one that is perpetually for sale. But others have taken on the Ecto-1 challenge as well. Ghostbusters fanatic Joe Kerezman created an Ecto-1 of his very own.

And a fan calling himself "Venkman21" modified his from a Cadillac ambulance.

Luke Skywalker's Landspeeder

They may not hover, but fans can always pretend in their homespun landspeeders. [all via Interbent]

This puppy was made from a 1988 Ford Escort and is actually a licensed, street-legal vehicle.

This pre-distressed model, created by Daniel Deutsch, runs on batteries and can climb to 25 MPH — impressive, though not exactly putting the "speed" in "landspeeder."

Why the teeth and the clown's head on a pole? It's an art car from Burning Man.

And this last one — which is a bit heavier on the wheels — comes from Pawtucket, Rhode Island, and annual Star Wars Day.

In Men Who Stare At Goats, in theaters today, Bridges plays Bill Django, a Vietnam veteran who founds a group of "psychic soldiers," who are warrior-monks steeped in the counterculture. And the film follows him from the 1970s to the present day. Meanwhile, George Clooney is Lyn Cassady, the best of Django's psychic soldiers, who takes a young reporter, played by Ewan McGregor, under his wing.

Both Bridges and Clooney manage to play their characters in the 1970s (in Bridges' case) and the 1980s (for both actors), as well as the present day. It gives you hope that Bridges really will be able to pull off his role as two different Flynns, an aged version and an ageless copy, in Tron Legacy.

So how did they manage to make Bridges and Clooney appear to span a few decades in the movie's flashbacks and present-day sequences? Heslov explains it was a tough decision:

We spent a lot of energy on that, even when I was just starting casting and George [Clooney] and I were talking about him doing the role, I was [wondering], "Do I have a younger guy play George in the past, and then George plays himself in the present? Or do I have George do it all?" And the more I thought about it, the more I hated the idea [of another, younger actor stepping in.] It's always hard to jump back and forth in time. I just felt like, if I had another actor playing George, the audience would be questioning, "Does he look enough like George?"

So once they had decided to use the same actors throughout, "it was just a question of how to back it up," and where to place the actors' current ages in the narrative. And how to use wigs and mustaches, among other things, to make the actors look younger in their flashback sequences.

For the 1970s sequences, they pulled Jeff Bridges' face back, to tighten the skin. "They use this kind of tape," explains Heslov. "They basically pull back under the hairline, and they tape it and pull back a little more, and then they use strings." The make-up people "use all sorts of gadgets" to get rid of Bridges' wrinkles, which sounds a bit painful. "It was fun, but it was time-consuming." Luckily, Bridges is "kind of a perfectionist," who "loves all that character-detail stuff." some actors don't want to be bothered, but Bridges will obsess over every aspect of his characters, including wardrobe, hair and makeup.

Also, for scenes set in the past, Heslov used as much soft light as possible, and in the present, "it was all about as much harsh light as we could use."

Escape From The Valley Of Elah

The majority of Goats' present-day sequences take place in Iraq, where Ewan McGregor's character travels to try and cover the war. So I asked Heslov if he was worried that his film would be lumped together with Iraq movies like Valley Of Elah and Stop Loss, which have bombed at the box office.

But Heslov says that he doesn't think of Goats as an Iraq war movie. "It has very little to do with Iraq, except that that's the backdrop of where the story takes place." The movie does touch on modern-day issues like torture and the military's habit of hiring huge contractors like Halliburton to take care of basic security and other functions, but "it was never my intention to make an Iraq war movie."

Counterculture meets military culture

One of the most striking images in Goats is the way Jeff Bridges' character brings a hot-tubbing, Zen, druggy counterculture influence to bear on the 1980s military. The merging of two opposite cultures in the "warrior monk" program is so loopy and weird, it feels like an alternate history. We asked Heslov if he thought the counterculture and military culture ever could really coexist, or learn from each other like that.

Heslov said he really does believe that the military is always exploring alternative ways of fighting wars. And he definitely does believe that in the wake of its experience in Vietnam and the 1960s and 1970s in general, the military was "beaten down by that experience, and they were searching for ways to change it up." But at the end of the day, Heslov thinks it would probably never have worked out, even if the individuals involved had behaved differently. Plus, if the military really learned to win without killing people, then it wouldn't really be war any more.

A debt to Dr. Strangelove.

Heslov says the weird blend of comedy and horror in his movie owes a lot to influences like Dr. Strangelove, M.A.S.H. and Catch-22. Certain directors, like Altman and Kubrick, have been very influential to him, and he did think about their works as he was creating this film.

Heslov says he tried to keep Goats from falling too far into horror or comedy, by keeping it as grounded as possible. Even at the most absurd points of the story, "I tried to keep it as real as possible, so the absurdness of the actual" situation would come through. Things like George Clooney trying to burst clouds with his mind, or people trying to run through walls, were played straight instead of playing up their silliness. "I hope that by maintaining that real tone, you could slide back and forth" between the absurd and the real.

We talked to Cusack yesterday as part of 2012 interviews:

With comic book films being so huge right now in Hollywood and big-name actors like Robert Downey Jr. starring in films such as Iron Man, would you ever consider doing a comic book adaptation or a superhero film?

I don't know, but yeah, for sure. I think the adult comics are some of the best film ideas out there.

Are there any comics in particular out there that you'd like to make?

Not one that I particularly know that I would like to do, but whenever I've come across one, I've really liked them.

Are there any [comic book movies] you've seen floating around in Hollywood that you'd like to see made?

Yeah, I can, there was one or two that I heard of that sounded really cool. One of them was about, I think... it's a vampire and a killer, and they're on the road, and it's this really strange story. I thought that sounded pretty cool. Also some of the obscure ones, I don't know if there are any more superheroes left.

That sounds a little bit like Preacher?

I think it might have been Preacher.

You should get involved with that!

I'm trying to. I heard about that one, I like that.

Who would you want to play?

I'd say either the vampire or the priest. One of those two guys.

So just the two best characters in the comic?

Why not?

So I'm not 100% sure if Preacher is the script that Cusack saw, but the name definitely struck a chord with Cusack. I can't even imagine Cusack as an murderous Cassidy, but he could make a pretty bad ass Jesse or even Arseface's daddy. John August's screenplay may not even be finished yet, and it's possible Cusack was merely talking about it as an idea he'd heard floating around Hollywood.

Last we heard about the adaptation of Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon's comic series, Sam Mendes was possibly going to direct and the script was half finished in May. But at least Mendes said he was trying to translate it just right so there might be a second or a third.

A group of researchers in the United States decided to do an experiment with water striders, in which they observed the mating success of prudent, "nice" males versus aggressive, "psychopathic" males. The latter group tried often to mate with the females very aggressively, and in previous experiments they had the most reproductive success. But these scientists discovered that the success of the psychopaths depended on very specific laboratory conditions

It turned out that other studies of sex among water striders had kept the population contained in a limited area, where females had access to very few males. When the researchers opened up the insects' habitat, allowing the females to roam freely, they discovered that the less aggressive males attracted the highest number of mates.

According to a release about the research, published yesterday afternoon in Science:

"The presence of psychopaths dramatically reduced the productivity of the population," [biologist David Sloan] Wilson said. "When all the males were gentlemen, the females laid about three times more eggs than they did when all the males were psychopaths. And yet within each group the psychopaths were doing better than the gentlemen. How do the gentlemen persist if they're disadvantaged within the group?"

Once the females could move between groups, the researchers had their answer. [Researcher Omar Tonsi] Eldakar and Michael J. Dlugos, then also a Binghamton graduate student, devised a wading pool equipped with special doors that could restrict movement between groups or allow the insects to move freely.

"When they opened the doors, the females would leave whenever a psychopath came around," Wilson said. "The whole thing resulted in a heterogeneity in which the females were clustered with the gentlemen. It's the movement of individuals that creates these differences between groups that favor nonaggressive males."

Who knows how much research into sexual selection has been flawed because researchers forgot the crucial ingredient of female freedom?

Ultimately, what's interesting about this study is that it shows why isolated populations might engage in a different mode of sexual selection than a free-ranging population that has a lot of contact with outside groups.

via Science

When a creator invents a fairly consistent set of rules, images, and characters in his or her fiction, often they get referred to collectively as a "mythos" (like the Cthulhu Mythos) or a "verse" (like the Whedonverse). Kelly has said explicitly that there are interconnected ideas underpinning his cult hit Donnie Darko, weirdo political epic Southland Tales, and forthcoming movie The Box (opening tomorrow). Kelly's movies are deliberately crafted to remain open to many interpretations. But there are a few consistent themes that form the shadowy pillars of what I've come to think of as the Darko Mythos.

time travel

In Donnie Darko, the half-mad protagonist Donnie is given a book called The Philosophy of Time Travel by one of his teachers. Reading it, he realizes that he's accidentally entered a "tangent universe" created by a rift or portal in space-time. Tangent universes diverge from reality very dramatically, are extremely unstable, and eventually come to an abrupt end. It appears that Donnie may have entered the tangent universe when a jet engine crashes into his bedroom while he's out sleepwalking with shady figure in a bunny suit named Frank (who turns out to be a figure from Donnie's future). Donnie lives in the tangent universe for a month, then travels back in time to the moment when the jet engine crashes into his room - only this time, he's in the bed. His death allows several other characters to live, and it's possible that they remember the tangent universe in dreams.

Critics have suggested that Southland Tales may also be set in a tangent universe, because the graphic novels accompanying the film describe several of the characters traveling through space-time rifts. The movie begins with two characters, Roland and Boxer, driving through a rift and traveling back in time for an hour. Southland Tales also tells the story of an alternate United States which has been attacked with nukes and hit by an energy crisis nearly as dire as peak oil. It's possible this entire vision of the United States is a tangent universe, which is destroyed at the end of the movie when the twins Ronald and Roland Tavener rise above Los Angeles in a floating ice cream truck and touch their hands together.

Time travel, in the Darko Mythos, is associated with relatively short-lived, parallel worlds headed for an apocalypse.

water flows through everyone and everything

As Kelly told us earlier today, he includes a lot of water imagery in his work because he thinks it represents a force that connects humans with each other and the water-logged Earth itself. In Donnie Darko, many of the characters (including Donnie) sprout long, watery tentacles that emerge from their chests. These watery appendages are connected with the way people move through time, and they are sometimes depicted as tunnels. You could call them souls, or simply a representation of the water that every human - no matter how despised or despicable - carries within them.

Water plays a role in Southland Tales as well. A crazed inventor at the Treer Corporation has created something called "fluid karma" that uses quantum particles to generate energy. It's touted as a replacement for oil, but also seems to be causing rifts in space-time.

Look out for water symbolism in The Box, too. A very strong theme in the Darko Mythos is that all human beings are connected. Every death leads to someone else's survival, and every crime is counterbalanced by an act of (sometimes bizarre) justice. People transform each other's lives across time and vast distances without realizing it.

mirror worlds

One of the iconic moments in Donnie Darko is when Donnie looks into the mirror and sees Frank in his bunny suit. There are several scenes where we look out of the mirror into Donnie's face, and watch him pounding against the mirror with his fists or a knife as the surface of the mirror ripples like water. In Southland Tales, the mirroring is even more bizarre. Two of the main characters are twins (or possibly just alternate versions of the same guy) named Ronald and Roland Tavener. Meanwhile, a character named Boxer (played by Dwayne "Rock" Johnson) has traveled back in time via a tangent universe, but his original self has died (which you see in this image of him looking at his own dead body).

In a world riddled with alternate universes, where everybody is connected, it's no surprise that doubling is a major aspect of the Darko Mythos. The mirror represents another version of the self, or perhaps just an imperfect way of looking at yourself. Either way, mirrors in the Darko Mythos remind us that we can never truly know ourselves. Even when we stare right into our faces, we see something mysterious.

apocalypse and redemption

The Darko Mythos possesses what you might call an agnostic form of Christianity. The trajectory of tangent universes seems to be an apocalypse that also inspires redemption: One of the notable aspects of Donnie Darko is that nearly every character is redeemed in some way, partly as a result of Donnie's actions. Even the seemingly-evil bunny Frank finds redemption in the end, when we discover that he's just a regular kid whose death in the tangent universe has turned him into one of the "manipulated dead."

Southland Tales is in some ways a retelling of the Book of Revelation from the New Testament, so it's packed with Christian imagery. But it's also full of psychic porn stars and sympathetic neo-Marxists, who seem to have claims to truth that are equal to the claims of the Bible. I'm going out on a limb here, but I'd venture to say that Kelly's view of redemption is a surreal blend of Christian spiritual love, carnal connection, and Marxist social justice. There is never any specific "God" in Kelly's work, but characters find something akin to godliness when they see and acknowledge their primal connection to other people.

Holiness and redemption in the Darko Mythos often involve a character or characters sacrificing themselves to save other people or to make the world a better place. These are not sacrifices to appease a Christian God, but rather to affirm the connectedness of all humanity. These are sacrifices even a neo-Marxist could get behind, because they aren't about going to heaven, but instead preserving the physical, carnal, human world.

military industrial entertainment complex

Southland Tales is about what happens to the United States when Republicans expand the USA-Patriot Act massively in the wake of nuclear attacks, and then institute a special surveillance agency called USIDent. It's also about how Hollywood movies and reality shows on the internet have intermingled to create a giant war of propaganda and counter-propaganda fought entirely on screen. At the same time, there are hints of government experiments with space-time that may have led to the surreal world of the movie itself, where neo-Marxists and internet porn stars are trying to subvert the surveillance state.

In Donnie Darko, the fate of the tangent universe hinges on a massive airplane engine that travels through time and eventually crushes Donnie. Even though his characters wade through mirrors and erupt with time-traveling spiritual essences, Kelly's Darko Mythos is packed with images drawn from the world of industrial technology.

You can expect to see more of this in The Box, whose main characters are part of the NASA Langley Research Center community. (In fact, The Box has a Space Age era origin in a Richard Matheson short story called "Button, Button" published in 1970.)

The Darko Mythos is also saturated with entertainment technology, from movies to the Web. During one of the pivotal moments in Donnie Darko, Frank opens a portal in a movie screen where Evil Dead is playing, and we see time/water swirling around in the center of an image from Sam Raimi's classic horror movie. One of the main characters in Southland Tales, internet porn reality star Krysta has developed precognition and written about the future of the world in a weird screenplay called "The Power," which is about a porn star trying to save the world (this subplot is mostly in the graphic novels associated with Southland Tales, not in the movie).

Ultimately the Darko Mythos is exploring mysticism in a world ruled by industry and the pseudo-rationalism of high tech propaganda. His characters, through excursions into madness and horror, always discover that beneath the trappings of modern life there lurks a primal spirit that connects all of us - across time and between mirror universes. It's a spirit that flows like water through everyone, from pornographers and NASA engineers to Christians and snotty teenage girls in the Sparkle Motion dance troupe. It's even in you.

Salon's summary of Southland Tales helped me immeasurably in writing this.

Dr. Horrible from Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog

Okay, we hate to diss Dr. Horrible, because after all he is us and we are him. He's the little evil guy, just trying to get by and make his way in the world — and we totally identify with him, since the alternative would be identifying with Moist. But still — as evil geniuses go, he's pretty inept. Take the freeze ray he shoots his nemesis Captain Hammer with, which wears off prematurely. Or the death ray, with which he plans to shoot Captain Hammer afterwards — Dr. Horrible gloats too long, and Captain Hammer is able to seize the death ray away from him and shoot it at him. And then the death ray misfires — and Dr. Horrible comes out on top, thanks to his own blundering. Except for poor, poor Penny, killed in the crossfire.

The Monarch from Venture Brothers

Okay, first of all, a butterfly-themed supervillain? Doctor Octopus would cover his face with all four robot arms in shame. The poor Monarch is obsessed with destroying Dr. Venture and his family, but can't even get sanction from the Guild Of Calamatous Intent, let alone recognition as a threat from Venture himself. As series creator Doc Hammer states, "failure, that's what Venture Bros. is all about. Beautiful sublime failure," so it's tough to pick one incident. In Tears of a Sea Cow, after finally winning back Dr. Girlfriend and gaining membership in the Guild, the Monarch still can't keep from arching Venture, despite Guild regulations. He infiltrates Venture's lab and has sex with his guard robot GUARDO. Then Dean walks in on this, and The Monarch insists he's trying to infect the robot with Chlamydia, and manages to convince Dean that if he reports this scheme to his father, he'll be playing into the Monarch's plans.

Brainchild from The Tick cartoon

He gets fashion points, for replacing the upper part of his skull with a transparent dome, to show off his brain. And he succeeds where the other villains have failed — he captures the Tick, transforming him into a two-headed bluebird-Tick who speaks French. While he has the Tick helpless, he tries to auction him off — but this is where his scheme falls apart. Die Fledermaus disguises himself as The Rake, a made-up villain who looks like Die Fledermause, except with a rake tied to his head. And Arthur, meanwhile, frees the Tick.

Syndrome from The Incredibles

This is the classic evil genius over/underachiever problem: He builds a killer robot and programs it to attack the city, so he can defeat it and look like a hero. The only problem is, he makes the robot too smart and it develops a mind of its own, so it defeats its creator with easy. Later, he tries to capture the Incredibles' new baby, but its developing super-powers are too much for him.

The Brain from Pinky and the Brain

His catch phrase ought to be enough to clue you in: "The same thing we do every night: Try to take over the world." A true evil genius shouldn't have to try, and it should only take one night. In one of his most notable blunders, in the episode "That Smarts," the Brain manages to build a super-machine that boosts Pinky's intelligence, so they're both super-geniuses. But Pinky becomes depressed and decides to reduce his intelligence to become stupid again. But Brain, not realizing this, decides they might be better off with Pinky being the smart one and Brain being the stupid one — so he, too, reduces his own intelligence, leaving them both too stupid to operate the brain-adjusting machine.

Cartman from South Park

At first blush, you wouldn't think that Cartman belongs on this list, but just consider his bizarre schemes. In the episode "Go God Go Parts 1 & 2," he's too impatient to wait for the Nintendo Wii to come out, so he puts himself in cryogenic suspension, and accidentally stays frozen until the distant future. Once in the future, he manipulates all the warring factions and changes history using a Time Phone, causing huge suffering just so he can get himself a Wii. Eventually, he gets trapped in a Wii-less time loop, because he keeps going back in time to try and convince himself not to put himself in suspended animation — and the past Cartman never listens to the future Cartman.

Mr. Glass from Unbreakable

Possibly the most elaborate scheme, for the least reward: he orchestrates several episodes of terrorism/mass murder, just to find someone who's invulnerable, so he can create/uncover a superhero to be his nemesis. Final proof that reading too many comic books will make you imagine a fourth wall when there is none. And of course, by so doing, he ensures his own defeat and incarceration.

Doctor Evil, from Austin Powers

This supervillain from the 1960s turns up in our world, unaware that time has passed him by and a million dollars is no longer much of a fortune. His schemes are great: set off all the world's volcanos at once, turn the Moon into a death star, shoot the White House with lasers, create deadly floods, bring back the dreaded Alan Parsons Project — but there's always some crucial flaw. It's hard to believe anything can go wrong with sharks armed with frickin lasers — even a child could make that work! But somehow, he manages to mess it up, again and again.

Lex Luthor from Superman

There have been many different versions of the scourge of Metropolis: the mad scientist who's mad at Superman because Superboy zapped his hair off, the business mogul who just wants Superman out of the way, the shadowy politician... but they're all kind of clueless when it comes down to it. Lex Luthor usually has everything you could possibly want — power, prestige, hot babes in chauffeur outfits, even the White House — but he still blows it all going after Superman. His battlesuit is emblematic of the problem: For one thing, it's a hideous green-and-purple color scheme. But also, it often goes wrong in the worst possible way. At one point, Lex gets his own whole planet of people who love him, Lexor, marries an alien princess. But then his battlesuit goes off during a battle and accidentally overloads the "Neutrarod," a spire he'd built to counter the planet's geological instability. And as a result, all of Lex's subjects die, including his wife and kid. He blames Superman, of course.

Doctor Doom

Like Lex, he's almost got it all, including his own country where everybody his his loyal vassal. He builds time machines and robot versions of himself, and even manages to build an Emotion Changer to force scores of supervillains to crash the wedding of Reed Richards and Sue Storm. But every one of his schemes goes metal facemask up, because he over-reaches. At one point, he managed to steal the nearly limitless powers of the Silver Surfer, but lost them because he insisted on challenging the barrier the Surfer's master, Galactus, had put around the Earth. He's lost battles with Luke Cage and even Squirrel Girl, whose squirrels chewed through the wires powering his Doombots.

Additional reporting by Josh C. Snyder.

Even though John Cusack tried to be pretty mum on the details, the actor (who's also a producer) filled us in exclusively about the movie's status, and just how R-rated this film will be.

Let's talk Hot Tub Time Machine. Where's the film at right now?

I won't give anything away, but we are cutting the film right now. But it's about four guys who go back to the 1980s.

From what we saw in the trailer it seems like a pure group comedy. Who is your character in that group? What is your role?

I play sort of a guy who is a little bit of a control freak. He doesn't like to look back, and he gets forced to go back.

Since you are dealing with time travel is this going to be a Peggy Sue Got Married scenario with the actors from the future stuck in their child bodies, or will you have younger versions of yourself playing 80s you?

I'm not gonna tell you.

You are killing me.

I'm not killing you I'm trying to tantalize you.

Well the trailer looks like a return to the heavy drug usage, heavy on the swears, super fun type comedy? Are you guys doing a lot of drugs?

That's true [about the comedy]. There's not a lot of it, but there's some, you know it's the 80s, it's got drugs and sex and all the things that you know...

Why should we be excited for this movie?

I think Craig Robinson, Clark Duke and Rob Corddry are hilarious. It's pretty fun if you like those old movies. There are some characters that make fun of those old movie characters like the stock bad guys on the ski patrol and the things like that.

What about the stock good guys? Anyone skewer your past characters a little bit?

We'll we have those too [for the good guys]. I think somewhere in there it's doing that. Crispin Glover is in it and he was in Back To The Future and is an 80s icon. He's in it. Chevy Chase is in it.

Besides the cast, why did you want to get involved with this project?

Because MGM was making it, and they only had about half of a script and they wanted to start making it before the summer. So they said, you have to just go shoot it right now, and you can produce it, but you'll have to rewrite the script and write it, but you'll have to start in seven weeks. So it was a very insane project and time frame, but we decided to do it anyways. It was a mad dash. Because you know what the fuck? It's just this insane juggernaut.

With a title like that, it kind of has to go to that extreme.

Even the filming was that way, we only had about 60 pages of the script. We just had to write it as we went. A lot of it is improv.

Nanoboxes

Researchers at Washington University in St Louis have developed tiny gold cubes called nanoboxes which could deliver drugs to precisely targeted areas of the body. How? These boxes only open up and spill their drug contents when exposed to light.

The nanoscale boxes will come packed with a drug, and then release it when hit by a laser. To do this, nanoscale gold boxes are created, and then coated with a polymer called poly(N-isopropylacrylamide). The polymers cling to the outer walls of the cube like hairs on a muppet, and seal the pores on the cube, thus preventing any of the payload from leaking. When the gold is hit by light of a resonant frequency, it absorbs it and converts it to heat, and when the polymer is warmed, it shrinks and collapses, releasing the medicine. Once the light is turned off, the polymers stand on end again, re-sealing the boxes.

According to Dr. Jingyi Chen, one of the principal investigators on the technology, the opening and closing is nearly instantaneous. The nanocubes heat up "from a nanosecond to a femtosecond, [the drugs] are released a little bit slower, that takes around a millisecond." They cool down at the same rate, which allows for extremely fine targeting of dosage. The really cool part is that both the gold and polymer can be fine tuned to work under specific conditions. By thickening the gold walls, the wavelength of light that it can absorb shifts. In this case, they're aiming for the 750-900 nanometer range. Why this wavelength? Because at this point it can penetrate the human body very easily, and can travel inches into the body, as the muscle and blood doesn't easily absorb this wavelength of light. The polymer is then tuned to react to a level of heat that won't kill any cells, but is still above the normal temperature of the body. In trials, the boxes were exposed to a laser of the correct frequency, releasing their dose, and then closing up once the light was turned off. Researchers used the boxes as a way of delivering targeted chemotherapy drugs and antibiotics to a controlled area.

Synthetic Skin

If you're dealing with open wounds, once you flush out any possible bacteria, you need to deal with the realities of closing the flesh. In situations where an injury is over a certain size, it can't be relied on to close normally. Through the use of collagen extracted from skin, doctors can induce new skin to grow by giving it a framework over which to expand. The collagen can be extracted and grown from a variety of sources, such as donated skin, baby's foreskins (apparently up to four football fields worth, which is an utterly disturbing mental image), or from non-human sources, such as mammal organs or reptile skin. The collagen can also be impregnated with other ingredients, such as silver, which is naturally antibiotic. For anything from burns to bedsores, this skin scaffolding can lead to impressive regrowth and healing.

Nerve Regeneration

With spinal injuries, on the other hand, growth is a major problem. The creation of scar tissue around damaged areas of the central nervous system can prevent nerves from healing and regaining function. Previously, the enzyme chrondroitinase ABC (chABC) was used to reduce the scar tissue, but it functioned poorly at body temperature. Within an hour of being injected, it loses half of its potency, and the rest within a few days. Due to this a catheter or pump has to be installed, so that the enzymes can be repeatedly delivered over the two weeks required for it to be effective. Researchers at Georgia Tech have discovered away to reduce the thermal sensitivity of the enzyme, so it can stay in your body effectively for weeks, by bonding the chABC with the sugar trehalose. They also developed a new way to deliver the drug, via an injection of hydrogel filled with microtubes, which allowed deeper penetration than catheters, and slowly releases the drugs over a two week period. This means that the spinal scar tissue can be effectively reduced by a single injection, rather than weeks of constant exposure, and without requiring invasive implants.

At the end of 2012 the cast members who have survived the massive floods and volcanic destruction on Earth head over to Africa, the new center of the world. What happens next has just been picked up by ABC as a television series that Emmerich is helping out with. We got the chance to find out more about his post-post-apocalypse series at the 2012 press day.

io9: You may dislike sequels but I hear you are interested in making a TV series sequel to the this film called 2013?

Roland Emmerich: But that's something different. It's something like Lost, which has a totally different feel to it. It's more than a little bit like District 9. These ships show up in Africa and [in] Cape Town there are survivors, and they are not happy people. Because they were left behind. And how do you start a new society? It has no visual effects, it's all about characters. What will the future bring? Hope for us?

Will 2013 have to happen pretty quickly after this movie is released? Do you have any actors or additional writers in mind?

They just made a deal with ABC. And we're very happy about that. I'm already discussing with the people that write and try to help them with what this could be. The original idea is from [2012 co-writer] Harold [Kloser], me and Mark Gordon. Mark is big in TV so Harold and I had an idea. Because there were a lot of things we couldn't incorporate in 2012. And we thought it was interesting what happened after all this. When we were writing the script we had to end it at one point and we left it very vague. They discovered that Africa is still existing. It has just risen a couple thousand feet. But that's it. And we ended on a really really small note about a little girl who overcame her fear. It was a very small way [to end]. Which was also kind of for us something very personal and poignant. [In the sequel] people would expect visual effects but it will be only what happened between people. We can do that on a TV show week after week after week.

It's just the fact that they come off their shiny arcs to a destroyed Cape Town. And it's not the bright and happy future everybody was envisioning. It's same old problems.

Captain Kirk velvet painting from The Velvet Store

Admiral Ackbar velvet painting from eBay auction.

Velvet Yoda painting for sale here, for just $1,500. Cheap!

Velvet Yoda Elvis painting, from BoingBong

Unicorns in space, from BoingBoing!

Star Wars poster on black velvet, from Mike Jackiw.

U.S.S. Enterprise on black velvet — sorry this is so low-res, but I had to include it. From Who Would Buy That? via Site Du Jour.

Chewbacca, plus weird creepy angel heads, on black velvet. From Brancusi7 on Flickr.

Baby Princess Leia on black velvet, from Bonnie Burton at the Star Wars Blog. (Thanks Bonnie!)

Admiral Ackbar (again!) From Indignico Inc. on Flickr.

Unicorn on the Moon! From Indignico Inc. on Flickr.

Wesley Crusher! As presented to Wil Wheaton. From Indignico Inc. on Flickr.

The Winchester Bros. From Indignico Inc. on Flickr.

A Sleestak, in contemplation. From Indignico Inc. on Flickr.

The Joker. From Indignico Inc. on Flickr.

Kim Jong Il and another Sleestak (why??) From Indignico Inc. on Flickr.

The movie has an incredibly terrifying premise. Hundreds of people have gone missing from the tiny, isolated town of Nome, Alaska since the 1960s. These missing persons cases have never been solved. But then a psychiatrist named Abigail Tyler starts investigating a rash of sleep disorders in Nome, and discovers that her patients are all having the same visions of white owls who interrupt their dreams. And when she hypnotizes one of her patients to find out more about this "owl," he is reduced to abject terror and then flees her office to kill his family and himself. Another patient, when hypnotized, starts screaming in ancient Sumerian and starts levitating.

Eventually Tyler realizes the people of Nome are being abducted by aliens, and she has been too. Set her discoveries against the tragic backdrop of her husband's recent, violent death (by aliens?) beside her in bed, and you've got a mega-spooky idea. Plus, there is actual documentary footage from the "real life" Tyler's sessions with these patients. And she even manages to record herself being abducted by aliens who scream at her in Sumerian.

Having grown up utterly terrified by the alien abduction scene in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, I understand why The Fourth Kind sounds scary. Plus it promised to be a pseudo-documentary, showing us never-before-seen footage of people who have evidence that they've been stolen from their beds at night by hostile aliens. Sealing the deal was a star turn by Milla Jovovich, who makes every action movie more awesome.

But the movie stumbled out of the gate by hanging most of its fear power on a fundamental dishonesty. There is no "archival footage." There are no "actual case studies." Instead, we get badly-acted, blatantly fake documentary footage which fuzzes out whenever anything alien happens. There is some interesting editing, where filmmaker Olatunde Osunsanmi shows the fake footage split-screened alongside a reenactment of the fake footage and you feel like you're either watching 24 or some kind of weird art-school critique of documentary realism. Unfortunately the ashen fake/real Tyler is such a bad actress, and her CGI-widened eyes so "alien," that you wind up with the sense that Osunsanmi and crew thought audiences for this movie would be so monumentally stupid that they would fall for anything.

I'm not against fake documentaries. I loved Paranormal Activity, which was effective because the actors seemed so effortlessly real. Nothing felt stagey or artificial about that movie's "documentary" evidence.

What pushes Fourth Kind from the merely bad into the actually insulting was the filmmakers' insistence that the documentary evidence was real. Actors from the "documentary" portions of the movie are uncredited, and many media outlets are still reporting that the footage is real. There was even an ill-fated Web campaign to create false professional credentials and publications for Abigail Tyler, but after investigative reporter Kyle Hopkins revealed them as fakes they were taken down. Here's what Hopkins wrote:

Try Googling "Abigail Tyler" and "Alaska." You'll get a link to a convincingly boring Web site called the "Alaska Psychiatry Journal" - complete with a biography of a psychologist by that name who researched sleep behavior in Nome. Except the site is suspiciously vacant, mostly a collection of articles on sleep studies with no home page or contact information.

Another site, www.alaskanewsarchive.com, features a story from the Nome Nugget about Tyler moving to Nome for research. The problem? The story is credited to Nugget editor and publisher Nancy McGuire, who says it's baloney and she never wrote it.Both the news site and the medical journal site were created just last month, according to domain-name research sites. Ron Adler is CEO and director of the Alaska Psychiatric Institute. Denise Dillard is president of the Alaska Psychological Association. They said this week they've never heard of the Alaska Psychiatry Journal, or of Abigail Tyler.

So basically the movie's fakery was so badly done that people involved with the movie didn't even bother to create a convincing "Abigail Tyler" website that they could maintain once the movie came out.

What I'm saying is that Fourth Kind reeks of laziness. Despite having a great concept, it fails at every turn to make that concept convincing or menacing. And this lackluster mood permeates all aspects of the film - not just the poorly-executed hoax gimmick at its heart.

There are three competing, poorly-integrated stories vying for your attention in this movie.

First, there's the alien abduction story, and the mystery around what the aliens are doing, which is never solved. All we know is that the aliens are scary, and that they steal people out of their beds. We never understand why anybody would want to be hypnotized by Tyler and Co. after the first few people she hypnotizes kill themselves or get their backs broken when aliens possess them and distort their bodies. Even though Tyler has two credible witnesses to every single hypnosis session, including one that involves alien possession and levitation, those credible witnesses mysteriously never corroborate her story. So we see her screaming and crying when police arrive to arrest her for breaking her patient's back, and neither of her credible friends comes forward to say, "Actually I was there, I am a licensed whatever, and this guy broke his own back while having some kind of alien-induced seizure."

Second, there is the mystery of how Tyler's husband died. She remembers him being murdered by an intruder, and for most of the movie her psychiatrist friend is trying to hypnotize her so she can remember the intruder's face. But then it turns out that actually her husband shot himself, and she hallucinated the murder. And everybody, including her friend, knew this all along. But nobody tried to tell her. So we've got this hallucinating, crazed lady who is being allowed to hypnotize people? And who still has custody of her kids, even though her son is clearly scared of her? By the time the aliens "abduct" her daughter during a fuzzed-out documentary moment, you are ready for her to be arrested and put in a psychiatric hospital.

Finally, there's a whole "chariot of the gods" idea that's sort of flung into the story as if we weren't already up to our eyeballs in disbelief we couldn't suspend even if we wanted to. The aliens speak in ancient Sumerian, which a professor is inexplicably able to understand, despite the fact that the only access to Sumerian he has are from ancient texts. Nobody knows how the language would have been pronounced. Still, he figures out that the aliens are yelling things like "I am god," and using the word "destroyed" a lot. We also don't understand why they're still speaking an ancient language - you'd think by now they would try speaking English since they've been abducting Alaskans since before Sarah Palin was born.

So we're left with an absolute mess of crappily-done documentary footage, inexplicable aliens who act more like demons than scifi creatures, and a main character (Tyler) who seems like a complete crazy lady. Milla Jovovich still manages to shine, though it's hard when she has lines like, "My baby! They stole my baby!"

By the end of The Fourth Kind, you'll feel swindled - and not in the happy, they-fooled-me way. I can only assume that people who were scared by this movie, or even vaguely intrigued by it, were responding more to the movie's concept rather than its execution. There were a lot of ways Osunsanmi could have taken this movie to salvage it. He could have focused on making the documentary hoax convincing by creating believable footage and a smarter online presence. Or he could have pushed the movie over into the realm of Weekly World News camp, winking at the audience while also delivering some chills. Instead, he wrote and directed a movie whose earnestness is laughable - and whose "reality" segments feel more staged than Jon and Kate Plus Eight.

This is something I've struggled with in my own fiction, and it's a much messier problem than you would think. Even when you feel like your tough woman space captain and your sensitive young astro-biologist are incredibly well drawn and full of character and neuroses, and nobody would ever imagine they were the same person. And then you're looking over your novel for the tenth time, and you realize that they're all sounding absolutely identical.

It makes sense, in one way — your characters are all aspects of you, after all. They all came out of your head, unless you based them on your friends or other fictional characters. (And even if they're based on someone else, they're still your creations, when it comes down to it.) You're speaking through their mouths. But that doesn't mean they're doomed to sound like you, or like the same person. This is totally a solveable problem.

Here are some solutions to the issue, ranging from least crude to crudest. If the least crude solution works for you, then you don't need to worry about the rest of them — but I've used all of these methods at various times, and there's no shame in using tough measures on your characters.

1) Listen to how people talk. I have a feeling this is what "real" writers do. Don't listen to how people talk on television or in the movies — go to a bar or cafe and just listen to the conversations around you, and try to hear how people are speaking. If you can write down snippets of people's conversations without being a total creep, then do that. V.S. Pritchett writes about doing this when he was a young writer — and one of those snippets of conversation even found its way into a short story that he later published. Try to get a feel for the rhythms of conversation, and the way different people form sentences. Bottom line is, if your characters all sound the same, then they're not sounding like natural dialogue at all.

2) Try to "hear" your characters' individual voices. This is not really cruder than the first one, actually. If your characters are really that vivid in your head — if you really feel like they're real, breathing people that you've brought to life inside a living story — then you should be able to hear their voices. And they don't just sound different because they choose different words to express themselves — they are saying different things.

Say Space Captain Starjumper makes lots of definitive statements, because she's got lots of points to get across, while Astrobiologist Second Class Sparrow is constantly raising tentative half-questions. Maybe Captain Starjumper has an undercurrent of insecurity, and that's part of why she has to make sharp statements all the time. And Sparrow really knows more than he's saying. The way in which people say the things they say also provides the reader with more information.

3) Realize your characers are not talking to you, or directly to the reader. Unless you're really doing some kind of post-modern fourth-wall-shredding exercise, your characters are talking to each other. And think about what kind of reaction your characters are hoping to get when they say something. Not the reaction they actually do get — it's too easy to jump straight to that — but the reaction they expect. Fine, Navigator Angstrom's revelation that he turns gay whenever the ship is in hyperspace meets with a stunned silence. But was Navigator Angstrom hoping for a stunned silence? Was he trying to provoke an angry response, or some kind of accepting, reassuring statement? Was he trying to guilt-trip the captain for making so many hyperspace jumps lately? It sounds obvious, but it's often hard to remember: the response you're hoping for shapes the way you talk. And every one of these characters has a script in his/her head for how this conversation is going to go, whether it goes that way or not. You, as the author, know the way you want/need for the conversation to go, but you need to know what the characters want/expect as well.

Update: Zack Stentz, writer on Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and Fringe, points out another helpful way of looking at this: "Every interaction between two people is on some level a negotiation for status." Remember that, and your characters' speech will automatically get richer and more interesting. Apparently this advice originates with Terry McNally, co-writer of Earth Girls Are Easy.

4) Try giving each character a few unique verbal tics, or habitual words. Maybe Captain Starjumper says "I declare" a lot, in between all those declarative statements she makes. (Okay, bad example.) Maybe Navigator Angstrom makes lots of puns, or tosses lots of sarcastic jokes into the end of every comment. Give
each character a few habits of speech, and maybe after a while those props will help you hear each character speaking differently. You may even be able to go back and take out some of these tics, if they get too repetitive, and if the speech around them has started to differentiate itself from the rest.

5) Go one step further, and give them catch phrases and stuff. This worked for Dickens, after all. A lot of Dickens characters basically have the same verbal habits over and over — the most famous of these, of course, is Mrs. Malaprop, who always uses words incorrectly, and gave us the term malapropism. (Update: Various people have pointed out this is not true. Sorry about the mix-up. I've read almost every Dickens novel, and somehow I believed this incorrectly. My bad!)

But it's true of a lot of minor Dickens characters. And especially if you're going for humor, there's nothing wrong with having a character who comes out with variations on the same funny line on several occasions. Maybe your astrobiologist character constantly states the obvious, but prefaces it by saying, "I have made a cunning observation."

6) Realize that you may have, at most, three or four character "voices" and refine those. As regular readers of this blog know, I utterly, unreservedly love Joss Whedon. But he is a perfect example of a writer who has a few voices that he uses over and over. There's always the stilted British person (Giles/Wesley/Adelle), the funny, quippy nerd (Xander/Topher/etc.) and the lost/crazy girl (River/Echo/Fred/etc.) And the amazing thing is — those characters are all wildly individual and have tons of depth. You would never mistake Giles for Adelle, even leaving apart that she's way prettier. (Well, somewhat prettier.) Whedon may have a few basic voices that he reuses over and over again, but he finds other ways to make his characters unique and distinct from each other. He's also worked, over the years, to refine each of those voices and make the most of their strengths.

7) Vary your sentence lengths, and play with punctuation. If all else fails, try this. In real life, some people tend to speak in longer sentences, others in shorter ones. (Actually, we all vary our sentence lengths all the time, but our average sentence lengths vary quite a bit.) There's nothing wrong with just deciding arbitrarily that Captain Starjumper's average sentence will be five words long, while Navigator Angstrom's will be twenty. Also, you can try giving one character lots of emdashes or colons in his/her speech — but do this sparingly, and only for one character. In my new fantasy novel, I have one character who includes lots of parenthetical statements, and I put those in actual parentheses. But I made sure to avoid any funny punctuation games with any other character's speech, so it didn't start annoying the reader too much.

8) Adjust the French/Anglo-Saxon mix. Those of us who write in English are lucky — it's actually two languages in one. (Plus random language detritus from a dozen other languages.) We're speaking a mixture of Anglo-Saxon and French, the language of the Normans who conquered England in 1066. And just as the Enterprise's engines are a mix of matter and anti-matter, your speech is a mix of French and Anglo-Saxon. And some people definitely use more words of Latin origin than others — it's often a badge of education and upper-class status to use lots of obviously Latinate words. So if all else fails, try experimenting with having one of your characters use more Anglo-Saxon words than the rest of them, or more fancy French words. Grab a dictionary of etymology and think about which words come from which language — you can give your characters a more Germanic or more French "voice" without actually making them speak a foreign language at all. You could also just try having some characters use more one- or two-syllable words than the rest, but this might be subtler and more fun.

Illustrations from Jovike, vivir_descalzo_mx and Terry McCombs on Flickr.

Louis Crane and Shawn Westmoreland of Kansas State University propose a way to use black holes as fuel that is entirely within the bounds of physics and technology as we know them, but would take phenomenal amount of engineering.

The crux of their idea involves using using a laser to form a micro black hole, which could be used as an energy source. This would be a Schwarzschild, or non-rotating, black hole which outputs Hawking Radiation, and the smaller the black hole, the more energetic.

Of course, making a black hole isn't the world's most easy undertaking. It takes a huge amount of power to build one in the first place. To make one of these mini black holes, Crane and Westmoreland propose a 370km2 solar panel, at an orbit one million km from the surface of the sun, which, if perfectly efficient, would gather enough energy per year to make one black hole. This power would be fed to a spherically converging gamma laser, with a lasing mass of around 10^9 tonnes. However, after you make a few black holes, you can use them as a power source to make more.

According to the authors, a black hole to be used in space travel needs to meet five criteria:

1. has a long enough lifespan to be useful,
2. is powerful enough to accelerate itself up to a reasonable fraction of the speed of light in a reasonable amount of time,
3. is small enough that we can access the energy to make it,
4. is large enough that we can focus the energy to make it,
5. has mass comparable to a starship.

Fortunately, black holes have a sweet spot in terms of size, power and lifespan which is almost ideal. If you take a trip to Alpha Centauri, with an acceleration of 1g to the half way point, and then decelerate at 1g for the remainder of the journey, the trip takes a relativistic 3.5 years. A black hole that would survive the entire trip would have a radius of 0.9 attometers, would have a mass of 606,000 tonnes, and a power output of 160 petawatts. The lifespan of the black hole could be extended by feeding it mass, too.

For longer trips, you could use larger but weaker holes, and smaller and more powerful ones for short trips.

Getting the black hole to act as a power source also requires a bit of work. One potential method involves placing the hole at the focal point of a parabolic reflector attached to the ship, creating forward thrust. A slightly easier, but less efficient method would involve simply absorbing all the gamma radiation heading towards the fore of the ship, and let the rest shoot out the back to push you onwards.

Of course, there are potential problems with Crane and Westmoreland's ideas. According to Govind Menon, Professor of Physics at Troy University, most views on extracting energy from black holes involve using ones that rotate. "With non-rotating black holes, this is a very difficult thing...we typically look for energy almost exclusively from rotating black holes. Schwarzschild black holes do not radiate in an astrophysical, gamma ray burst point of view. It is not clear if Hawking radiation alone can power starships." Menon adds that extracting energy from black holes is highly problematic. "Given [this type] of black hole, it is not clear to me how someone would go about extracting energy."

Another issue is what to do with the black hole when it reaches the end of its life span, as they tend to explode. "Such an explosion is powerful by terrestrial standards, but not by astronomical standards", say Crane and Westmoreland, so it's merely a matter of dropping the black hole around 1 AU away from anything too important, and letting it detonate.

With a set of four machines: black hole generator, black hole drive, power plant, and a self perpetuating black hole powered black hole generator, the potential is enormous. As Crane and Westmoreland say:

A civilization equipped with our four machine tool set would be almost unimaginably energy rich. It could settle the galaxy at will.

Article available on ArXiv
Found via Next Big Future

So last night was the long-awaited debut of V, the show about beautiful aliens who show up and claim to come in peace and offer us lots of goodies... but turn out to be rapacious lizards in disguise. The pilot moves along at a brisk pace, introducing the aliens in the first 10 minutes and setting up various characters as anti-alien and pro-alien. The younger priest is suspicious, but the older priest is an alien-sympathizer. Elizabeth Mitchell's FBI agent is suspicious too, but her teenage son guzzles the Kool-Aid. The nice-suited African American guy is conflicted and doesn't want to be "that guy" any more.

By the end of the first episode, it's already made crystal clear that these aliens are up to no good. They've had sleeper agents on Earth for years, including Alan Tudyk's FBI agent. And other aliens living secretly among us are part of an anti-alien resistance, which may look like terrorists to the uninitiated.

So now that you've had a chance to see the pilot for yourself, you can judge whether it's actually a broadside aimed at our president. The Chicago Tribune's Glenn Garvin seems absolutely certain it is:

Imagine this. At a time of political turmoil, a charismatic, telegenic new leader arrives virtually out of nowhere. He offers a message of hope and reconciliation based on compromise and promises to marshal technology for a better future that will include universal health care.

The news media swoons in admiration — one simpering anchorman even shouts at a reporter who asks a tough question: "Why don't you show some respect?!" The public is likewise smitten, except for a few nut cases who circulate batty rumors on the Internet about the leader's origins and intentions. The leader, undismayed, offers assurances that are soothing, if also just a tiny bit condescending: "Embracing change is never easy."

So, does that sound like anyone you know? Oh, wait — did I mention the leader is secretly a totalitarian space lizard who's come here to eat us?

Welcome to ABC's "V," the most fascinating and bound to be the most controversial new show of the fall television season. Nominally a rousing sci-fi space opera about alien invaders bent on the conquest (and digestion) of all humanity, it's also a barbed commentary on Obamamania that will infuriate the president's supporters and delight his detractors.

The meme spread throughout the right-wing and left-wing blogospheres yesterday, with Ana-Marie Cox weighing in over at Huffington Post.

So now that you've had a chance to see the pilot for yourself, is it really all about how we would have been better off with McCain in the White House? Umm... Probably not. But it was definitely not a subtle episode. The aliens had "too good to be true" plastered on their faces from the beginning, and because the episode moves so fast, we're left wondering why anybody would have bought this dog-and-pony show in the first place.

And there are some little winks at the right-wing tea-partiers that may just be intentional, like when Anna (Morena Baccarin) talks about "change," and the sleazy journo guy asks her about universal health care. Mostly, though, the show seems designed so that you can project whatever ideology you want onto it — not unlike Anna's luminous screen, floating over the world's major cities.

The show isn't subtle, but that's part of the point — there are no hidden messages here at all. The messages are all right on the surface, and they're pretty basic science-fiction standbys, like "aliens who seem too good to be true usually are." Even the show's little jabs at the media and our dumb youth culture feel like they're just slapping a 21st century paint job on the show's 1980s fable. Media talking heads are blow-dried and dumb, young twerps enjoy tagging and Youtube — it's not exactly incisive social criticism.

I really doubt Obama is worried here.

The fast pace, though, is a good thing — that's one of the things that endeared me to this pilot in the first place. Anyone who remembers the original show is going to know these aliens are hucksters, so the faster that's revealed to the audience, the better. And compared to the pilot of FlashForward, which fixated on the crashy destruction and chaos attendant on the future vision/blackout in its pilot for several minutes, V got the disruption of the aliens' visit over fairly quickly, with one desultory plane crash.

Watching the pilot for a second time, the main problem that jumps out at me is that those two teenage kids are going to make me want to claw my face off. And it seems like Smallville's Laura Vandervoort is going to be somewhat painful to watch as well, with the woodenness. But getting to see Elizabeth Mitchell kick more ass and be less angsty than she was on Lost pretty much makes up for those drawbacks. And priest guy, who hails from The 4440, is still just as fun to watch as ever. Plus Baccarin can only get slyer and more engaging as the evil Anna, once her evil plans unfold.

I'm pretty sure this version of the pilot was significantly different from the version we saw at Comic Con. We knew the final sequence was going to be different — that laser shooting robot drone (in the clip above) was not there before, and the last few minutes were generally zippier. But also, my favorite scene is missing from the televised version. In the original version, when we meet Chad Decker, he's just had sex with the vice president's cougar-ish assistant, who promises to get him an interview with the Veep in return for the booty call. It lets us know right away that Decker is a man-whore, and is sort of hilariously trashy besides. In the televised version, that's replaced with a bland scene of him wanting to interview the Veep, but being told that he's just the talking head who reads the news. I have a feeling there were other weird, funny touches removed before the show aired, but I can't remember the others off the top of my head. This definitely felt a bit blander than the original pilot, although how much of that was editing and how much was just seeing it a second time, I'm not sure.

But despite some quibbles, this was a pretty fun outing, and a nice start to the series. It got us to the "OMG the aliens are evil lizards" part quickly and zippily, and set us up for three more episodes of alien intrigue and human gullibility, with an anti-alien resistance simmering under the surface. Now if those two teenagers can just get blown up in a tragic shuttlecraft accident, preferably next week...

"Once Upon a Time In Texas" was about the most important item on Hiro's "things to fix before I die" agenda. And that item was Charlie, the cute waitress whose life he tried to save from Sylar three years ago by traveling back in time 6 months. This time, Hiro traveled back three years to the moment when Sylar ate her brains, in another attempt to save her life. Then Hiro has the great idea to freeze time and pack Sylar away in the baggage bin on a Greyhound bus outside the diner where Charlie works.

Up until that moment, things had been going so well! Hiro was acting like a grownup (more or less) and HRG of the past was having a heretofore unknown office romance with a fellow agent. I liked the HRG retcon, where he has a budding romance with a competent, tough woman who is his equal and with whom he can talk about anything - unlike his family, whose minds he wipes on a regular basis.

But then Hiro once again used his powers in a way that once again reminded me why this show makes me regularly leave weird sweaty marks on my TV screen where I bang my inflamed head against it. (See clip.) First of all, he can stop time. SO WHY NOT JUST FREAKIN RIP SYLAR'S HEAD OFF WHILE HE IS FROZEN?! Second, if Hiro is going to inexplicably avoid the face-rippage, why not contain Sylar in a way that makes sense? How will a little duct tape and a bus stop Sylar from eating Charlie's brains? This is Hiro of the future - he knows how deadly Sylar can be. And yet this is his big solution? The thing he's done despite knowing it will push him closer to death than he already is? I am completely mystified, people.

Not surprisingly, Sylar escapes from Hiro's lameass trap, so then Hiro saves Charlie's life a new way. First, he sends his 3-year-old self back in time 6 months, so that he can fall in love with Charlie and not alter the paranormal romance timeline. (When you fuck with paranormal romance narratives, things really get ugly.) Then he convinces Sylar to fix the aneurism in Charlie's brain by promising to reveal lots of neat things about the future. Why Sylar falls for this is as mysterious as why Hiro continually does not freeze time and kill Sylar.

So Charlie is saved and Hiro says something like, "In the future you will be powerful but all of us will band together and destroy you and nobody will shed a tear." Oh boo freakin hoo. You think Sylar cares if anybody sheds a tear for him?

Then Charlie gets all whiny about how Hiro should have let her die, which is lame. It just feels really forced, like OK we get that she doesn't like that he cuts deals with serial killing madmen, but why would she whine about "why did you save my life when other people die?" He SAVED HER LIFE. That is an unqualified good thing, no matter how random fate is and blah blah blah. So there's a lot of narrative flailing that eventually leads to Hiro and Charlie making up (duh). But then! Evil carnival Samuel sticks Charlie into some nethertime region using the last juice from his dying time travel carnie pal.

Big reveal: Samuel has been trying to use Hiro all along, but has until now inexplicably not made any direct effort to control Hiro except through passive-aggressive mumblings about "changing the past." How was Hiro even supposed to know Samuel wanted anything from him, anyway? And why does he need to imprison Charlie? Anyway, the point is that Hiro gets all worked up and non-kidlike again, which is such a huge relief that you don't even mind when HRG's potential office fling gets her mind wiped so she'll forget about her crush on HRG. It's like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind plus some episode of The Hulk show from the 70s.

Will Hiro help Samuel change the past (which has something to do with a glimpse we get of a dead Suresh) in order to rescue Charlie from the nethertime? Unfortunately we won't find out next week, because it's back to Head Sylar - or Head Matt . . . or something.

James Turner, an editor for O'Reilly Media, claims that zombies share a kinship with Godzilla. His theory is that, just as Godzilla was inspired by the dropping of the atomic bomb, Western filmmakers (Romero aside) latched onto zombies in the wake of Three Mile Island, the recognition of AIDS, the Ebola outbreak, and similar medical and technological disasters. He goes on to posit that the increasing popularity of zombie movies involving a biological outbreak suggests a Western ambivalence toward biotechnology.

It's an interesting thought, though perhaps a bit reductive. Certainly zombies have been used to comment on biotechnology, but they've also been used to comment on a number of social issues, including consumerism, corporate greed, and the objectification of women. And what causes the zombie outbreak is often less important than what comes afterward. Still, Turner makes an interesting case that biotechnology-based zombies could evolve to more acutely reflect our biological and technological fears:

Blackberry-spawned abominations, anyone? Dawn of the Single-Payer Healthcare Undead? What about, They Came From H1N1?

He's far more convincing when he talks about the important differences between giant monsters and zombies, namely that it's the military and scientists who fight Godzilla, where zombies fall to resourceful and self-reliant survivors.

Americans must like the idea that, as out of control as our hubristic science might become, a good machete and a 12 gauge in the hands of a competent man or woman can always save the day. The 2003 bestselling title, The Zombie Survival Guide, offers the same message of self-reliance. (I'm not sure what lesson we can take from the success of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.)

A Brief History Of Zombies [Forbes]

The reason why I say that so emphatically is, there's a tendency to avoid watching a television show if you think it's already pre-cancelled. Why give your heart to a piece of ephemeral pop culture that won't even last the five-to-seven years that a successful show lasts? Why become fixated on a story you know won't end? Part of the answer is that we are science-fiction fans, and having our hearts broken is part of the deal. But you also have to keep the faith alive that it won't happen this time.

So in case you've missed our grindingly depressing coverage (mirroring everyone else's) of V's misfortunes, it's had a troubled ramp-up. First it was put on a production hiatus for a few weeks, then it was announced that showrunner Jeff Bell (who was showrunner on Angel's final season) was being demoted — he's still around as a writer, but he's no longer in charge. Then before the first hiatus was even over, a second hiatus was announced, and the show was on hold for at least a couple of months. And then the network decided to air only four episodes, this month, and then put the show on hold until after the Olympics, in March.

And today, there's the news that Scott Peters, the show's creator who replaced Bell as showrunner, was himself ousted. His replacement, luckily, will be Scott Rosenbaum, who's been a producer on Chuck and The Shield. Judging from the USA Today article, it sounds like the root of all these problems, including the production turnovers and delays, is the network's discontent with the show's creative direction. Here's USA Today's succinct explanation:

[T]he series remake has run into roadblocks. V's pilot episode was well-received by advertisers and critics, but ABC's late-summer decision to start the show two months earlier than planned – in part to dodge American Idol and the broadcast of the Winter Olympics, also in Vancouver – led to script problems, which forced reshoots and a five-week production break.

The first of three planned story arcs was condensed from six to four fall episodes. And the show will test viewers' loyalty with a three-month hiatus; remaining episodes won't surface until March. A promotional campaign that called for planes to skywrite red V's over national landmarks was scuttled after publicity over potential environmental effects.

And Thursday, in a response to the show's production problems, Peters (USA Network's The 4400) was replaced at the helm of the show by Scott Rosenbaum (Chuck, The Shield), though he is expected to stay aboard as an executive producer.

"We had a great pilot, then a couple of great episodes, but we had a disconnect on where we were going from there," says ABC Entertainment Group chief Stephen McPherson. Though no stranger to tinkering (he made extensive changes to the original Grey's Anatomy pilot), "I hadn't had the experience of that before." But McPherson accepts "a little blame for rushing them."

Mitchell, who plays hero FBI agent Erica Evans, says the resulting changes merely speed the pace of storytelling to pack a bigger wallop, including big cliffhangers in the Nov. 24 episode. Filming on that episode is set to wrap today, giving actors another unexpected 10-week break as the show is retooled. (Mitchell will trek to Hawaii to shoot new Lost episodes.)

So, yes. A troubled show, even before its first episode airs — and this does remind me a bit of similar behind-the-scenes stories about Bionic Woman, Dollhouse, Life On Mars, and countless other shows that had difficult gestations leading to troubled runs. But these things aren't fore-ordained, and a show can beat the odds.

Here are some reasons why I'm still cautiously optimistic about V in spite of all of the negative buzz:

1) The pilot really is great. From what I hear, the pilot that airs tonight is much the same one we all watched at Comic Con, and it's truly impressive. I went into the pilot expecting, at best, pleasant mediocrity or a watered-down tribute to the geek TV of our childhoods. And instead, I was surprised by what a cracking great piece of television it is. The story of the aliens who arrive promising great wonders, but quickly turn out to be a lot worse than we realize, is retold at a zippy pace and revamped for our wired, media-savvy culture. And it's provocative to have a show that says that despite all of our proud cynicism and air quotes, we're still suckers for the first super-advanced civilization that shows up offering us small-pox-infested blankets.

2) The cast is terrific. This matters a lot. You know who they never replaced during Bionic Woman's behind-the-scenes dickering? Michelle Ryan. You could have swapped in a dozen different producers, and it wouldn't have made Ryan watchable. In V, Elizabeth Mitchell is proving that her sparks of versatility on Lost weren't just illusions — she's really great as the show's heroine. (And how great is it that we actually have a female lead on a network show, who's not Michelle Ryan?) Given time, Mitchell could be as great as Lena Headey as Sarah Connor. Also, Whedonverse alums Alan Tudyk and Morena Baccarin are also just as great as you'd hope — and Baccarin is so natural as a smarmy alien leader, you'll almost forget Inara.

3) Maybe all the tinkering really will make it a better show in the end. Rosenbaum coming on as show-runner is actually great news — and if he can bring a bit of The Shield to V, then we'll be doing great. Also, I'm not entirely sad to hear they're tightening the pace. When I hear that six episodes were compressed to four, or that a show is going to cut to the chase faster, I often secretly rejoice — the biggest pitfall with a show like V is that the mysteries will be sustained for too long, that characters won't figure stuff out until long after the audience has, and that we won't get to see people fighting aliens until season three. As the SF Chronicle's Tim Goodman points out, this sort of molasses-slow storytelling has already overtaken fellow ABC show FlashForward (which might get renamed "inch forward" soon) — so it would be a shame if it happened to V as well.

4) We sort of owe it to ourselves to support any show about alien invaders. It's not as if we have a bevy of alien-invasion shows to choose from, or really a bevy of shows about aliens period. American television seems to have abdicated the territory it once owned, of first contact, alien attackers, galactic imperialists, and so on. I am prepared to apologize for mocking the boring alien makeup on shows like Star Trek: Voyager, if it means that we'll get aliens on TV once again. But for now, if there's even a hope of getting a show about meeting people unlike ourselves on television again, we need to grasp it with both hands.

5) I'm hoping that the creative stew of influences will still yield something really subversive and interesting. Peters, who created The 4400, is still on board as a producer according to USA Today, and Angel's Bell still seems to be in the mix as well. And the pilot definitely contains a huge dose of the paranoia and concerns about selling out that those earlier works were all about. (There's the journalist who's willing to ask only softball questions of the alien leader, as well as the religious figures who hitch their wagon to the aliens' star.) So maybe if those things remain part of V's DNA, and they aren't part of what gets sacrificed in the network's headlong dash to create soft and mushy enough for the general public to chew and swallow, then we'll still get a show that challenges us and reminds us that science fiction, even on television, can be a thing of amazement.

So yes, it's worth risking another disappointment. V is on ABC tonight at 8.

Chabon talks about how his eldest son startled a British attendant at the Smithsonian with his Dalek T-shirt, and then his other children had to regale the man with tales of their Cybermen and Time Lord shirts, until he understands they're a geek family. And then Chabon talks about how the new Doctor Who series has brought his family together, and sings the show's praises:

And if you aren't watching and loving the glorious new BBC incarnation of Doctor Who, geeking out on the mythos of the Daleks and Time Lords and Cybermen, swooning to the polysexual heroics of Captain Jack Harkness, aching over the quantum transdimensional heartache of Rose Tyler, and granting yourself the supreme and steady pleasure of watching the dazzling Scottish actor David Tennant go about the business of being the tenth man to embody the time-and-space traveling Doctor on television since the show's debut in 1963, then I pity you with the especial harsh pity of the geek.

As you might have gathered from its subtitle ("The Pleasures And Regrets Of A Husband, Father, And Son") Manhood For Amateurs is Chabon's collection of essays about being a man, and the various personas he's taken on. But even as he delves into the heart of his own struggles with maleness, Chabon invokes science fiction and comics, exploring topics as diverse as why Big Barda is the greatest superheroine, or why all futurism is now retro-futurism, and we've lost our starry-eyed optimism. Like manhood, these geek avatars gain their meaning from other people, they're public and subject to interpretation. They also change over time, like the Doctor. (Chabon, himself, has gone through incarnations, including being a "little shit" in his twenties, as he makes clear at various points.)

The Doctor Who essay, one of the last in the book, returns to the theme of the book's first essay: the solitary and communal sides of fandom. Chabon grew up, like many of us, as a solitary geek, with nobody to share his obsession with comics and science fiction paperbacks. The first essay talks about how he tried to start a local comic-book fan club, with his mother's help — they even paid $25 to rent a room for the first meeting, and only one other boy showed up, then immediately left before he could get sucked into this "loser's club." The Doctor Who essay is about how the new version of the show has given Chabon's children the gift of each other, and how fandom and families are the same, with their rituals and obsessions.

Most provocatively, in the earlier "Loser's Club" essay, Chabon even suggests that fandom and the artistic drive come from the same impulse, and even hints that fanfic and literature spring from the same well:

This is the point, to me, where art and fandom coincide. Every work of art is one half of a secret handshake, a challenge that seeks the password, a heliograph flashed from a tower window, an act of hopeless optimism in the service of bottomless longing. Every great record or novel or comic book convenes the first meeting of a fan club whose membership stands forever at one but which maintains chapters in every city — in every cranium — in the world. Art, like fandom, asserts the possibility of fellowship in a world built entirely from the materials of solitude. The novelist, the cartoonist, the songwriter, knows that the gesture is doomed from the beginning but makees it anyway, flashes his or her bit of mirror, not on the chance that the signal will be seen or understood but as if such a chance existed.

Manhood For Amateurs isn't just notable for the honestly with which Chabon deals with every aspect of his life, including his insecurities and his relationships with women and his own children — it's also a more revelatory look at fan culture, and science fiction, through the lens of the personal essay. Anyone who's interested in discussing science fiction and its attendent genres for their personal as well as cultural significance should be checking out these essays.

More than ever, Chabon uses superhero comics, Star Wars toys and Doctor Who's Daleks as signposts to the masculine imaginary. He geeks out about these things as if they are the only points of certainty in a shifting, illusory world.

(The book is by no means perfect: At times, his opinion-spouting gets a little overwhelming, and by the time he gets to the section where he talks about women, about two-thirds of the way through, I was starting to wonder if Chabon really did live in some male-dominated enclave — but then a lot of the last third of the book is about women, and he addresses that criticism of his writing head-on. But my criticisms of the book mostly have nothing to do with its discussions of science fiction or geek culture, and they're pretty minor in any case.)

Manhood, Chabon seems to be saying, is improv. You create yourself on the fly, in roles as perplexing and diverse as husband, father, lover and friend, and hope to project an impression of knowing what you're doing. The fact that Chabon deconstructs masculinity while pulling together so many elements of science fiction turns nerd culture into a set of anchor points. You sort of expect Chabon to use comic-book and science-fiction icons to illuminate his inner world, the way in which superhero storytelling in Kavalier And Clay became a kind of emotional atlas. But it goes beyond that: one of the constants in Chabon's essays is the primacy of play, in the midst of all this role confusion. And geeking out is an essential ingredient of that play.

The discussions of play includes a very carefully considered history of Lego toys, and their development from abstract bricks to a world dominated by crudely representational minifigs. (We featured a "quote of the day" a while back, in which Chabon talked about how his kids were remixing these Lego sets and transcending the tyrannical corporate-sanctioned instructions.) He joins the chorus of people lamenting the fact that kids no longer roam free on their bicycles and skateboards. He narrates some bizarrely awesome-sounding games he and other kids played, based on the 1973 Planet Of The Apes TV series (not the movies, weirdly enough). And he talks about stargazing, and discovering our smallness in the cosmos, as well as the Long Now Foundation's 10,000 year clock and how it's making him wonder why we've stopped obsessing about the far future.

All in all, Manhood For Amateurs is a much geekier book than you might have expected from its title, and yet also a much more personal book than most geeky essay collections. If you've suspected that fandom's signs and collections of ill-fitting clues were markers in someone else's inner cosmology, just as they are in yours, then you will definitely bond with this book.

How has the response been when people found out you'd be in this major genre reboot?

So far it's been pretty great. Our first sort of big dose was going to Comic Con to screen the pilot, and it was really incredible. I'd never seen anything like it, I obviously know - I'm a fan of a lot of scifi shows and genre shows and so there's a level of imagination and depth to the storytelling and it really draws people in. So seeing people react to some of our other cast members who have done other genre shows before was really incredible. When they embrace you, it's pretty great and complete and intense. In a way I feel like a bit of a newcomer into the world of it, and I hope I'm welcomed in. But the response to the story and to our show was really really incredible. We screened the pilot for 4,000 people and that's a really unique experience, you just don't, (you) rarely get a chance to see a piece of work that you've done with that size audience, and they seemed to love it. So it was really encouraging.

You said you were a fan of genre and scifi shows, what shows are you a fan of? Did they influence you at all while making this series about aliens?

Wolf: I grew up watching Star Trek and the original Battlestar and Six Million Dollar Man, Lost in Space, so I think there's a level of imagination in the storytelling, there's really no limits and that's really kind of exhilarating. For the most part, playing a newscaster who, as far as I know, is not an alien, is a human, a lot of my stuff has been interviewing people and acting as a media, so there's hasn't been a ton of special effects stuff. But there's been a bit - and interviewing Anna, the leader of the Visitors on the space ship, we work on a virtual set and then they create this world around us, it's really intense. I mean, to see what they're able to create nowadays, and our show winds up looking like a movie every week, because the limits to what people can accomplish on television seem to be blowing wide open, so there's really no difference between the effects an the storytelling that you see in theaters that you will now on television. So it's exciting to be part of a story that feels epic.

Your character [the news anchor] is ambitious but relegated to being just a talking head. And then when Anna, the leader of the aliens, tells him to ask only positive questions, he goes along with it. Do you think he'll ever actually try to get to the bottom of what's happening with these aliens?

I think he's just so looking for that thing that's gonna launch him, that I think his first thought when aliens land is, 'This could be it.' But only after his encounter with Anna, the leader of the Visitors, and she selects him to do this first worldwide interview where she's going to basically tell the human race why they're here, obviously then he knows he's got the opportunity of his lifetime sitting in his lap. So I don't think he foresees that he's going to wind up being manipulated the way that he gets manipulated, and I don't think he saw himself having to sell his soul to the visitors quite as quickly as he's asked to do it. As our story continues, you see him really fight the good fight. I think he's sort of morally up-for-grabs, because he wants, he's ambitious enough to go to great lengths to accomplish the things he wants to accomplish, but whether his better self or his lesser self will win out in the end is kind of, I think, the fun of his story.

The world treats the Visitors differently because they're so beautiful, do you think that's a real life metaphor for any existing groups right now because of the way that they're treated?

Absolutely, I do. I think one of the things that's intriguing about this version of this story is oftentimes when we imagine aliens and their arrival on Earth, we imagine these scary green men or monster creatures, and in our story they're beautiful, human-looking creatures. So the fact that so many people, because of their appearance, because of their message, fall in line and are inspired by them and feel a sense of hope that these creatures are actually going to do what they say and peacefully enhance the life that we're all living, I think if they were really creepy looking, not as many people would jump on board.

Yes, I think on the surface, there's definitely a commentary on why we embrace certain things and reject other things and that's one of the underlying themes, which there are many of.

With my character, with Chad, one of the themes that they're dealing with is how much faith we place in our media and is that faith honored and is it well-placed or is it ill-advised? And if you place that in the wrong hands, if there's somebody who's sort of morally up-for-grabs, potentially, like Chad Decker is, and you've charged him with getting the truth, you could have a very dangerous situation.

Did you base Chad on anybody that we know?

You know, yes and no. I mean, I think he's described in the pilot script as being an Anderson Cooper wannabe, so there's some of that in there I think. I mean, he's a modern day news guy who sort of lives and dies on people feeling like he's their buddy. It's not this kind of parochial father-figure news guy, he's more of your buddy who's going to give you the scoop. There's definitely a lot of people who I watch and have sort of drawn from, but hopefully he winds up being a product of who our producers and writers are creating.

To me, he's a really fascinating character, because I think he represents a lot about how we function, day in and day out. Which is I think we see the story we want to see oftentimes. And sometimes that's OK and sometimes that gets us into trouble.

Let's get the Mythical stuff out of the way first, shall we? Marvel's (Incredible) Hercules begins his latest and greatest storyline in this week's special one-shot, Assault On New Olympus, which guest-stars Spider-Man and leads into the regular series with plenty of other guest stars in issues ahead.

Not to be outdone, DC collects the recent Wonder Woman storyline Rise Of The Olympian in both hardcover and softcover, and it's well worth a look - I admit to being thrown by it when it was being published in single issues, but the destination is worth sticking around for; it's also the largest scale adventure for the character in years, as well. DC also has the first issue of Cinderella: From Fabletown With Love, a spin-off from Bill Willingham's Fables that sees fairytales' most deadly secret spy go globetrotting on her latest dangerous mission with wit, panache and some great art from Shawn McManus, for those who like characters who've been around before there were comics.

Talking of long-lasting characters, Ricardo Delgado's dinosaur epic Age of Reptiles returns this week with a new series, The Journey, which shows why dinosaur migration isn't as simple as it sounds. If you go in expecting an unusual, challenging but surprisingly beautiful read, you shouldn't be disappointed.

Much less beautiful (by design), Anthrax's Scott Ian writes Lobo: Highway To Hell, the first issue of which is out tomorrow and sure to be, uh, "heavy." Or something.

For those looking for more superheroic thrills, DC spins out The Great Ten from 52 (A plan only slightly flawed in that 52 finished over two years ago, and few people remember who The Great Ten were; they were the government-sponsored Chinese superteam). Marvel launches Paul Cornell's new Black Widow: Deadly Origin series, as well as a new Deathlok series (Deathlok: Pretty much, "What if Captain America was a cyborg with a bad attitude in the future?" It's as good/bad as that idea may sound to you).

And I guide you away from those in the tights and bright colors to my current hometown of Portland, where Greg Rucka's new series Strumptown is set. Yes, Stumptown (Rucka's new detective series, which he talks about right here, but comes from love of The Rockford Files and Magnum PI) may lack any sign of supernatural, sci-fi or urban fantasy hallmarks that would make it io9 material, but nonetheless, it's likely to be the best thing you could spend your money on at the comic store this week. Consider it recommended.

Just like last week, the week before that and every single one of these posts, you can meet all of the comics released to comic stores tomorrow on this here Diamond Distributors shipping list, and then find your closest comic store to purchase all the goodies mentioned here. You know it makes sense.

This is how we know that Russell T. Davies is no longer really involved in running the Sarah Jane Adventures: if RTD had been in the mix, "The Wedding Of Sarah Jane" would have been laced with little references to the Doctor as Sarah Jane's former boyfriend, who's showing up to stop her wedding to the cute new guy, Peter. As it was, the episode was remarkably respectful to the former companion, repeating several times that the reason she'd never gotten a bloke was because she was too busy saving the world herself, and she wasn't sure if any guy could deal with her weird life. Which is way better than the explanation RTD wrote: that she was still hung up on Tom Baker all these decades later.

So in "The Wedding Of Sarah Jane," she falls in love with a guy remarkably quickly and then agrees to marry him like a shot... so of course you know it's an evil scheme. The nice touch is that Peter Dalton isn't actually evil himself, or alien for that matter. He's just a pawn, who happens to be genuinely a good match for Sarah Jane. If they'd met under other circumstances, they might have gotten together normally, without any of this "fiendish trap" nonsense.

But the fact that Sarah Jane feels she can't tell Peter about her real life of hanging out with robot dogs sort of raises a larger point that the RTD version of Doctor Who has skirted around a few times: At this point, after all these alien attacks, there are just two kinds of people left: The ones who know all about aliens and are completely obsessed with learning all about them... and morons. So if Sarah Jane feels like she ought to date a man who can deal with her alien-fighting lifestyle, then her dating pool ought to be enormous. I guess this is a sort of suspension of disbelief thing, except that Doctor Who has gone out of its way to poke holes in it a few times.

In any case, the wedding episode was fun — and completely a rehash of stuff we've seen before, of course. Every time we see the Trickster, he gets a bit less interesting. His first outing, where he changed history so Sarah Jane died as a small girl, was fantastic — but since then, he's been stuck doing variations on a theme. Plus some homages: This time, we get a bit of the "Buffy's mom dates evil Jack Ritter" episode, a bit of every wedding episode ever, and a bit of the final episode of Sapphire And Steel, with the being trapped in the house that's floating outside of time and space.

Presumably a lot of regular Doctor Who viewers tuned into this one for the Tennant appearance, so I'll just say that the Sarah Jane Adventures is sometimes a bit better than this story, which felt a bit motionless, especially in its second half. At its best, the more young-kid-friendly Who spinoff is fast-paced, fun, a bit silly, and very reminiscent of classic 1960s and 1970s Who, with implacable monsters, young companions, and dilemmas that are soluble with large amounts of pluck. (Especially in its first season, the show ruled, and it's been making a major comeback this year after a weak second season.)

I never actually thought I'd say this, but I think a bit more RTD sentimentality could have served this story quite well — it had the Murray Gold "woooooooo" sad music for large chunks of the second episode, but it never quite felt like it got to the emotional root of what was going on — either the kids feeling left out or worried because Sarah Jane had someone new in her life, or Sarah Jane realizing that it's all a trap, and she can't really have romantic love as well as everything else she's built in her life. Somehow, the episode kept skimming over the really interesting bits - and Sarah Jane and the Doctor never quite manage to have a real conversation. I was sort of hoping they could have a chat about how she's becoming more and more like a human version of the Doctor, and what that's meant to her relationships. I know it's a show for little kids, but little kids like to know that these characters are real people, with feelings.

Other stuff: We got yet another otherworldly creature giving a speech about how the Doctor is fire and ice and chocolate and nougat and so on. It was really nice to see K-9 back in his element, and especially interacting with the Doctor once again. K-9's little rivalry with Mr. Smith is fun as well. I'm glad the Doctor realizes how terrific those kids are, and once again Clyde gets to be the hero, which makes me happy. And I guess it's good that Sarah Jane's arch-enemy rates the Doctor's respect — since the Trickster mostly seems like a very second-string villain at best, it's nice that the Doctor didn't just dismiss him.

Oh, and most of all, we're getting Sarah Jane built up as the defender of the Earth, without whom we're all toast. The first time around, there was a concrete reason for that — an asteroid on a collision course with the planet, that Sarah Jane needed to be there to deflect. But now, it's just more vague and all-encompassing. Without Sarah Jane, the aliens will just run rampant. It makes you wonder quite how ineffectual U.N.I.T. is these days.

Even though we thought the film Gentlemen Broncos rose above the bad buzz, to become an intensely personal film from a different person's perspective — awkward moments and all — some disagreed.

Entertainment Weekly complained that the film lacked the ever-present kitsch, and didn't celebrate its oddball characters as director Jared Hess has done in his previous works...

As they did in Napoleon Dynamite and Nacho Libre, the Hesses claim to celebrate the amusing qualities of misshapen people and their misshapen dreams, insisting that amateurism and bad taste (both in filmmaking and in life) are intentional artistic choices. The audience may have bought the act in Napoleon Dynamite. But this time, the act bombs.

AICN went even further accusing Hess of "Bully Porn."

Jared Hess doesn't make comedies. He makes Bully Porn. His characters, devoid of any likable qualities whatsoever, serve only to mope around pathetically, dressed in the hand-me-down isn't it ironic clothing of the late 1980's, to be laughed at for how miserable, lowly and despicably uninteresting they are. By us. The bullies. You see, this is supposed to be funny. We're supposed to giggle and chortle at the mom who wants nothing more from life than to make nightgowns for a living, or the indie-from-home filmmaker who grins like he's had reconstructive facial surgery. That's funny, right?

We knew this was coming, because a few audience members just didn't laugh the way we did during the screening. So we asked Hess if he was prepared for a potential backlash against this film. And how he walks the line between skewering these outcast characters, versus paying them homage.

Hess told us:

I don't really think about walking a line, I'm just doing what I love and casting the people that I love and ... it's funny. I think especially when Napoleon came out for the first time many people were like, 'Gosh this is condescending to rural America and their way of life; how dare he!'

And I don't know if these people have ever really been, you know, the people that didn't understand it, didn't really understood the love.

It's, for me, giving these smaller stories and characters that you normally wouldn't see in film, giving them a chance to be heard. In this fight, they've got bizarre life goals. It's still cool to be able to see them succeed in their own little sphere.

We also grabbed producer and snake-holding actor Mike White, and asked him what he would say to people that don't understand it and might accuse Broncos of making fun of science fiction fans and science fiction in general. Is it teasing or an homage?

I really don't think that that's true because I feel like Jared [Hess] really has an affection for all these people, and really relates to all these people — if you meet him, he does all the voices, it's like he really ... is inside it. I think Jared has a certain sensibility that if he's not into something, he just won't focus his attention on it. And the things he does focus his attention on are things he's really an enthusiast of.

I think some people don't share...I think some people don't have a sense of humor, period. And whether it's teen life or the troubles of a misfit teenager, or the travails of a writer who wants to write science fiction, some people, if all they want is for all of that to be taken very seriously, they're gonna have that reaction, yeah.

But don't mistake not taking something seriously for making fun of it. I think he wants to have fun with his characters and with scenarios, but I think the reason he chose this world is because he was that kid. I think he's more big-hearted than some people [see]. Some people come to it with their own prism.

We felt the movie was less an assault on the nerd culture and more an extremely personal revelation. Each of the characters struggles with his/her own failures, insecurities and successes — if anything, it was so realistic I almost cried when the main character threw up before getting kissed, because some of us might have been there before.

Whedon's open letter to Halcyon proves just why this man should be given the keys to the cyborg car:

An Open Letter to the Terminator Owners. From a Very Important Hollywood Mogul

Dear Sirs/Ma'ams,

I am Joss Whedon, the mastermind behind Titan A.E., Parenthood (not the movie) (or the new series) (or the one where 'hood' was capitalized 'cause it was a pun), and myriad other legendary tales. I have heard through the 'grapevine' that the Terminator franchise is for sale, and I am prepared to make a pre-emptive bid RIGHT NOW to wrap this dealio up. This is not a joke, this is not a scam, this is not available on TV. I will write a check TODAY for $10,000, and viola! Terminator off your hands.

No, you didn't miscount. That's four — FOUR! — zeroes after that one. That's to show you I mean business. And I mean show business. Nikki Finke says the Terminator concept is played. Well, here's what I have to say to Nikki Finke: you are a fine journalist and please don't ever notice me. The Terminator story is as formative and important in our culture — and my pretend play — as any I can think of. It's far from over. And before you Terminator-Owners (I have trouble remembering names) rush to cash that sweet cheque, let me give you a taste of what I could do with that franchise:

1) Terminator... of the Rings! Yeah, what if he time-travelled TOO far... back to when there was dragons and wizards? (I think it was the Dark Ages.) Hasta La Vista, Boramir! Cool, huh? "Now you gonna be Gandalf the Red!" RRRRIP! But then he totally helps, because he's a cyborg and he doesn't give a s#&% about the ring — it has no power over him! And he can carry it AND Frodo AND Sam AND f@%& up some orcs while he's doing it. This stuff just comes to me. I mean it. (I will also offer $10,000 for the Lord of the Rings franchise).

2) More Glau. Hey. There's a reason they're called "Summer" movies.

3) Can you say... musical? Well don't. Even I know that's an awful idea.

4) Christian Bale's John Connor will get a throat lozenge. This will also help his Batwork (ten grand for that franchise too, btw.)

5) More porn. John Connor never told Kyle Reese this, but his main objective in going to the past was to get some. What if there's a lot of future-babies that have to be made? Cue wah-wah pedal guitar — and dollar signs!

6) The movies will stop getting less cool.

Okay. There's more — this brain don't quit! (though it has occasionally been fired) — but I think you get my drift. I really believe the Terminator franchise has only begun to plumb the depths of questioning the human condition during awesome stunts, and I'd like to shepherd it through the next phase. The money is there, but more importantly, the heart is there. But more importantly, money. Think about it. End this bloody bidding war before it begins, and put the Terminator in the hands of someone who watched the first one more than any other movie in college, including "Song of Norway" (no current franchise offer).

Sincerely, Joss Whedon.

For this, Joss is forgiven all of Dollhouse.

(According to the Financial Times, real parties interested in Terminator include Sony, Twilight studio Summit Entertainment, and Media Rights Captial, the people behind Bruno. The rights will be auctioned later this month.)

An Open Letter to the Terminator Owners [Whedonesque] (Link updated, thanks all.)

Monday

If you didn't lose most of your Sunday to Syfy's V marathon, don't despair; they're continuing it today, from 8am through 7pm (And then again tomorrow, starting at 8am again). Jane Badler fanatics of the world, unite for one last time before Morena Baccarin takes over. Talking of remakes of beloved shows, AMC have a 15 minute Prisoner Preview at 2:45, teasing the reboot that premieres later this month (It re-runs throughout the week, if you miss it).

Of course, Monday wouldn't be Monday without Heroes; this week is the much-anticipated "Once Upon A Time In Texas" episode that sees Hiro try to save Charlie's life again, even though I thought we'd conclusively proven way back in the first season that he couldn't do that. Oh, Heroes, suddenly that House re-run on Fox at the same time seems that bit more interesting...

Tuesday

Having presumably primed yourself with the end of Syfy's V marathon, you'll be eagerly anticipating the premiere of ABC's brand new, now-with-extra-Scott-Wolf V, for the first of four weeks before a winter break. We reviewed it at Comic-Con and were pleasantly surprised by the "creepy and intriguing" update of the classic show. Here are the first eight minutes or so:

Meanwhile, AMC and FX are showing off their superhero movie chops: AMC has a doublebill of Batman and Batman Returns starting at 8, while FX shows the better-than-the-first-but-that's-not-necessarily-saying-much Fantastic Four: Rise Of The Silver Surfer at the same time.

Wednesday

Get your humpday started properly with AMC showing of the Buffy The Vampire Slayer movie at 9:45 in the morning, and then stick around for Reign of Fire - one of our favorite dragon war movies ever - at 3pm. In fact, when you add in more showings of Batman, Batman Returns and Batman Forever (at 8pm) and Batman Begins (at 10:30), you could pretty much just leave your television tuned to AMC all day.

But if you did that, you'd miss a new episode of Eastwick at 10pm on ABC. Considering I've never seen the show, I'll just quote the summary instead:

After Chad visits her one last time in a dream, a grieving Roxie resolves to fulfill his last wish — if she can figure out what it is. Hounded by Max, her replacement at the Gazette, about her kidnapping ordeal, Joanna grapples with her own lingering questions while dodging his and Kat, startled by a newfound ability, realizes that Bun's old friend Eleanor Rougement may have answers for both of them.

For those looking for documentary-esque thrills, Mythbusters investigate liquid nitrogen myths in a new episode at 9pm on the Discovery Channel, and, after rocking a marathon of Destination Truth from 8am through 3pm (There's also a new episode on at 9), Syfy celebrates the power of brand loyalty by bringing in Warehouse 13's Eddie McClintock to help track down the "Ghost Of Buffalo Bill" on a brand new episode of Ghost Hunters at 8pm.

Thursday

As if the V marathons earlier in the week weren't enough, Syfy has a Threshold marathon starting at 8am and running until 3 in the afternoon. Remember Threshold?

Because it's Thursday, it's time to give your TiVos a workout. At 8pm, you can choose between a new episode of FlashForward on ABC -

Mark, Demetri, Gough and MI6 agent Fiona Banks investigate a Blue Hand club and its possible connection to some recent suicides. Meanwhile, Aaron receives a surprise visit from a former army buddy of his late daughter's, Demetri comes clean with Zoey about his lack of a flashforward, and Nicole helps Bryce uncover the mystery of his flashforward while volunteering at the hospital.

- or a new Vampire Diaries on the CW:

On his birthday, Stefan is surprised by a visit from Lexi, one of his oldest friends. Still upset by the events at the Halloween haunted house, Elena does her best to stay away from Stefan, but Lexi gives her some unsolicited relationship advice. Elena and Jenna are surprised by a change in Jeremy's behavior. At Damon's insistence, Caroline tries to get his medallion back from Bonnie. Finally, Damon's offer to help Sheriff Forbes has sudden and tragic results.

Similarly, 9pm brings a choice between Fringe on Fox -

The Fringe Division takes on a puzzling investigation where victims are inexplicably disintegrating into ash. The shadowy case casts light on Special Agent Phillip Broyles' past and leads the team to the possibility of foreign Fringe Science. Emotions run high as the alarming events stack up and revealing personal details emerge about the leader of the Fringe Division.

- and what looks like a very fun episode of Supernatural on the CW:

The Trickster throws Sam and Dean into an alternate universe where they are characters in different television series, including a sexy medical show, a Japanese game show, a forensics show and a sitcom. The brothers realize the only way to get out of this world is to play along and become the characters in the shows. However, Castiel appears and warns them this universe is dangerous and they must get out before they become trapped.

(My suggestion: Watch FlashForward and Fringe live, TiVo Supernatural and try to pretend Vampire Diaries doesn't exist. Sorry, Kevin Williamson.)

Friday

Today's Syfy marathon? The third season of Doctor Who. Again, it starts at 8am: Set your TiVo to relive the awesomeness that is Martha Jones. Otherwise, you'll be left with nothing to watch until Smallville on the CW at 8 (Jor-El meets Chloe, Clark realizes that a younger version of his dad is on Earth and Zod keeps disappointing in the villain stakes).

That's followed by the Syfy double bill of Stargate Universe at 9 (Wherein Richard Dean Anderson guests with a crazy plan about how to bring the accidental crew of the Destiny home. Spoiler: It's only the sixth episode: It's not going to work), and Sanctuary at 10 (Magnus wakes up with no idea where she is, or why everything around her has been destroyed. I know how she feels).

If you're feeling like you're missing old friends, though, you could always tune in to White Collar on USA at 9, which counts Fringe's dear departed Charlie and The Middleman's Natalie Morales amongst its cast this week. Plus, of course, Matt Bomer, whom everyone keeps telling me is the new David Tennant in dreaminess quotant.

Saturday

Syfy seems to have forgotten that Halloween was the week before, with three horror movies: Open Graves (starring a pre-Dollhouse Eliza Dushku), in which American students abroad find a deadly boardgame, the remake of The Amityville Horror, and From Within, which apparently has something to do with a Christian questioning her faith when people around her get gruesomely slaughtered.

Thankfully, the movie that follows those three, Snakehead Terror features both snake-headed mutant pirhanas and Bruce Boxeleitner, so things seem to getting back to normal in the end. (Open Graves starts at 4, and each following movie comes two hours later).

Sunday

Worried about the truth behind Roland Emmerich's new destructo movie? Then don't watch 2012: Startling New Secrets on Syfy, which sounds as if it treads the fine line between Destination Truth-esque knowing parody and tacky sensationalism. Which, come to think of it, sounds pretty like the 2012 movie itself, actually... Instead, finish off your weekend with "Return To Malice," the latest, and no doubt entirely awesome, episode of The Venture Bros. on Cartoon Network at midnight. Let's face it: Brock would be disappointed if you didn't.

The panel included a lively discussion of trends over the past two years in fantasy and science fiction, and included Gollancz associate editor Jo Fletcher, Locus magazine editor-in-chief Liza Trombi, book critic Tom Whitmore, and bookseller Justin Ackroyd, who runs Australian mail order bookstore Slow Glass Books.

I asked panelists about whether there is a recent trend in which fantasy has overtaken science fiction in popularity, and everyone seemed to agree that this idea isn't a recent trend at all. Jo and Justin pointed out that fantasy has been more popular since the early 1980s, and that there hasn't been a big science fiction bestseller in years (though there have been big fantasy bestsellers, and bestsellers by mainstream authors who have written science fiction novels, like Michael Chabon). Tom pointed out that almost since science fiction became a recognizable genre, people have been declaring it dead.

Other trends we talked about included young adult science fiction, which is one of the most exciting, growing areas where science fiction is being published. Liza suggested that YA fiction is intriguing because authors can be more overtly polemical in it. Younger audiences have more patience for overtly didactic stories. We also talked about how YA fiction allows authors to tell SF "starter stories" aimed at people who aren't familiar with the SF canon. "It's about storytelling," Jo asserted, "plain and simple." When authors aim at younger audiences, they are free to tell stories that break away from SF traditions.

Finally, we talked about how paranormal romance is one of the biggest-selling subgenres that crosses over with SF and urban fantasy. I mentioned that I think there is a lot of prejudice against paranormal romance, especially among SF readers, because it's viewed as silly and girly. Jo explained that there is a lot of great writing in the paranormal romance genre, and mentioned that Charlaine Harris' non-Sookie Sackhouse novels are really quite interesting and multi-layered.

Then we talked about our book lists, which are linked below. Tom didn't have time to put together a list, but he did mention that he was excited about Terry Pratchett's latest Discworld novel, UNSEEN ACADEMICALS.

Justin Ackroyd's picks

Jo Fletcher's picks

Annalee Newitz's picks

Liza Trombi's picks

I don't want to spoil Hunter Prey for you too much, but suffice to say it's a twisty thriller that will remind you a little bit of Enemy Mine and (surprisingly) of Treasure of Sierra Madre. There is no "treasure" per se, but Collora's tale of shifting loyalties among a group of aliens and their prisoner - stranded after a crash on an alien world - brings to mind classic movies about desperate, selfish men in who would rather die than work together to survive.

Shot on a microscopic budget in Mexico, the film's concept design is fantastic. Collora's greatest strength lies in creating settings of rich depth and designing characters who simply kick ass. It's easy to forget you're watching what is basically a labor of love when the design is so stunning and cool.

Hunter Prey asks a question that has preoccupied a lot of recent science fiction, from Doctor Who to the new Star Trek movie: When somebody has exterminated your whole planet, what do you do? One of Hunter Prey's characters is the only remaining member of his species, and a large part of the film is about whether he's justified in trying to exterminate the species that committed genocide against his own.

So when can you see it? Collora has just completed the movie, and is working out details on a distribution deal, but hopefully you'll have a chance to look at it in 2010. For now, revel in these exclusive stills from the movie.

The Wikipedia entry for the book says* that They'd Rather Be Right, also published as The Forever Machine, "has often been considered the worst novel ever to win a Hugo." So it was with muted enthusiasm that I logged into Amazon and ordered a used copy. (The book is no longer being printed, as best I can tell, although I see it's available for the Kindle.) I confess, too, that I didn't dive right in when the mailperson delivered it a few days later.

As it turned out, once I actually started reading, I was pleasantly surprised. This should come as no shock — first, my expectations were low, and second, the Wiki entry doesn't even have a citation for its claim; the only external link from it is to this review by Dave Langford (himself a Hugo winner in several categories), although the review is indeed unequivocally negative.

I'll certainly agree with Langford that Clifton and Riley do more telling than showing in this novel, and I'm of the opinion too that this is generally a bad thing. And I'll even buy that They'd Rather Be Right is "an implausible award-winner," as he puts it. And yet...

The story is about three men on the run — two professors and a grad student. They're in hiding in San Francisco because they've built a supercomputer into which only pure facts — no assumptions, no theories — have been programmed. The supercomputer, Bossy, isn't quite an artificial intelligence, because she never demonstrates any individual initiative, but she can tell right from wrong, and in the mildly dystopic future setting of the book, where the government uses "opinion control" to keep the public in line, she's seen as a threat to humanity's place of primacy. Or something. It's not entirely clear what the public's initial problem is with Bossy, and that lack of detail is the sort of problem that plagues the story.

The public is right to be concerned, though. What Bossy is, though it's never mentioned by name (probably because Vernor Vinge wasn't even a teenager at the time), is the Singularity. Is she the first Singularity in SF? I don't know. She's definitely the first in a Hugo-winning novel.

What Bossy can do is, through "psychosomatic therapy," take a normal person and erase years of accumulated stress from their cells, essentially resetting the person, freeing them from a lifetime of frustrations and problems stemming from the unfounded assumptions that start afflicting everyone shortly after birth — and making them more or less permanently young. The catch is that the patient has to be willing to give up all the biases and prejudices, about themselves and others, that have been pounded into them.

Yeah, it's a little silly, but far from the silliest idea in SF. And it's a metaphor, and Clifton and Riley's telling is such that you can suspend your disbelief without much trouble. (Certainly, their recognition that you have to want to change for psychotherapy to work rings truer than the Freudian bits in their Hugo predecessor.) And although Dave Langford is arguably right in his review that the big idea here is "lamentably undeveloped," on the other hand, there are a lot of different ways to write a good book. They'd Rather Be Right does have a lot — like, a lot — of those sort of pontificatory passages about How Dumb People Are and How Smart We Could Be. And I can certainly empathize with readers who hate that shit. At the same time, plenty of great authors — Heinlein, Asimov, Card, Simmons, Stephenson, and innumerable others – have done it with frequency, and it can be very satisfying.**

And in They'd Rather Be Right's case, it might even be healthy, because the one core idea the book focuses on — again and again — is How Little We Know, and how reflexively we adopt and cling to what we think we know as truth. Proponents of hard science fiction lament the dearth of scientific accuracy in the genre, but far more important to me than whether a fictional technology is possible is driving home an idea that is the very foundation of science: that we only know what we know, and that what we know could change at any moment, subject to additional data. Science's job is not to preclude.

Rather does some other things well, too: Its handling of telepathy rings utterly true; and if you've read as much Marshall McLuhan as I have, you may find its notion of multi-valued facts, as well as its calling-out of the specialist mind-set, eerily prescient. And the workout at the end of the book — tycoon Howard Kennedy's solution to the Bossy problem — isn't stunningly original, but Slashdot types should appreciate it. (The final chapter, however, could be cut completely and the story would be better for it.)

Anyway, I can see how it was an implausible award-winner. But still, it reminded me, several times over, not to assume anything I don't actually know (like how good a book I haven't read is), and it did so in a way that'll stick. I'm not sure I'd run out and hunt down a hard copy if I were you, but think about getting it if you've got a Kindle.

*At least, as of this writing. Wikipedia changes, you know.

**The tone and style of They'd Rather Be Right are especially reminiscent of another classic work of science fiction that usually doesn't get regarded as such: Atlas Shrugged. Clifton and Riley aren't as compelling of novelists as Ayn Rand, but their philosophy holds up a lot better under scrutiny; one could do worse than administer their book as an antidote to hers.

"Blogging the Hugos" appears every other Sunday. In the next installment, on November 15: Double Star, by Robert Heinlein, from 1956.

Moff's real name is Josh Wimmer, and he can usually be found here.