Kim Jong-Il – the late dictator of North Korea – once kidnapped a famous South Korean filmmaker, held him and his wife prisoner for nearly a decade and forced him to make a Communist knock-off of “Godzilla.” Really. Here’s a show about it.

Hat-tip io9

I often strain for sober-sounding methods to explain my disgust with the villifying of “intellectuals” or “elites” in American culture; or why I get as furious as I do with Climate Change deniers, Creationists, Intelligent Design proponents and all other manner of superstitious wastes of skin (see, there I go again…) rather than just ignoring them.

Fortunately, Neil deGrasse Tyson (who’s supposedly going to step into Carl Sagan’s shoes for Seth McFarlane’s “Cosmos” revival – yes, really) helpfully explains it by means of a simple infographic that shows the United State’s standing as a scientific-innovator dwindle to near-nothingness within a mere decade:

This is why I DON’T get mad when people in Asia, Europe, Japan etc. gloat about how stupid my country is now percieved to be, because it’s increasingly TRUE and it has very simple, tangible sources: America, as a whole, does far too much “believing” (religiously and otherwise) and not nearly enough THINKING. We prize moral-righteousness over intellectual prowess, we hold “common sense” superior to educated analysis, we slash funding for research to meet short-term budgetary goals and expect “the market” to pick up the slack (it won’t, “the market” LIKES a stupid population) and we treat people walking around in the 21st century denying cold hard proven facts like evolution, climate-change etc as having “beliefs” or “a different opinion” instead of obvious mental failings not worthy of ether discussion OR respect in a modern world.

We’re having an election soon. Not ONE Republican can hope to be nominated if he doesn’t swear to his constituents that he believes the proven fact of evolution to be false, and no one of EITHER party can hope to win period without reassuring a significant number of people that they believe – sincerely and without a hint of doubt or questioning – that there is an invisible man living in the sky calling the shots via a ten-item “don’t” list. These are the signs of a society that is not only failing, but that deserves to be failing.

So while the fundamentalists, hardcore believers, absolutist pro-lifers, “traditionalists,” creationists, homophobes, climate-deniers and all the rest MAY in fact include some otherwise perfectly nice individuals among their ranks, collectively the ignorance they espouse and the anti-progress, anti-reason political leaders, candidates and movements they support are murdering my future; and I feel wholly disinclined to continue being “tolerant” of them. Differences should be tolerated, but ignorance should be corrected – and if it cannot/will-not BE corrected it deserves only to be shunned.

I actually really like the “Underworld” movies, overall. The whole series has a mountain of problems following it from sequel to sequel, but the whole production is so unblinkingly, unironically wrapped-up in itself that it almost feels like conventional aesthetic criticism doesn’t “matter” – like the golden age Bond movies or the “Rocky” series, it more-or-less demands to be met on it’s own terms.

Helpfully, other than the first film sucking for almost a FULL HOUR before it suddenly gets interesting and engaging, the terms are pretty reasonable – for a franchise comprised chiefly of complicated-for-complication’s-sake revisionist vampire fan-fiction and director/producer Len Wiseman’s (largely successful) attempt to enshrine wife Kate Beckinsale as an iconic genre-film sex-goddess; the whole affair has been pretty damn watchable.

For those not up to speed on the “Underworld” lore: Vampires and Werewolves are real – except Werewolves are called “Lycans” – and the two teams don’t get along (Lycans = blue-collar, Vamps = aristocrats) on account of the Lycans having once been Vampire slaves until some star-crossed-lovers stuff went down between a wolf-guy and a vamp-princess back in medieval times; and they’ve been fighting the equivalent of an unseen-by-humanity mob war (hence the title) for centuries. Oh, and they share a common ancestor in some guy who made himself immortal trying to cure a plague and passed the gene on to his twin sons who were bitten by a wolf and bat, respectively.

Beckinsale is Selene, a vampiress with a blackbelt in wolf-exterminating who winds up on the outskirts of the fight after she falls for Scott Speedman as a guy who’s been mutated into a vampire/lycan Hybrid and learns that the monster-war backstory is actually MORE complicated than she thought – bad guys who aren’t so bad, good guys who’re secretly evil, the usual. To it’s credit, the franchise keeps track of this information in what was initially a novel way: When “Underworld” vampires drink blood, they also absorb the bleeder’s memories.

“Underworld 3” was actually a prequel, with Michael Sheen (really!) and Rhona Mitra as the lycan/vamp Romeo & Juliet analogues. “Awakening” brings back Selene and takes the story to the next logical step: At some point between Part 2 and now, human beings finally found out about vampires and werewolves being real and tried to wipe them out. After a prologue explaining this, Selene wakes up sans-Michael in science lab where we learn she’s been locked up for eleven years. The movie makes a big deal out of this “lost decade” business, but it doesn’t really have much resonance – part of the “conceit” of the previous films was a near-total lack of reference to where or when ANY of this was actually taking place beyond “medieval times” and “modern big-city.”

So, despite the whole “it’s the future now” setup, everything is pretty familiar: Selene running about in her black pleather skin-suit and duster beating up enemies, some of whom can morph into big bipedal wolf-monsters. I will say that I like that the series maintains it’s creatures-eye-view conception of it’s world despite the new wrinkle of actively-involved humanity – it’s a trip that our ostensible heroine casually murders human canon-fodder en-route to her various goals since, hey, to her these are basically just free-range cattle, after all.

Granted, it’s at last become impossible to ignore that the series really isn’t “about” anything other than it’s own worldbuilding (it really does have NOTHING to “say” after four films than “here’s the next addition to the ‘Underworld’ mythos!”) so at this point it’s all about the novelties – this time around, the “new stuff” includes a giant-size mega-Lycan, Stephen Rea(!) as a scientist and a pair of fairly surprising plot twists.

I don’t really know that I “needed” a fourth one of these, and I’m not exactly demanding a fifth one… but I can’t say it’s not worth a shot.

The ESA has dropped it’s support of SOPA. Holy shit.

Okay, kind of beside the point since the bill (and it’s cousin PIPA) are both effectively dead, but still a pretty big deal and a HUGE moment for the video-gaming community. If nothing else, it shows that the same fervor that’s often mounted in support of silly causes like Diablo III’s color-scheme or “nerfing” of this or that feature CAN in fact be mobilized to effect real concrete change in the industry; and that in itself is an incredibly positive development.

In terms of business/politics/history, this whole series of events also represents a pretty massive shift in the entertainment-industry power structure – essentially, the tech/digital side of the amusement biz (video games, Google, Wiki, YouTube etc) were on the winning side of a legislative defeat while the film/TV side came out the (corporate) losers. The Internet is now “officially” more powerful than Hollywood – that’s a big change, and the aftershocks will be felt for a long time.

For those who’re wondering about the status of the Stand Together boycott… as of right now, I don’t know. Speaking only for myself, I think that it’s incumbent upon to me to acknowledge that they “listened to us” and rescind the “no E3 coverage whatsoever” blackout for my own blogs; but I don’t think I’ll be throwing them a party either – they never should’ve supported the bill in the first place. I’ll clarify that further once everyone invovled in the initial boycott gets on the same page.

As to “what’s next?” Tomorrow night (Saturday) at 10pm CST, I’ll have a NEW episode of The Game OverThinker up for ALL audiences that – rather presciently, if I do say so myslef – has a few things to say about where anti-piracy legislation and the relationship between the entertainment industry and it’s audiences in an increasingly-digitized age needs to go. I hope you’ll tune in – it also features the announcement of some “tweaking” to the format of the series that I think many will find very pleasing.

Turned out pretty good. Whaddaya know?

“Intermission” chronicles my recent convention-going.

At this point, I think it’s fair to say that the “Resident Evil” movies are more stable as a B-movie institution than the original franchise is as a video-game institution. The new trailer for the fifth(!) go-around doesn’t show off any story points (or zombies, for that matter), other than a handful of shots that seem to be set during/around the earlier sequels – is this the “fill-the-plot-holes”/continuity-porn installment? It also looks like Umbrella now has a fleet of airships… where do they keep GETTING this stuff after the end of the world?

Eh, whatever. Each film after the original has been a romp on some level, and the amount of fun the husband/wife team of Paul W.S. Anderson and Milla Jovovich seem to be having with this ongoing family project is always in evidence. In fact… am I the only one who thinks it’s probably time for Alice to turn up in one of the games? At this point, she’s as much an iconic part of the brand as Wesker is…

Here’s the second part of the Media Sandwich podcast, featuring me. But really, you should be keeping an ear on this one even when I’m NOT the guest.

Short version: In solidarity with ScrewAttack.com and other websites, I will not be attending or directly-posting any news coverage of this year’s E3 unless the ESA (which runs E3) rescinds it’s support for the SOPA bill. Longer version:

Please link, repost, tweet etc. this video/blog as widely as possible; and I stand with the others in asking that you encourage other gaming/web outlets to join the “boycott” of E3.

HOWEVER! please remember that regardless or what this or that person may feel about SOPA; not everyone is in a position to refuse to attend or cover E3 and should NOT be ill-treated if they opt not to join this particular movement of SOPA opposition – the last thing we need at this time is to splinter and fractionalize, so I don’t want to see anyone pulling any “this or that site is still going to E3! Traitors!!!” bullshit, okay? Okay.

Ever since the infamous Supreme Court “Citizens United” decision, Stephen Colbert has been engaged in a piece of long-running, high-concept political theater – creating his own flagrantly-corrupt “SuperPAC” to raise money for his own not-at-all-directly-coordinated political career – to point out the absurd possibilities of the new campaign laws.

As of last week, the performance has entered a new act: Colbert will run for president in the South Carolina Republican primary, while an “unaffiliated” party – Jon Stewart – will take over Colbert SuperPAC, making it “legal” for the SuperPAC’s funds to be spent on Colbert’s campaign… a legal manuver that required only ONE document to be signed. The point, of course, is to point out how simple it would be for a REAL campaign to pull the same basic shennanigans.

In any case, “Colbert SuperPAC” has released it’s first ad, targeted at Colbert’s “opponent” Mitt Romney, that joins in the chorus continuing to slap Romeny around for the “corporations are people” line: If Mitt thinks corporations are people, argues the ad, his time as a Venture Capitalist (read: corporate raider) makes him a serial killer: