“What would you do if something challenged your scientific beliefs?” Um… I dunno, maybe point out that there’s no such thing as a “scientific belief?”

Looks like this might be a good year for the Smart Movies With Stupid Premises subgenre of science fiction. First up is Wally Pfister’s “TRANSCENDENCE,” which thus far looks like nothing so much as a preemptive anti-Singularity hit-piece (“Don’t let the smart people become TOO smart!!! It might not work out so well for the normals!!!” Heaven forbid…)

Now we have the trailer for “I, ORIGINS” (just wait till you see how the title is actually a pun,) Mike Cahill’s follow-up to “ANOTHER EARTH.” It’s yet another movie about a dorky, introverted nerd (Michael Pitt) whose life is turned upside-down for the better by a whirlwind romance with a quirky, flighty, spin-dancing-for-no-reason, Zooey-Deschanel-as-a-Portland-area-kindergarten-teacher dreamgirl (Astrid Berges-Frisbey.) The nominal twist this time? Instead of coaxing our dweeb hero out of his introversion or giving him the confidence to finally finish that novel/play/startup, Organic Food-Truck Tinkerbell cures him of atheism.

No, for real. That’s apparently our premise this time: Pitt is an evolutionary biologist specializing in the human eye, who’s grand ambition is to explode for once and for all the popular Creationist assertion that the complexities of the eye are evidence for Intelligent Design. But after getting good n’ Garden-State’d by Burning Man Barbie (“Why are you working so hard to disprove God??”), he’s chasing mystical albino peacocks to India because hey, maybe reincarnation is a thing.

ALSO: If you’ve noticed that there have been slightly less-frequent updates to this main blog this week, it’s because I’m now part of The Escapist’s news team; so a lot of movie-news and trailer stuff I might otherwise have been tossing up here have instead become news posts there. If you’d like to stay current, here’s a handy link to ALL of my posts, shows and articles on the site.

There are two kinds of people in the world: Thinkers and Believers.

UPDATE: That is, in fact, Kate Mulgrew’s voice narrating the pro-geocentrism documentary bankrolled by anti-semitic Holocaust-denying Christian Fundamentalist Robert Sungenis, but apparently she was mislead into the voiceover work.

Man, but that’s sad. I know not everyone gets to have the post-Captain career of Shatner or Patrick Stewart, but GEEZ… you don’t see Sisko doing this shit…

Yup. And here’s an Intermission, too.

Yes, it’s true – we’re taking this circus to CANADA!

Details on panels, appearances, etc will be announced at a later date. Me, I’m just hoping modern Canada hasn’t been over-sold to me 🙂

Very happy with how this came out:

Hollywood screenwriting legend Lorenzo Semple Jr. has died at 91.

This guy had a career any industry pro would envy, penning classics like “The Parallax View” and “3 Days of The Condor,” along with cult-classics like “Flash Gordon.” But he’s probably best remembered today as the creator/mastermind of the Adam West “Batman” series; through which he was either directly or partially responsible for the “Bat-____” device-naming convention, the Barbara Gordon version of Batgirl, the creation of Mr. Freeze and the rehabilitation of what were then largely-forgotten DC characters like Penguin, Riddler and Catwoman. In recent years he was part of the team behind the “Reel Geezers” YouTube series.

Semple lived a full life, certainly. We should all be so lucky. But I do think it’s kind of a shame that he didn’t live to see “Batman’s” long-awaited DVD release later this year. I’ve maintained for awhile now that fandom, which unpleasantly turned Semple and that series into a rhetorical punching-bag in the Dark Age 90s, was due to turn around on that once all of the episodes were more widely available (a lot of people have really only seen the movie, which is missing a lot of the smart/sharp satire the episodic series brought) and I imagine it might’ve been nice for him to see that.

Here’s something you don’t hear every day: “Damn, that Bible Movie kicked a lot of ass!”

ALSO: “10 Bible Movies Even Weirder Than “NOAH.”

So… this looks really underwhelming. And surprisingly cheap, too. Say what you will about Michael Bay (who only produced this one), He’s at least got style, whereas Johnathan Liebsman really is sort of a rote point-and-shoot guy, at best:

Animators? Look, I get that deadlines and budgets are a thing and that studios want you to use facial-tracking algorithms instead of taking the time to animate a character’s expressions independently… but this thing (a direct result of that approach prevailing) where otherwise inhuman characters have overly-humanoid eyes, noses and (especially) lips? It just never looks good. Uncanny Valley and all that. Please, trust me: No plurality of filmgoers have ever expressed the following sentiment: “I was totally onboard with the premise of six-foot tall amphibians trained in ancient Japanese martial-arts until I noticed they’re mouths shouldn’t be capable of producing human-sounding syllables!”

Look. New origin for the TMNT? I can dig it – they aren’t exactly Superman in terms of modern mythmaking. But man, they really did just lift the (already shitty) “your father was a scientist working with the bad guy to create this” psuedo-predestination wankery from “Amazing Spider-Man,” eh? I’ll have more to say on that front in the near future, but until then enjoy freeze-framing that one shot where Leonardo actually looks sort-of cool.