Hulu Recommendation Friday: Battlestar Galactica Classic

With today's news that Bryan Singer is signing on to direct a new Battlestar Galactica movie, inspired by the original series, it seems only appropriate that this Friday's Hulu recommendation be the Glen Larson epic.

Singer has a strong track record in genre films, with only one argument starting hiccup. Singer's X-men movies perfectly captured the tone of what made the Claremont/Byrne run of the comics so engaging, while simultaneously translating the narrative to a different medium. This was no small task and Singer should be rightfully praised -- especially since audiences would soon learn how easy it is to make a bad X-men movie when the third film in that franchise hit theaters.

Singer's one hiccup is his attempt to make an engaging and topical Superman film. His Superman Returns managed to simultaneously get everything right regarding how amazing Superman can be, while getting everything wrong about what makes the character great. The film is beautiful and follows in the footsteps of two excellent Superman films, ignoring the misguided 3rd and 4th films, but it is exceedingly flawed. While it is plausible that in the minutes following the ending of Superman II Kal-El would fly off into space to find news of his home -- especially after the meaningful final conversation with Jor-El -- Superman as deadbeat dad is still a painful concept with which to grapple. It also forgets the most critical aspect of Superman's personality, and the underlying reason Superman has a secret identity. There is no practical reason for Superman to have a secret identity. If Superman were Superman full time, no one would be at increased risk of villain attack. Unlike Spider-Man, Supes secret identity doesn't protect an "Aunt 'Em." Unlike Batman, his identity doesn't protect a vast fortune that can be used to aid the needy. Superman's having a human identity actually puts people at risk rather than protects them. His secret identity causes more problems than it solves. But it does do one thing, it allows him to become human and connect with community. Superman -- like the "perfected man" in Aristotle -- needs the city, that's why he has a secret identity. Singer would have been well served to remember this one fact. Still, the film is spectacularly beautiful and contains two of the best Superman sequences ever filmed. It is a work of contradictions.

The same may end up being true of Singer's Battlestar Galactica. All signs point to his version being closer to the vision of series creator Glen Larson. Larson's BSG was Mormonism as SF narrative. It was biblical allegory with a touch of humor. It was filled with hope in the face of despair. It was more Orson Scott Card than William Gibson, it was more Heinlein than Haldeman. For these reasons, a generation of viewers were engrossed each week as the show aired for its sole season -- we won't count Battlestar 1980. It was a perfect example of golden age SF Space Opera.

When Ron Moore -- who shall forever be known to Cinerati as the man who killed Kirk because Picard couldn't win a fist fight -- re-envisioned the franchise for his 73 episode run, he did so as a writer influenced by Gibson and Haldeman and the events of a post-9/11 world. The story was dark and hopeless, and featured a human civilization not worthy of saving. The colonies of Moore's BSG are craven and deserve destruction, but as individuals they are more human. The series is often praised for its writing, but such praise is misguided. The show is amazingly acted -- the cast does a phenomenal job -- but any series that ends with the ultimate SF cliche ("and their names were Adam and Eve") lacks the depth that its facade presents to the world at large. BSG is the poster child for a generation of viewers/readers who believe "grim means philosophically deep." For those who grew up on the SF of Heinlein and Asimov, deconstructive tales are refreshing. For those who grew up on the SF of Moorcock, Haldeman, and Gibson, deconstructive SF is stale.

I am among those who found BSG stale and staid, but well directed and acted. It is the "reconstructive" narrative that I find refreshing. Give me The Incredibles and Wall-E over most modern SF. Give me Old Man's War instead of Forever War. These are what I find well crafted, innovative, and refreshing.

Singer will have an arduous task ahead of him. Moore's BSG won critical acclaim and brought new audience to the IP, at the expense of losing some of the nostalgic crowd -- people like me. Larson's original is dated and overly campy, so it can't be directly remade. It must be properly reconstructed or those fans who were dissatisfied with Moore's work will still be dissatisfied. But it also has to have complex characters, something Moore's definitely had, or those newer BSG fans will reject the vision as well.

Singer has the same challenge he had with Superman Returns, presenting a narrative of hope that contains complex characters. It is likely any Battlestar he creates will contain some of the same flaws as Superman Returns. Given Singer's ability to craft beautiful visuals and given the stable of actors who frequent his films, I look forward to seeing Singer's Battlestar...flawed or not.

As always -- for those in the US -- hit play, then click on the full screen button and enjoy.

Anne Thompson, Toy Movies, District 9, and the Indie/Popular Divide

I am a great admirer of Anne Thompson and find the majority of her coverage of Hollywood to be insightful, and to be honest "must reading." But there are times when I just have to cross her name off of the Holiday card list, and her recent post discussing the merits of District 9 while excoriating Hollywood for making films like GI Joe is one of those times.

Certainly, Thompson is right to praise a film like District 9 which manages to bring to the big screen quality science fiction at a budget price. Geekerati plans to do a show this weekend begging the question, "is there an inverse relationship between budget and the quality of an SF film?" Where Anne wanders off into the hinterlands of privilege, snobbery, killjoydom, and filmic cultural selectivity is when she writes, "That’s why I want G.I. Joe to take a dive this weekend (sorry Lorenzo Di Bonaventura), not because I want Paramount to lose money but because I want the Transformers-blinded studios to see that derivative toy movies are not the only way to go." Even worse, she goes on to claim that Hollywood executives, "In their search for franchises and tentpoles... ignore the obvious: most of them were once originals, from Star Wars and Lethal Weapon to The Matrix and Raiders of the Lost Ark."

One find's it hard to believe that a journalist covering Hollywood could write such passages, that is unless the same journalist happens to be wearing her Blinders of Public Disdain +5. Apparently, Anne owns a pair of those not so rare magic items -- or maybe she has the powerful artifact Schiller's Monocle of Aesthetic Disdain. Whatever the case may be, her statements are not only disrespectful of a particular audience demographic (Gen X and younger males), but are just plain incorrect at one level -- she is correct in stating "studios often forget what their customers really want: something new that they’ve never seen before". She just forgets that they equally want something that they are nostalgic for.

It's one thing to assert Anne's wrongheadedness, but one must address the individual statements and analyze them as well.

First, why should Anne want GI JOE to fail because she "want[s] the Transformers-blinded studios to see that derivative toy movies are not the only way to go?" Is it necessary for studios to fail for them to see that movies inspired by nostalgia for a particular intellectual property aren't the only way to go?

Not a chance.

If the films should be required to fail, it should be because they fail to inspire the same level of awe that was created by the intellectual property audiences feel nostalgia for in the first place. Hollywood should make hundreds of "derivative toy movies" if they manage to capture the mystique of the original IP -- especially if they are profitable. Transformers has failed to do this twice, largely because they have erred to much on the side of making adolescents laugh and not enough on telling a good story. This is the opposite error that many childrens movies make today, the modern kid flick spends to much time making sure to wink at the adults in the audience and not enough time telling a compelling story. If Transformers 2 had fewer "ball" jokes, and a more coherent narrative, the film would have been amazing. Sadly, that was not the case. It's hard to say that Transformers had a derivative narrative, since it's hard to say what the narrative of the film even was -- other than giant robots blowing stuff up.

This isn't true of GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra. The Joe film managed to have an underlying narrative that was fairly original.

[Spoiler Alert that contains information that even those who saw the movie may not have understood] Cobra's plan was to replace the President of the United States with a Cobra agent so that when a major terrorist attack took place the world would turn to the US for leadership, only to end up under the direct control of the terrorist group behind the attack.[End Spoiler Alert]

That's a pretty cool underlying premise. The execution of the film is flawed, as the film tries to do to much in some areas and not enough in others, but that's not a particularly derivative story. In fact, in structure and execution one could argue that the GI JOE film is the true heir to the 007 films of Connery and Moore -- as the Craig movies are more a return to the tone and feel of the novels. One can argue that Joe wasted money on cast, money it didn't need to spend, since it is the IP and not the cast that brings one to a nostalgia fest, but one shouldn't argue that it was derivative. "Original?" No. "Awe Inspiring?" No. But if one imagines what the collective mind of 12 year old boys in 1984 want out of a Joe film, one gets a film pretty close to what ended up on the screen. That was the point, to fuel and feed off of nostalgia.

Even more to the point of it not being "necessary for studios to fail for them to see that movies inspired by nostalgia for a particular intellectual property aren't the only way to go?" Let's look at some very successful films from the past decade that break from the "tent pole" assumptions. My Big Fat Greek Wedding and Mama Mia! by themselves provide ample proof that lower budget movies aimed at a "non-tent pole" audience (read: not 18-35 males) can make an amazing amount of profit. It is necessary that non-extravaganzas be made and be successful for studios to see these films have value. The more that are made, the more that will be made...by the studios. Studios will go where the money is. It is easy to do a Net Present Value analysis of an existing IP, with an established fan base. It is much more difficult to do one on an unknown idea. You have to be willing to take a risk and lose money, and that's something that business people don't like to do. They don't like to spend good money after bad.

Want to watch your investment money disappear faster than an addiction to crystal meth? Invest in an independent movie that you believe in. Risky films are risky. That's why Hollywood, which is risk averse because it likes profits, doesn't make a lot of these films. Show them that the risk isn't as big as they believe, and you can and will see more films like Juno.

Never mind the logical fallacy that "toy movies" need to fail for studios to learn there are other options, even more egregious is Thompson's assertion that "most of them [tentpoles] were once originals, from Star Wars and Lethal Weapon to The Matrix and Raiders of the Lost Ark." Originals? Really? Are you serious? I'll give you The Matrix (just), but the others?

Can Thompson actually believe that Star Wars, a masterful combination of the narratives of Hidden Fortress and the Flash Gordon serials -- which includes frames lifted straight out of Flash Gordon, is original? Shoot me now. Star Wars is amazing, but it is highly derivative. It is homage.

The same is true for the Allan Quartermain inspired Raiders of the Lost Ark. Could this movie exist without King Solomon's Mines? Not a chance. Raiders is phenomenal because it captures the essence of the old serials and combines it with the raw fun of H. Rider Haggard's tales. As an aside, King Kong is a combination of Haggard's tales with Conan Doyle's The Lost World. Raiders appealed to a nostalgia in a particular generation and did it so well it created nostalgia in a new one.

If Thompson is even trying to hint at the fact that Hollywood's great movies were "original," I can already feel the milk bubbling through my nose from the laughter.

Gone with the Wind? Based on a novel.
Wizard of Oz? Based on a novel.
West Side Story? Based on a Broadway musical, based on Romeo and Juliet.
The Maltese Falcon (1941)? Based on a Dashiell Hammett novel and had three theatrical versions between 1931 and 1941. Three in a decade before they made a great version?!
Yojimbo? Based on Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest with a touch of The Glass Key thrown in for good measure.
Rashomon? Based on a short story.

I could go on and on and on. Hollywood isn't in the business of making "original" stories. Heck, film makers aren't in the business of making "original" stories. Hollywood is in the business of making money. Film makers are in the business of entertaining. Sometimes they entertain us with original ideas, and some times they entertain us with familiar ones. I put no preference on either category. I just want to be entertained...and sometimes educated when I'm feeling Aristotelian.

As for District 9? I'm excited about this combination of Alien Nation, V, and Cry Freedom. Though I do share some of Science Fiction author Steven Barnes' concerns.

Truth is, there is a lot of truth in Anne's article. Hollywood should remember that there is a relationship between risk and reward. The higher the risk, the greater the potential reward. Films like GI JOE may have a predictable NPV, but they aren't going to provide the high levels of profitability that something like My Big Fat Greek Wedding are going to bring.

Hollywood should take some risks.

But Anne...you need to stop hating the male Gen X and younger audience. We just want to be reminded of those afternoons when we and our friends made up stories while playing with our GI JOE and TRANSFORMERS action figures.

Hulu Recommendation Friday (on Monday) -- The Legend of the Seeker

Since 1994, Terry Goodkind's objectivist Sword of Truth has been flying off the shelves. The series combines objectivist philosophy with traditional fantasy storytelling to very good effect. If you ever wondered what a fantasy series written by Howard Roark would read like, the Sword of Truth series is a pretty good approximation.

The first novel, Wizard's First Rule, is the novel that suffers the most from "generic-itis." The overall story in the novel is very similar to the underlying narrative of Terry Brook's wonderful Sword of Shannara -- itself reminiscent of the Tolkien classic Lord of the Rings. Both Goodkind's and Brook's novels focus on the importance of Truth and the dispelling of "illusion." Both books are entertaining, but each approaches the central theme of Truth from a different perspective. Brook's Shannara series uses the more traditional fantasy toolkit of mythic tradition to advance his argument. Goodkind, on the other hand, uses the novel as a place to embed philosophic discussions. Beginning with the discussion of the titular "wizard's first rule," and not really ending in the first novel, the book continually examines the best tools for determining Truth.

Goodkind's books are entertaining and insightful, and one need not be an Objectivist to appreciate them.

The Legend of the Seeker television series is a very entertaining adaptation of the Goodkind series to the tv medium. Sam Raimi's production company Ghost House Pictures is affiliated with the show, but unlike Raimi's prior fantasy foray's Xena and Hercules this series doesn't fall as much into slapstick. Xena and Hercules were fantasy for Three Stooges fans (which includes Cinerati), but The Sword of Truth is fantasy for television fans.

As always, click play then click full screen and enjoy.

The Voice of a Suburban Generation: Director John Hughes Dead at 59

I am saddened by the death of film director John Hughes.

When I think of the 1980s, I think of two things -- High School and the movies of John Hughes. I don't know if John Hughes' films perfectly captured the high school experience my friends and I lived, or if his films shaped the way that we perceived the world around us. All I know is that John Hughes' early films have touched my heart in wonderful ways. I empathized with Molly Ringwald's character in Pretty in Pink. I wasn't one of the popular kids in school, but I wasn't one of the rebels either. My lot was somewhere between them all. When I watched The Breakfast Club, I saw a little of myself in all the male characters. None of them were me, but all of them were. I always wanted to be as self assured as Ferris Bueller, but felt like a working class version of Cameron.

But it wasn't just the teen films of Hughes that touched my heart. On the contrary, his films seemed to grow with me -- though some like Mr. Mom would be films my life would have to catch up to. In 1987 and 1988, Hughes wrote three films that have shaped the way I look at life and family.

Plains, Trains, and Automobiles is THE classic Thanksgiving film and Hughes keeps you laughing until the end...when you weep love for John Candy's character.

She's Having a Baby wonderfully captures the worry and stress of the soon to be father. When Jody and I were making our "family plans," I was constantly having flashbacks to the many times that she and I had watched the film. I didn't experience many of the anxieties that Kevin Bacon's character goes through. But when Clio was rushed off to NICU because she wasn't clearing the fluid out of her lungs and I had to simultaneously comfort my wife, accompany my other daughter Nora to her first bath, and run off to NICU to check up on my second twin, in a strange way it was Hughes' film that prepared me for the possible combination of joy, fear, sadness, and elation that accompanied the birth of Jody and my twins.

And then there's Uncle Buck. Who doesn't love Uncle Buck?

One could go on and on about how entertaining most of John Hughes' films were. One does wonder what happened after Home Alone that so many of Hughes' films became slapstick comedies about young children, though I imagine that might be an bi-product of being a grandfather. Besides, I kinda liked Drillbit Taylor -- which was his idea, if not screenplay.

Yes, I am saddened by the death of John Hughes, but I did find one thing that made me feel hopeful when I read the Hollywood Reporter obit. It included the clause, "He is survived by his wife of 39 years." It is nice to read that someone who wrote so well about family was married to the same woman for almost 4 decades. It's particularly nice when we live in times when we see so many public and messy divorces.

Thanks for the stories. Now...where to begin with the Hughes marathon. I think Vacation is a perfect place to start.

Gail Gygax and Family Want a Gary Gygax Memorial in Lake Geneva, WI

Reporting out of Janesville, WI, Kayla Bunge has a nice public interest story about Gail Gygax's desire to have a memorial built in Lake Geneva in memory the founder of much of modern gaming.

According to the article, Mrs. Gygax desires the statue be built in Library Park on the shore of Lake Geneva. I can write, based on personal experience, that Library Park would be a perfect location. The one time I visited Lake Geneva, I drove by the Gygax residence (I should have stopped by, but didn't) and spent some time on the shore of lovely Lake Geneva. It was a wonderful trip and is a beautiful location.

THE HURT LOCKER: Anne Thompson Interviews Kathryn Bigelow

Film news analyst/reporter, and sometime critic, Anne Thompson has migrated her insightful film industry column away from industry dinosaur Variety over to the IndieWire blog network. The column keeps its "Thompson on Hollywood" title and Thompson continues to provide high value content.

In a recent post, Thompson opines on the Oscar worthiness of Kathryn Bigelow's latest film THE HURT LOCKER which is an early dark horse candidate. Embedded below is the 8 minute interview Thompson recorded with Bigelow at the Toronto Film Festival.



Thompson's move to Indie Wire would seem to be a good match for the analyst. Historically, Thompson seems to favor "independent films" -- by which she typically means "art film" rather than movies like Evil Dead, though there are exceptions -- and it was always a slightly awkward fit at the industry oriented magazines like Variety and The Hollywood Reporter where she formerly hosted her columns. Her move from Variety comes after her print column had been canceled by the magazine and her duties had been completely shifted over to Variety's digital portal. She had been a Deputy Editor for the magazine before they made her a full-time blogger, a shift that no doubt included a substantial reduction in pay and benefits. Variety, like The Hollywood Reporter, doesn't quite seem to know how best to use the internet -- or print -- in its business model.

The move away from Variety appears, on the surface, to be less contentious than her move away from The Hollywood Reporter. When she left The Hollywood Reporter for Variety, The Hollywood Reporter made her leave her column masthead Risky Business behind. It didn't matter to THR that Thompson had been writing a column of that title since her days as an analyst at LA Weekly, they wanted to benefit from the reputation that Thompson had built up while working at THR. Risky Business has tried hard to live up to Thompson's legacy, but has continually fallen short.

This blogger's respect for Thompson's columns shouldn't be read as blind worship, Thompson has significant blind spots in her analysis. Her vision of Hollywood's past, with regard to quality and originality, is sheer fantasy. Her love of independent film often leads her to overlook excellent blockbuster fare. Not to mention that her obsession with "independent film," has as its foundation a fairly narrow definition of what constitutes independent. She also, as seems so often today among film analysts and reviewers in the post-internet era, seems to find it difficult to avoid being a political blogger from time to time. She is far from perfect, but she is very much worth reading if you want a more sophisticated view of the industry than you'll get from the "hype mags."

Hulu Recommendation Friday #2 -- She-Ra: Princess of Power

For those who grew up as "latchkey kids" in the 1980s, there were an amazing array of weekday cartoons to keep us entertained as we put off doing homework and waited for one of our parents to come home from work. The kings of the weekday afternoon set were GI JOE, TRANSFORMERS, and HE-MAN, but I always had fond place in my heart for SHE-RA: PRINCESS OF POWER. Yes it was beat for beat HE-MAN with a female protagonist, but that just meant I got to watch another half an our of HE-MAN style action and that was cool with me.

I think that fact that Larry DiTillio, who wrote a movie column for the role playing game magazine Different Worlds and also wrote a classic adventure (Isle of Darksmoke) for the Tunnels and Trolls Roleplaying game, wrote the pilot episode probably didn't hurt my enjoyment of the show. Larry will be running a Tunnels and Trolls adventure at this year's Trollcon. We haven't interviewed Larry on Geekerati yet, but we did interview another 80s cartoon writer -- who worked on GI JOE and SPIDER-MAN AND HIS AMAZING FRIENDS -- Christy Marx.

As usual, click play and then click the full screen button and enjoy.