Did a Google search just for the heck of it. I wonder how quickly those numbers will climb…
Category: Sci-Fi/Fantasy
Insert code name here
Been watching Heroes and loving it. Recently we read a list of names for the characters’ alter-egos. Inspired by this, I bring you my inventions:
Charlie – Flashdrive
Claire – Rebound (or, if you want silly, Anti-Maim)
D.L. – Fade
Eden – Hpnotiq (because somebody’s got to have a cool alternate spelling)
Isaac – Visionary
Micah – Wiretap (because I think Spark would get me in copyright trouble)
Nathan – Rocketman (I’m not the man they think I am at home . . . )
Niki – Evil Twin
Peter – Tabula Rasa (because anything with Mirror sounds too much like Mirror Master)
Sanjog – Dreamtime
I can’t think of anything for Mysterious Haitian Dude, and I just can’t bring myself to use Thought Police for Matt or Mr. Fusion for Ted. And I agree with the OP that Hiro is just Hiro because he rules.
Nightmare Before Christmas: 3-D Edition
This weekend we went out to see The Prestige, which was quite good. The next theater over was running The Nightmare Before Christmas in 3-D, and we figured, what the heck? After the first movie, we got tickets for another.
The Nightmare Before Christmas is one of my favorite movies, but for some reason the 3D release didn’t really interest me when I first heard about it. It felt too gimmicky, like when they project a regular movie on an IMAX screen even though the movie itself isn’t really made for that format.
I got a little more interested when I read an article about how they did it. ILM essentially re-did the entire movie as a computer-animated film, matching each frame exactly, then shifted the virtual camera over a bit. One eye gets the original film, and the other eye gets the CGI copy.
I was astonished at how seamlessly they matched. I couldn’t remember which eye got the original, and I honestly couldn’t tell. Most CGI-animated films have a cartoony, sort of vinyl look to them, which would not blend at all, but ILM is used to matching their CGI to photographed actors and sets, which I suppose makes them the ideal animation studio for this sort of thing. It had to be the most effective reformatting of a film that I’ve ever seen—compare it to colorizing movies, or the Star Wars special editions (which were done by the same effects house, but with older technology)—because it didn’t detract (or distract) from what was there in the first place.
Of course, it wasn’t long before I stopped looking at the technical merits and just settled into watching the movie.
Having re-watched it, I’m now very interested to see what director Henry Selick does with the movie adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s book, Coraline
Dear George: Why I’m not buying the Star Wars Limited Edition DVDs
I grew up with Star Wars. It was the key fandom of my childhood. I don’t remember discovering Star Wars because I did so before I could really form long-term memories. I started reading the novels when Heir to the Empire came out, and the Dark Empire and Tales of the Jedi comics. I was thrilled to see the special editions in theaters after nearly 15 years, even though some of the changes, like Greedo firing first and the way that you restored the Jabba scene,* didn’t make sense.
And while I’ve lost some interest over time—the novels and comics have gotten so complex that I wouldn’t have time to keep up with them if I wanted to, and the prequels were less engaging than the original series—I stayed on board for the entire prequel trilogy. Grumbling at times, but enjoying them nonetheless.
When you announced that only the special editions would be available on videotape, I was disappointed, because I liked both versions. When you announced that the films would be changed again for the DVDs, I was disappointed for the same reason. But I bought the DVDs, and (mostly) enjoyed them.
So when you announced that the original versions of the original trilogy would be available on DVD, I was thrilled! Continue reading
Mary Shelley’s Bride of Frankenstein
I’ve been working my way through the classic Universal Frankenstein movies, some of which I’m sure I’ve seen before, and some of which I’m sure I haven’t. Of course, they get filtered through having read the book at least three times and having watched Young Frankenstein many times.
Last weekend I watched Bride of Frankenstein. It’s a good movie, but the framing sequence bugs me. In it, Lord Byron is telling Mary Shelley how much he enjoyed her tale of horror, and proceeds to revisit the high points in the 1935 version of “Previously, in Frankenstein…” Unfortunately, just about everything he mentions wasn’t in her book! (Neither the 1818 or 1831 versions.) He then bemoans that it should have ended so abruptly, at which point she says something like, “Ended? That wasn’t the end at all!” and proceeds to tell Percy Shelley and Lord Byron the tale of, well, the next movie.
All this, despite the fact that the movies clearly take place in the 20th century, though they at least went to the effort to dress Byron and the Shelleys in period costumes.
On one hand, it’s a nifty conceit, made somehow more appropriate by casting the same actress, Elsa Lanchester, as both Mary Shelley and the Bride.
On the other hand, it’s emblematic of Hollywood’s mixed demand and contempt for original source material and its authors. This is the industry that brought us both Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, trading on the author’s name as a claim of authenticity while still taking things in their own direction. (To be fair, both movies made efforts to include aspects of the original stories that are usually left out. And MSF followed quite well until about 5 minutes before the end, at which point it took a 90° turn and flew off into another movie entirely.)
Neil Gaiman says it best in his short story, “The Goldfish Pool and Other Stories” (in Smoke and Mirrors):
She managed a pitying look, of the kind that only people who know that books are, at best, properties on which films can be loosely based, can bestow on the rest of us.
Minicon: LA Sci-Fi, Flash and Teen Titans: Trouble in Tokyo
Went to the Los Angeles Comic Book and Science Fiction Convention on Sunday. I’d only been to one before, last June, and it was pretty pathetic. The dealer’s room was sparse, and hardly anyone was in attendance. Or maybe they were all in the movie (IIRC it was a Wonder Woman fan film). All this seen through the context of my search for affordable copies of 1940s-era Flash Comics led to me spending a grand total of an hour there before leaving.
In fact, I wouldn’t have gone back if it weren’t for three things:
- The writers on the new Flash series would be there, signing autographs.
- One of them posted a reminder on a message board that I frequent. (I would have looked at the calendar next Friday and realized that I missed it.)
- They were screening Teen Titans: Trouble in Tokyo, a full-length movie that will otherwise only be shown on Cartoon Network.
With #3, that meant Katie wanted to come along too.
So we got up early (for a weekend), went out to breakfast at Ruby’s and drove up to LA.
I was shocked to see a line to get in. And the place was comparatively packed. I could swear there were twice as many dealers, and 2 or 3 times as many attendees. My best guess is that a lot of people stayed home in June since it was only a month before San Diego Comic-Con.
I cruised the dealer’s room, found some comic book adaptations of The Colour of Magic (1/4) and The Light Fantastic (full set), and a couple of Elric books, looked at what I thought might be the autograph table to see if Bilson and DeMeo were there (the Flash writers), didn’t see them, and joined Katie as we waited for the movie to start.
And waited.
And waited.
You see, the actor who does the voice for Beast Boy was signing autographs (and using it as a way to collect money for PETA — you got an autograph by making a $2 donation). They wanted everyone in line to get an autograph. He wanted to keep reminding people that they really should pick up some of the PETA literature he had up front.
The movie was supposed to start at 12:30, and didn’t get underway until at least 1:00. Fortunately it was a lot of fun… until 45 minutes in, when the DVD started skipping and catching. And no one did anything about it. The guy sitting at the control table, as near as anyone could tell, wasn’t even trying to do anything. After a few minutes — yes, minutes — of this, people started leaving in earnest.
I decided to make one more circuit and see if I could find the main autograph table, and it turned out that it was the table I thought, and I just hadn’t recognized them (one of them did most of the talking at the Comic-Con panel I went to, and he shaved off his beard between then and now). I spoke to them briefly, got them to sign the new Flash #1 and the Flash TV Special from 1990. (They were really impressed at the condition it was in, and asked where I got it. I explained that I’d picked it up when it was new, and kept it that whole time.)
About this time the people running the movie finally got around to fixing, cleaning, or whatever they needed to do to the DVD, so we got to see the rest of the movie.
Trouble in Tokyo was very good. The story was a bit predictable in places, but it kept up a manic pace and had tons of humor. There was a travel montage early on that was just one joke after another, and some drop-down-funny parts scattered through the film.
The one that practically had us on the floor was in a sequence with a sushi chef trying to convince Cyborg to leave his all-you-can-eat restaurant by handing him ever-more-ridiculous dishes.
We still left after maybe 4 hours, but it was an interesting four hours!
(Originally posted at LiveJournal)
Worldcon Los Angeles / LACon IV: Through an Orange Haze
The cold that had been threatening me all last week finally hit on Friday morning, and I’ve spent the last four days in haze induced by a mixture of the cold and DayQuil. I actually went home early on Friday, dropped onto the couch, watched some Netflixed Justice League, and felt like I was staying up late when I went to bed at 9:00 or 9:30.
Out of sheer determination I dragged myself to Worldcon/L.A.con IV on Saturday. Katie stayed home since her main experiences with SF-themed cons were a few post-millennial Loscons, and Loscon was really going downhill at the time. Fortunately, this was more like I remember past Worldcons and earlier Loscons.
My parents are SF fans, and they regularly took me and my brother with them to conventions. As far back as I can remember, it was a Thanksgiving Weekend tradition to visit family on Thursday, have Friday free, then go to Loscon on Saturday and Sunday. As for Worldcons, I’d been to three before: L.A.Con II in 1984, ConFrancisco(?) in 1993, and L.A.Con III in 1996. (Hey, if Worldcon is on the order of a 10-mile drive, you may as well take advantage of it.)
So I staggered through the dealer’s room, the art show, the exhibit hall with original Star Trek costumes, genre cars like the Batmobile and the DeLorean from Back to the Future, mock-ups of the lunar lander and rovers. I went to some panels on things like “What will future historians get wrong about our time,” the rise of theocracy, fixing things that go wrong in space, and what past sci-fi got wrong about the present.
There was a group (IIRC, from a local college) with a bunch of remote-control robots. As I walked by, there was a college-aged group sitting and eating lunch from In-N-Out, one of whom had placed her hamburger (still mostly wrapped) on a little remote-control car, and was driving it around the floor, dodging obstacles (like feet). Then tragedy struck, and the burger fell off.
While I was in the art show, someone started up music nearby. The song sounded familiar, but I couldn’t place it until it reached the chorus. It was the “Make your own kind of music” song that was used in last year’s Lost season opener! The music turned out to be the accompaniment to a dueling artists bit.
Someone had responded to Pluto’s demotion to “dwarf planet” and set up a display labeled Pluto Needs Rocks, all about a campaign to collect rocks and launch them at Pluto to increase its mass so it can clear out its orbit and get its status back as a planet. Yes, there was a collection box beneath the display. And yes, it had rocks in it.
I ended up running into my parents and some family friends, and we set up a time to meet and go to dinner. I figured I had enough time to drive home, pick up Katie, and come back, as long as we met outside the convention. Unfortunately, the freeway was backed up, and I realized there was no way we could have made it back in time. (One of the family friends had something to go to after dinner.) I called to cancel, and by the time I got home, I began to realize I wasn’t really in shape to continue driving. I realized later I’d been running on DayQuil and willpower, and my willpower had just run out for the day. So I ended up collapsing on the couch as soon as I walked in the door.