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.