A Quick Glance Around the Geek-o-Sphere

According to Board Game News, Twilight Creations' Zombie Town has cleared customs and is ready to ship.

Twilight Creations is a company with a seemingly singular obsession with Zombies. I own quite a few of their games and am especially fond of When Darkness Comes which combines Board game quickness with some Roleplaying elements.

Steve Meretzky has an article up on what we can learn from board games.

The article is reminiscent of some of the comments in Steven Johnson's Everything Bad is Good for You and John Derbyshire's surprised comments regarding Age of Empires. I love it when curmudgeons find value in "pop" things.

Variety's Tom McLean gets ready for New York Comic Con. He also points out that "Graphic Novels" are the most popular format in the medium.

I don't always like the use of the term "graphic novel" to describe collections of the periodicals. To me Blankets was a graphic novel, Identity Crisis (DC Comics) is a collection of periodicals (a "trade" if you will), so is Watchmen for that matter.

SciFiChick has a list of SciFI "One Hit Wonders."

I may not agree that all of these are wonders, but it is a good list of thirteen shows that never got past season one.

In Tanzania a Bat Demon is blamed for sexual assaults.

Can I really add anything to that? Go Zotzilaha!

Evil Dead: The Musical

How the hell did I miss this?!

Robocop vs. Terminator

Buck, over at No Blasters, has embedded an awesome Robocop vs. Terminator video and provided links to two follow up vids.

Oprah: Huckster or Dupe?

Brian Lowry, television critic over at Variety, discusses Oprah Winfrey's inclusion of psychics, self-help gurus, and other snake oil salesmen in today's column. Mr. Lowry attacks the soft, approving, and non-critical way that Oprah treats theses guests. He is essentially arguing that, given the high esteem with which people view her, she should be skeptical of those who offer her audience "pat answers" to potentially difficult problems.

No argument from me, but Lowry doesn't discuss Larry King's obsession with both psychics and space aliens. No one can deny Larry King's influence, he dominates his particular niche, yet Lowry doesn't use his interviews as a comparison. King, too, presents people like Sylvia Brown with little to no critical analysis. When King did have James Randi on in 2001, Randi challenged Brown to prove her abilities. Since 2001, Brown has been back on Larry King Live. To my knowledge, James Randi has not. Even though Sylvia Brown has never followed through on her promise to prove her abilities.

Why do those who are in trusted media positions so readily embrace people who are taking advantage of other peoples sorrow? Is Oprah, or for that matter Larry King, a huckster or a dupe?

Preparing for 300

When it comes to historical dramas, one often wonders what the thoughts of scholars of a particular subject think about films depicting that subject. When watching a film about the Crusades, one wants to know what medieval scholars think about the film as a whole product.

No one expects historical dramas to be perfectly accurate, but one does expect them to capture the feel of the times and to be compelling stories. There are exceptions to the above statement, especially with regard to biblical films where some people do expect perfect accuracy, but by and large the audience wants to know that a film is entertaining and not a mockery of the era it is representing. Let me give what I think are two good examples. Kingdom of Heaven has many historical inaccuracies, but the more I watch the film, the more I am drawn in by the sense of the film and its imagery. The film genuinely transports me away from the present and into a faux version of the Crusades. Timeline has an almost opposite effect. As much as I enjoyed Crichton's book which provided the foundation for the movie version, I dislike the movie more each time I view it. Sadly, I have seen this film around six times because I have friends who enjoy the movie, and friendship is more important than agreeing whether a film is good or not. For me, Timeline's problem is that the film completely ignores the underlying argument of the book, chiefly that the "Dark Ages" weren't anywhere near as dark as the Renaissance claimed it to be. Every time I see Timeline, I keep asking myself, "Where did the $80 million go?"

Next month sees the opening of Frank Miller's 300 on the big screen. The Battle of Thermopylae has been one of my favorite subjects to read about/watch for a long time. My first exposure to the famous battle was Rudolph Maté's 1962 classic, The 300 Spartans. I saw it at a tender young age when I was cutting my teeth on all kinds of Sword and Sandal films, most of which had some kind of supernatural element. The 300 Spartans was different. The heroes didn't win the day, they died heroically. I have watched the film numerous times since and, while it does seem dated, it inspires me every time. I guess you can't go too wrong as long as you include the "big lines" from Herodotus.



I am excited about Frank Miller's version. The graphic novel was good, though there was significant artistic license. The previews look beautiful and Gerard Butler, who was the best thing about Timeline, looks to be a very good Leonidas. Being excited, I did what I usually do and surfed the internet searching for speculation by scholars familiar with the subject. I was pleasantly surprised to find more than mere speculation. Frank Miller, and film director Zack Snyder, gave classical scholar Victor Davis Hanson a preview screening. Both claim to be big fans of VDH, a fandom which includes me.

In an interview with Rebecca Murray, Zack and Frank were quoted as saying:

Zack Snyder: He’s a frickin genius. He’s a Greek historian and we showed him the movie because I wanted him to write a forward to the Making Of book. I was a little nervous to be honest, because I wasn’t sure how he’d react. And Kurt Johnstad who he and I worked on the screenplay together, he actually also is a huge fan of Victor Davis Hanson. He went up to show him the movie at his house.

Frank Miller: I mean, jumping back to Victor Davis Hanson, it was right in the middle of maybe our first conversation that Zack brought his name up, not realizing that he was citing my favorite non-fiction writer in the whole universe.

When I read these words, my excitement increased. But it was upon reading Victor Davis Hanson's review of 300 that the film went from "must see" to "will murder to see." VDH gives the film a glowing review over at his site (though it should be noted that the graphic novel is being released by Dark Horse and not Black Horse). He states in the summary of his review, "most importantly, 300 preserves the spirit of the Thermopylae story. The Spartans, quoting lines known from Herodotus and themes from the lyric poets, profess unswerving loyalty to a free Greece. They will never kow-tow to the Persians, preferring to die on their feet than live on their knees."

I can't wait.

Jet Li to Play Mummy in Mummy 3

Prepare to witness the wrath of Jet Li and a terracotta when the son of Rick and Evelyn O'Connell unearths more than he bargained for in The Mummy 3. According to Stax at IGN, Jet Li will star in the upcoming Mummy sequel which will focus on the child of the adventurers from the first film.

When I first read there was going to be a new Mummy movie, I was a little concerned. I didn't like the second one as much as the first. In fact, I was becoming wary of all the Universal horror remakes after Van Helsing, but getting Jet Li to star in a movie directed by the director of Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story is enough geek-nip to overcome any fears I might have.

We're talking Jet Li here!! And Mummies!! And terracotta warriors!! And the Forbidden City!!

Hat tip to Anne Thompson of the Hollywood Reporter.

All we need are Ninjas, Pirates, Dinosaurs, and Giant Robots to make a film completely invincible to any criticism. Ooh, ooh, and cowboys...zombies...

Just so long as there are no mummy-pygmies...

Piracy and the Los Angeles Economy

According to the Los Angeles Times, there are about 100,000 people in the Los Angeles area who might like to have words with Cory Doctorow if they knew where to find him.

According to a study by the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp, piracy costs 100,000 people across 9 industries there jobs because of lost sales in 2005. I know that Mr. Doctorow thinks that DRM and other measures to protect that antiquated idea known as copyright are evil. God forbid you actually claim ownership of something you create. You see once you make something it belongs to the collective interwebconsciousness and not to you. You are merely a part of the Species Being and once you accept that your concepts of individual rights are mere selfishness made manifest you will be as free from slavery as your pirated creations are from cost.

If only all 100,000 of these people knew that Cory was a visiting professor at USC. They could just march to campus to protest his opinions. Of course, his employment at the University (and as editor of Boing Boing) means that piracy only costs 99,999 jobs. He is, after all, employed to advocate piracy.

I doubt that any of the 100,000 people who are unemployed because "information wants to be free yo" will bother to march to USC in protest. That would require them to know who he is.

Lichtenstein Revisted

When it comes to the Pop Art of Roy Lichtenstein, I am of two minds. One the one hand, I like the fact that he demonstrated that the draftsmanship of comic books was worthy of being considered Art. On the other hand, his demonstrations pretty much had the exact opposite effect when it comes to how the art world looked at comics. Most people look at a Lichtenstein and they thing that he elevated the image by making the common into the grand, the low into the high. Personally, I think those people are absolutely nuts.

I like the Lichtenstein comic series, but his artwork is actually inferior in craft to the ones that he lifted whole cloth from the pages of the "funny mags." Alex Beam of the Boston Globe has an article discussing whether or not Lichtenstein was a Creator or a Copycat that was written last October. It's a good read, and it direct you to David Barsalou's enlightening site "Deconstructing Roy Lichtenstein." At the deconstructing site, Barsalou displays many of Lichtenstein's most famous pieces next to the comic pages they are "inspired" by. I'll leave it to you to decide whether the images are copycats or not, but I will say that the original version of "Kiss II" with the weird "emanation" lines is far more moving aesthetically than the "explosion" that Lichtenstein gives it and that the different backgrounds (in that one particular image) changes the meaning significantly. The Lichtenstein Foundation adamantly asserts that Lichtenstein added considerable value and alterations to the images that inspired him, but that's their job.


I am reminded of a conversation in The Philosophy of Andy Warhol where Andy is discussing Art with "Damian."

Damian: "I guess you have to take a lot of risks to be famous in any field...For instance, to be an artist."

Andy: "Any time you slice a salami, you take a risk."

Damian: "No, but I mean for an artist--"

Andy: "An artist!!...What do you mean, an 'artist'? An artist can slice a salami, too! Why do people think artists are special? It's just another job."

Damian: "But to become a famous artist you had to do something that was 'different.' And if it was 'different,' then it means you took a risk, because the critics could have said it was bad instead of good."

Andy: "In the first place,...they usually did say it was bad. And in the second place, if you say that artists take 'risks,' it's insulting to the men who landed on D-Day, to stunt men, to baby-sitters, to Evel Knievel, to stepdaughters, to coal miners, and to hitch-hikers, because they're the ones who really know what 'risks' are."

I just love the fact that he says that "artists" don't take risks, Evel Knievel takes risks. Though I imagine, if you pressed him, Warhol might say that Knievel also made art. But that is another discussion. I just wanted to highlight the Evel Knievel quote because I am going to see Ghost Rider this evening and Johnny Blaze is nothing if not inspired by Evel Knievel...but with a flaming head.

Spend Some Quick Quality Time with "The Dude"

Guy With the Glasses has put together quite a few "5 Second Movies," including one of my favorite comic riffs on noir The Big Lebowski. Without further ado, here's the dude's tale in 5 seconds. Okay, it's really around 20 seconds, but the title claims 5. Sadly, the abridged version lacks the nihilists.

You can watch more of Guy With the Glasses' 5 second mania over at his site on You Tube.

An Edgy Argument for Aesthetics

After reading Hal Duncan's recent apology for aesthetics I am reminded that two of the major writers in the field were moral philosophers as well. Both Kant and Hegel wrote about and discussed aesthetics, Kant made deep connections between aesthetics and the moral imperative. One might even notice that Edmund Burke was a dabbler in this particular field.

Conservatism and Anna Nicole Smith

When one thinks of how conservatives might react to the recent death of pop culture figure Anna Nicole Smith, one imagines many different reactions. The first that jumps to mind is a Thomas Hibbs-ian commentary on how Anna Nicole's life was a perfect example of how nihilism manifests in popular culture and how any obsession with Anna Nicole is an obsession with the void. One might also imagine what Rod Dreher of National Review might write given the less than kind things he has had to say about her in the past.

What one might not expect is that they might find a heart-felt eulogy in the pages of the Weekly Standard. This is especially true given the way that the media writ large has been treating her recent death. It is an odd thing to see what is often private sorrow, turned into public spectacle.

My favorite line from the piece, written by comedian Larry Miller, "We all have a lot to be forgiven, because, you see, like it or not, we're all part of the mob. No: We are the mob."

His description reminds me of other portrayals of the media consuming mob. One can only wonder where Homer Simpson and his large hands are. That's not a cartoon reference for those wondering.

Movie Lists for Geeks

The Houston Star Chronicle has a list of 15 "geek movies to see before you die." I can't really disagree with any of his choices. I'm a geek, I've seen all the movies listed, and some multiple times. It has some of the true geek classics, and even has two Shatner films (both Star Trek), so kudos for that.

He also links to another list called "81 movies for geeks that do not suck," which has the added bonus of being cataloged by the particular geekdom to which the film would most appeal. I've seen all of those as well, but I wouldn't agree that they all don't suck. Swordfish is pretty bad. It features both "fast typing" as a substitute for activating algorithms when hacking and has an over the top John Travolta. Top Secret and Real Genius are also stinkers. I might like them, but there is no way I think that Real Genius doesn't suck. It just sucks in a lovable 80s comedy kind of way.

I thought I'd add to the mix by including some films that every "Gamer Geek" should watch. Beware, some of these are really bad.

• Beastmaster: This movie used to be on the TV so much at my house that we started calling HBO "Hey Beastmaster's On."


• Cloak and Dagger: You knew this would be on the list, it has to be. Come on. A kid stops an evil spy ring with the help of his Super Spy roleplaying game character? How much more gamer geek can you get?


• Hawk the Slayer: The Lord of the Rings books might have inspired the creators of roleplaying games, but this film is an accurate portrayal of what the "shared experience" of any gaming session would look like if it were a movie.


• E.T. the Extra Terrestrial: They are playing D&D in the opening sequence, no more reason needed


• TAG: The Assassination Game: Linda Hamilton stars in this film where a first generation live action rpg game based on Steve Jackson Games' Killer goes wrong. One of the players goes crazy and stars really killing all the other players. Good stuff.


• Gotcha: It's TAG: The Assassination Game meets Cloak and Dagger. It's fun, funny, and Anthony Edwards has a big yellow pencil.


• The 300 Spartans: Classic sword and sandals film, with ample quotes from Herodotus.


• Jason and the Argonauts: Remember when your high level PCs almost suffered a TPK fighting a small group of skeletons? Me either, but this movie makes me believe it could happen. One of the best parts of the film is the gathering of the Argonauts. A Harryhausen classic.


• The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad: Kerwin Matthews proves that Sinbad doesn't need to be "beefy" to be a compelling hero. The movie features both "Dungeons" and "Dragons."


• The Golden Voyage of Sinbad: A great "quest" movie starring Tom Baker of Dr. Who and Dungeons and Dragons fame.


• Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger: It's all about Minoton.



• The Valley of Gwangi: This film has almost everything. Gypsies? Check. Dinosaurs? Check. Cowboys? Check. What more could you want? An rpg based on this movie, that's what. Well, you could just buy Deadlands, Cadillacs and Dinosaurs, or Broncosaurus Rex

Have any more gamer geek movies? Other than The Gamers that is.

Steven Barnes on "Honesty in Writing"

I have begun frequenting Steven Barnes blog of late. Partly because he's as local author and partly because he was one of the authors of a book I keep rereading every year called Dream Park. I always thought that I kept coming back to the book because I am a huge rpg geek and I wanted to read about an idealized roleplaying experience. After reading Barnes' comments on honesty in writing, I have to add that it might just be the humanity and plausibility of this wild piece of fiction that keeps drawing me in.

Here's a clip of what Barnes has to say, if you want more you'll have to head over to his blog:

do you really believe what you just wrote? Would a real human being, in this situation, really do or say what you just wrote? Even if it’s a fantasy story, would a real being, evolved within a universe of fantastic potential, behave in this fashion?

The post is worth reading for any of you potential authors/screenwriters out there. Let me add that one of the writers recently added to my "it is imperative that I read every book by this author list", John Crowley, has said "I think that if a novel has no whiff at all of the impossible, the fabulous, the inexplicable, the metaphysical as the Romantics meant the word, then it isn't very realistic, because the real (this, our shared physical and biological) world does have those intimations in it. (When the intimations become certainties, you have fantasy.)"

Southern California Hates Baseball History

In April of 2003, The Sporting News published a little book titled Roadside Baseball. Given my love for America's pastime, I noticed the book when it first appeared in the baseball section of my local Borders. I am given to browsing that section just as the void ends and baseball season begins, so it was natural that I would find this book just as it was released. I read the book discovering lots of little tidbits of baseball lore, when I came across a particular gem which highlights the one thing I find most frustrating about Los Angeles.

I really like LA but it is a city that seems to be continually trying to forget its past, maybe even destroy it. If America is a country which has no past, then LA is a city that doesn't seem to want one. One constantly reads stories about classic eateries, like the Brown Derby, being demolished. There is some wonderful deco architecture in town, but sometimes you have to really dig to find it.

Case in point -- On October 31, 1924, the one and only Babe Ruth came to the Brea Bowl where he played an exhibition game against Hall of Fame pitcher Walter Johnson. The field where they played this historic game is now the Gateway Shopping Center. So if I want to visit the place where Babe Ruth hit the, arguably, longest homerun ever, I can go eat a Fatburger while looking at a mall. Ironically, the Original Fatburger location might be demolished.

The other day I found this nice YouTube video by Chris Epting, author of Roadside Baseball commemorating the event.

Joss Whedon Polite as He Leaves Wonder Woman Project

I was one of those who was beyond excited at the thought of Joss Whedon directing an adaptation of DC Comics' Wonder Woman character. Whedon has directed, and created, wonderful superheroic female characters in the past, and I can think of almost no one better to tell the story of one of DC's "big three" (the other two are Batman and Superman). Alas, it was not to be and Joss Whedon has stepped away from the project.

After reading the brief ICV2 blurb, which sited "script differences" as the culprit and left thoughts of narrowminded suits dangling in my mind, I was relieved to read the Hollywood Reporter article on the subject. The article describes in much greater detail the causes, and includes comments by Whedon himself. Whedon's comments are extremely gracious, which one can attribute to two things (among others). The first thought that might come to mind is that Whedon is being polite because he wants to be able to work on future Time-Warner projects, including scripting comics, in other words self interest. The second is that Whedon is doing good press because he is a nice guy. Given how nice he is to people who randomly stalk him at comic conventions this is not unimaginable.

What people won't probably think of is that Whedon might be making the comments because they are true, this is especially true of the fanboy types who still blame "suits" who wanted giant spiders for the demise of Kevin Smith's Superman screenplay. If you believe that, I have some prime real estate in New York I'd like to sell you.

Before you all begin anti-corporate screeds, let me give you a little of what Whedon said. I'll give you gust enough to see what I'm talking about without violating Borys Kit's copyright on the article.

According to the Hollywood Reporter Whedon stated, "Everybody knows how long I was taking, what a struggle that script was, and though I felt good about what I was coming up with, it was never gonna be a simple slam-dunk" and "The worst thing that can happen in this scenario is that the studio just keeps hammering out changes and the writer falls into a horrible limbo of development."

In other words, Whedon was taking a long time to write a screenplay for which Warner had set a large amount of money aside. And, as anyone who has read Rob Long's book Conversations with My Agent knows, "development hell" is a bad thing for both product and creators. Does any real fan of comic books want a screenplay that has been "patched" together through a long and difficult process which includes 6 or more screenwriters? Does anyone remember Catwoman? That was exactly what happened with that film and we ended up with one of the worst comic movies of all time.

Seems to me that contrary to what the most skeptical might imagine, the reasons for Whedon leaving the project aren't solely due to corporate mindset. It seems they are do to a combination of corporate mindset and a genuine desire for a quality product.

Maybe they can talk Doug Liman into doing the project, that would be awesome.

The Future Was Only 11 Days Late

SCI FI Channel has finally revealed their "deep" entry into the realm of Internetelevision, SCI FI Drive-In. When SCI FI announced the broadband channel, the stated a release date of January 21st, but I wasn't able to find the site until this morning.

So far the offerings are pretty limited, but worth a visit. If they meet their proposed content this will become one of my favorite sites of all time. Currently, you can watch The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Metropolis, both films that you should rush out and see immediately.

What are you doing reading this still? Go watch Metropolis, then come back and complain that the Flash Gordon serials aren't available yet. Right now I have to settle for The Lost City, Undersea Kingdom, and Radar Men from the Moon. I guess that can tide me over for a while.

Who am I kidding? This is awesome!