…And, hey! Did you see the NEW “Game OverThinker?”

Anyway, I can now announce that I’ll be out and about at Arisia ’12 – a big Boston Area scifi/fantasy/fandom convention running January 13th-16th you can learn more about HERE. At this time I can’t officially announce where/when you’ll be able to see me appearing in an “official” capacity (i.e. panels, speaking, discussions, etc;) but I’ll also be around “the floor” so feel free to say hi if you happen to be onhand as well.

I’m also planning on being at PAXEast again this year as well, though details on that are still aways off. Stay tuned!

Apple has the trailer for the Farrelly Bros. modern reboot of “The Three Stooges.” I’ll post an embed when I get one, but for now go and feel my pain.

Ye gods, what did anyone do to deserve this? For all the care taken to get the actors looking “right” and match the old-timey sound effects; how did NO ONE notice (or care) that they have NONE of the actual Stooges’ gift for physical comedy? And are we really, honestly doing “sexy nun” jokes in 2011?

And so it ends. Watch the first part HERE.

Put together by Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard YEARS ago but shelved when MGM collapsed, “Cabin in The Woods” is finally coming out. You should just watch this trailer. Now. Without any other context:

That’ll do.

It is, let’s be honest – just as it’s not fair that my “Liberal” friends get stereotyped as weak and/or wimpy; it’s a little unfair that my Republican friends get stereotyped as being idiots. Granted, running presidential candidates who reject the scientific facts of things like evolution, climate change, or in general hold science and knowledge as inferior to “belief” doesn’t really help their case.

Also not helping their case? Doing a 7 minute segment on Fox Business attacking “The Muppets” for “brainwashing” children with an anti-corporate message. (Summary of charges? The bad guy is an oil magnate named Tex Richman.)

http://cloudfront.mediamatters.org/static/flash/pl55.swf

EDIT: Somehow, this initially went up without the page-break I intended. My appologies.

This has been “news” for a few days now, but I wanted to chew it over before posting anything. Plus, weekend and all that…

So… Internet Lore has it that I “hated” JJ Abrams’ “Star Trek” reboot; which is basically untrue – I didn’t really care much for it, and I think it’s kind of telling that the “return of Trek as a super-relevant franchise” thing that it was supposed to kick off has more-or-less failed to materialize – let’s be real for a moment: the Geek Culture “organism” has been obsessing over “what’s gonna happen in ‘The Avengers'” since the end of “Iron Man”… how much chatter or even excitement has there been over “New Trek” since the movie? – but mostly I was underwhelmed.

Anyway! Latino Review claims to have the scoop as to the identity of the (presumed) villain Benicio Del Toro is playing in the sequel. POSSIBLE SPOILER WARNING FROM HERE ON OUT!/

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According to LR’s sources – and they are known for having really, REALLY good intel – he’ll be Khan Noonien Singh, pretty-much THE most widely-recognized Trek villain (moreso because of “Wrath of Khan” than his origins on the original series.)

This has pretty-much been what most people have been assuming (again, Khan is really the only Trek heavy that EVERYONE has heard of) since the beginning… and while there have already been a slew of denials from the filmmakers that means very little at this point, as Devin at BAD points out “extreme truth-stretching” is standard-issue for movie rumor denials these days.

In any case, IF true it’s kinda dissapointing news from where I sit.

Mainly, it smacks of taking the easy route: This was what everyone assumed the 2nd movie would be before they shot the FIRST movie. By the same token, it smacks of Abrams and company’s strictly-superficial read of the franchise: Khan is iconic mainly because of “Wrath of Khan” – which they probably aren’t going to remake (in no small part because they already ‘borrowed’ the basic skeleton of Khan’s story in that film for Nero in the last movie.) “Space Seed” – the Young Kirk era episode that introduced the character – had previously been  prized mostly for it’s world-building; one of the few Original Series episodes to offer some tidbits about what had happened in Trek’s history between the audience’s present and the Federation-era future (short version: Khan is a genetically-engineered superhuman who became a would-be conquerer during the delightfully-named “Eugenics Wars,” later discovered hibernating in a spaceship by The Enterprise.)

Basically; if this is true it means that despite re-booting the entire Trek universe and thus having the option of using ANY character (or making up a new one) they’d be going for a retread of the most popular movie in the pre-reboot series. This isn’t automatically indicative of anything, of course – maybe THIS will be the screenplay where Team Abrams finally delivers – but it’s not a terribly encouraging sign.

Also… not to nitpick here, but if it IS going to be Khan… with all due respect to Del Toro, it would’ve been nice if they could’ve found an Indian actor for the role. Khan is supposed to be a Sikh, after all – and it’s not like there aren’t a metric-ton of good Indian actors who could really benefit from a breakout part like this (not to mention it could mean HUGE boxoffice in the increasingly-important India market.) Casting him with another Spanish actor – a good one, don’t get me wrong – once again smells unpleasantly of a surface-only read of the series. Plus, let’s be honest, the ONLY way for a new Khan to stand on his own merit is for him to be as far removed from Ricardo Montalban’s version as possible.

We’ll see.

The problem with Robert Heinlein’s “Starship Troopers” is the problem I worry “John Carter” has – being a ‘seminal classic’ also means that by the time you get to the movies everyone else has already borrowed all the original stuff. Which is why, to my mind, Paul Verhoeven’s “Troopers” movie did the only thing you could really DO with the propert after decades of military scifi had picked it’s bones clean: Turn Heinlein’s quasi-fascist army-fetishism into a scathing – and kind of brilliant – scorched-earth throttling of every bullshit pro-war propaganda flick ever made. I still maintain that, if not for pre-dating the “War On Terror” by many years, it would be the best movie about the “War On Terror” ever made.

So, of course, it’s being rebooted.

It would be crazy for them to try and mimic the tone of the first film (or the sequels,) so expect talk of “going back to the source,” which will probably also include actually utilizing the “powered robot-suits” that the first film skipped for budgetary reasons. I’m sure it’ll result in a serviceable, visually-attractive film… just not one with much going on under the hood.

I could be wrong, of course..

I understand and sympathize with the attitude behind San Francisco’s goofy “Happy Meal Ban.” Yeah, my latent libertarian streak says that if your stupid enough to think a $1 hamburger (which is NOT, by the way, the cheapest food you can get in most areas where such poverty is a major problem so please spare me the histrionics) prepared in 30 seconds is proper day-to-day nutrition you deserve what you get. To some people “too dumb to live” is a cute hyperbolic insult – to me, it often sounds like a solid catch-all public policy…

BUT, that said, I completely “get” not wanting children to suffer for the stupidity of their parents. So yeah, I get where they’re coming from; but it’s still a foolish, pointless move from a city that seems to have lost it’s ability to distinguish between worthwhile liberal social-policy and cartoonish parodies of what right-wing dipshits think liberals are about.

Which is why – despite my mixed feelings on the Fast Food industry (on the one hand I’m not “against” corporations ‘preying’ on idiots, on the other hand… y’know, kids don’t get to choose whether or not they’re born to idiot parents) I straight-up LOVE McDonalds’ ingeniously dickish “fuck you!” to the ban:

See, SF made a law that said you can’t include FREE toy prizes in “kids meals” that don’t comply with city nutritional standards; which, of course, seem precisely built to exclude pretty-much anything McDonalds might sell. McD’s solution? Raise the price of a Happy Meal by a dime, make the toys something you have to ask for, and call the dime the “price” of the toy. Oh, and that dime? They’re giving it to charity. Fuck yeah. Take a bow, Ronald.

To show my solidarity, one appreciator of a high-quality loophole-leaping “fuck you” to another, I’ll be making it a point to eat some McDonalds today – y’know, after a 2,000 calorie workout, of course. I haven’t been in awhile, what should I get?

I liked it.

“Intermission” is about movies mimicking movies.

Much as I liked what the first “John Carter” trailer was implying, the buzz since then has been shaky – fans who got a look at a sizzle reel during D23 were largely underwhelmed; and the suspiciously expection-lowering-esque “leaked” reports of budget runovers and the ongoing issue of the title (WHY can’t they add in “Of Mars” again?) haven’t helped. I want this to work, but I’m not getting that same “holy shit, they NAILED IT!” vibe the first “Lord of The Rings” trailers had.

This new one… is a step in the right direction. I’m still coming to terms with the decidedly un-Martian look of Mars (I’m wondering if they intend “I’m on Mars” to be some kind of surprise-reveal?) and the practical/semirealism look of the the tech and creatures… but that’s an expectation thing, I think – adhering to either Burrough’s persistent “going native” fetishism OR the gloriously-overblown Frazetta paintings that have defined this franchise visually for so long were never really options for a Disney actioner.

At this point, my bigger worry is that it doesn’t look all that much “different” from Star Wars or a dozen other similar offerings, which is problematic considering how ‘traditional’ the narrative is by now. That said, the use of Led Zepplin (which couldn’t have been cheap) goes a long way toward giving the whole thing a very “ostentatious album-cover” feel, so we’ll see.