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Metal Tornados And 90 Rockers Get Twisted [Cult Movie Worship]

Meredith Woerner — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 18:00:03 -0800

How has there not been a movie about Metal Tornadoes yet? Well, worry no more, there is now. Take that 2012 and your silly little arks.

Metal Tornado:
What more really needs to be said here, other than GIANT METAL TORNADOES! That's about 1,000 times cooler than regular tornadoes. Now, thanks to the Sci Fi Chronicles, we can finally upgrade our natural disasters. Here's the poster and official synopsis:

When astronomers discovered the phenomena of magnetic tornados on the planet Mercury, they were amazed by the destructive power of these gargantuan solar-fueled magnetic fields...but they never imagined witnessing the catastrophic forces in their own backyards.

Samuel Planck is head of the HELIOS PROJECT—a high tech facility tasked with storing and converting solar rays into an endless supply of renewable energy. After years of research and millions of dollars, it is now time to test the system out. The scientists cheer loudly as initially things go according to plan. But when the facility is unable to control the massive amount of energy coming in, the cheers turn to screams. The charged particles begin swirling around themselves, creating a massive magnetic vortex that quickly becomes the first magnetic tornado on earth!

Planck and his team try to abort the procedure but it's already too late—with a trillion watts of power to draw from, there is nowhere this monstrous force of nature can't go. The mega swirling tornados are soon ripping steel from buildings, cars off the street, and planes from the sky as they pulverize everything they touch!

Now Samuel Planck and his team must find a way to stop these metal tornados before they destroy all of us!

Love:
Angels And Airwaves, a band made up of some Blink 182 people and some other aged '90s rock stars have made a short film based on an astronaut who is all alone in space. Uh oh, looks like somebody saw Moon. I'm not really sure what to think about this... It look pretty, but my hatred of A&A is pretty steadfast. I guess we'll have to wait and see.

Synopsis:

After losing contact with Earth, Astronaut Lee Miller becomes stranded in orbit alone aboard the International Space Station. As time passes and life support systems dwindle, Lee battles to maintain his sanity - and simply stay alive. His world is a claustrophobic and lonely existence, until he makes a strange discovery aboard the ship. Driven by the powerful music of Angels & Airwaves, Love explores the fundamental human need for connection and the limitless power of hope... A high-impact visual adventure, that resonates a common truth, that everyone has a story to tell and something even greater to leave behind.

All About Evil:
This strange little parody of a parody takes place when a young librarian inherits her father's movie house and starts showing horror pictures. Some way or another, she gets the "Shining" and becomes a murderer. Here are a collection of stills pointed out via Quiet Earth. It looks colorfully cute, and it appears to have the sassy character from American Pie in it. Let's keep our fingers crossed for actual comedy.

Shorts:
World Builder

And this week for shorts, check out this slightly oldie but goodie where a man creates a virtual world for the woman he loves. It's very sweet, and from the minds that made the short 405.

World Builder from BranitVFX on Vimeo.

Killing Off Everyone On SGU Was A Great Idea [SGU Recap]

Meredith Woerner — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 17:00:51 -0800

What an episode, what a night. On the one hand we've got team adventures, new planets, monsters and time travel. On the other hand it was a Kino-centric episode. Here's what we thought about the Back To The Future SGU.

With a flurry of zaps and one terrible brown tone filter, we're off and watching through the lens of a Destiny Kino. The teams on a new planet and gathering up food bit. What's edible here? No idea, but it's cute that Eli is the first to dig in (and fortuitous for him that he doesn't die). Within a few moments, you can tell this isn't going to be another "what did we run out of this week" episode, so phew and yay. Even though it's a food gathering mission, it's safe to say that food is not the number one priority of this episode.

The team's on the ground, and there's Chloe collecting food and talking about how hot it is on this alien planet. In fact, everyone talks about how hot it is, but no one takes off their sweatshirts or long sleeves? Inbetween giggles and flirting with Scott, Chloe manages to gather a few fruit like substances. And might I just point out that SGU is just going full throttle with this High School romance. They look like they're 5 seconds away from a tickle fight in front of the rest of the starving crew.

Anyways, the set looks great; I'm loving the steaming mounds of alien nests along with the plants. Eli makes a bad joke about aliens and this noise, "Raaaarrrrrhhhhh," and it just hurts. This moment right here perfectly demonstrates all of my problems with Eli. He's forced to be funny and awkward all on his own. So when he makes a bad joke, it sounds more like a failed attempt to be actually funny other than an awkward character moment. He needs help carrying the brunt of the funny, so that when he tells a bad joke, we know it's an intentional bad joke and not a failed attempt at humor. Also, it won't look as fake when T.J. starts laughing later, because we will have shared little glimmers of hope or happy previously with other members of the crew. Pass it around guys.

But then everyone starts throwing up, and we don't know if they got sick from the planet or from something on the ship. We find out later that a small amount of the water from the ice planet wasn't disinfected properly and now they are all slowly dying from a bacterial thingy. So that's convenient for the plot, but it's Stargate, so I don't really care and this seems like an interesting predicament. Sign me up.

Meanwhile, Greer is listening to Saul Williams "List of Demands." Why? I have no clue. Of all the songs they could have played, they picked this single from 2004? The reason escapes me. Because they are living "hand to mouth," and "they have demands?" I really hope that's not the case. If you know why they used this tun,e please explain it to me. If it's a random, why not? musical choice, why not pick something fun? Why not "Tiny Dancer"? Think about it, the song comes on and everyone is silent on the forest planet, avoiding each other's eye contact, then one person starts singing all alone, then a few people start singing (because how can you not? It's "Tiny Dancer"), and then a few more people sing, and all of a sudden, everyone is laughing and smiling. The whole crew has reconnected through the power of song. And maybe, just maybe, this crew will make it to the next stop and solidify their place in Rock and Roll history, as a family. Because *whoosh* "this is their home."

But I digress. Let's talk about the important stuff, like the fact that Greer even has an ipod and ipod docking speaker system. Two weeks ago, when Rush cued up his onboard ipod, we learned that the Destiny has music. Because he must have grabbed while he was running for his life, fleeing the Icarus Base? Right that makes sense, right? No. No, you do not grab your ipod and speakers when you are fleeing for you life. No, no, no. And second, let's say there was some asshole that decided to grab an ipod over a medicine kit whilst running for their lives, lets say that actually happened. Greer is a dick for taking that precious music bringer on a alien planet. They don't know if it's going to rain, thus ruining music for everyone. No. Bad.

Rush yells a bit because it's been seven minutes since he did something like that and then it all starts to get awesome....Eli and Rush have a brilliant odd couple moment under a tarp in the rain, and then Chloe dies. And the crowd goes wild.

This is what I meant by lightening the mood. Rush and Eli play really well off each other even if Eli's choices were pathetically pandering and predictable. He picks Hackers because he's a Hacker, I GET IT HA HA HA HA HA HA HA. If we play by these rules than Greer will pick "Diary of A Mad Black Woman" and "American Psycho," Scott would pick "Top Gun" and Chloe would pick "Wish You Were Dead" well that's just projecting but you catch my drift.

Movie titles aside, it was a great scene and, again Chloe dies!

Then SGU does the old flippero and, gasp, they aren't dead, they're dead in the future and now we're in the present time watching what will happen to the characters unless they can change it. I really enjoyed this whole idea. I thought the whole thing was executed very well. I didn't even mind Eli being the narrator.

The present day crew, still aboard Destiny, has nothing left to do but watch in horror as their own deaths are revealed on camera, or kino, or whatever. Tiny little bits are revealed about the characters, like why Eli's mom is sick, and where T.J. learned how to sew stitches which is something I guess for T.J. Sadly, it didn't reveal that much about Greer but it allowed the audience to watch Greer interact with people in a real way, as opposed to his dull confessionals or I'm crazy let's just shoot it moments. I think I may like Greer, and I'm pretty sure I like T.J. just give me more. It's not fair that I know so much about Eli, and none of that information has actually been a shock, and near nothing about T.J., Ming-Na, Greer, James and so forth. That being said, I loved watching Greer teach Eli how to fire a gun, after he shoots down his Kino. Those actions do help flesh out his personality beyond "psycho." Rush also has a little reveal about his opinions on the afterlife, but I think we all pretty much know where he stands for now.

Also, it was nice to see the Kino's being used in an engaging manner and not like the Real World confessional booth. There is nothing more tiresome than listening to a person tell you how their character feels. They're like youtube diaries bad, so I'm glad this episode was all interaction and very little "Dear Kino, I haz a sad." A few people expressed their disgust with Eli's constant Kino commentary. It didn't bother me in the slightest, when he gets uncomfortable he talks. It felt really natural for his character and David Blue can make it work when it's coming from a place of honesty.

And it just kept getting better. People started getting sick on the ship and for a split second I thought that SGU had finally killed off a real life character, James, but then when it started picking off other crew members one by one, I knew it was all a sham. Eli tells Chloe he loves/likes her because she's dying, and it's very, very sweet. He's a giant sweetheart for most of this episode. Sadly it doesn't mean much because, well we all know no one important stays dead on Stargate. They really had me when they killed off James, my mouth was on the floor realizing that this may the new dark Stargate we were promised, but the seconds Chloe kicked it I knew the time traveling reset button would be hit soon. That being said, when T.J. cried, I almost cried, it was incredibly convincing. Please give her more.

So back into the jungle, and the whole crew is depending on catching one of these little night monsters. What's going to happen? Death, and lots of it. The next thing we know Scott is screaming into the Kino and sending it back in time, hoping the next time the Destiny Crew happens upon this time traveling Kino they can use their death mistakes to their benefit. And that's it. That's the end. It's all wrapped up with a big question mark.

Where does that leave the viewer? Confused but rather happy that SGU is able to take these kind of risks. I guess it all depends on the next episode, and where they decide to pick up. Some of the time traveling wires don't really pan out in this episode, but it doesn't really matter. You have to take it with a grain of salt, like the fact that people have ipods on the Destiny. I'm hoping that they at least pick up next week at the very end of the new mission. Maybe everyone is getting their venom injections and Young is telling the people that found the old Kino to, never speak of this again. Bottom line, it was something risky and fun. We're exceedingly thankful for this even if it didn't move the story ahead. It showed us what SGU is capable of which is much better material than the past few weeks, and for a moment there I thought we were in trouble.

1950s Science Fiction Loved Neanderthals, Feared Polio [Astoundingly Late Reviews]

Esther Inglis-Arkell — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 15:00:28 -0800

Did you know we made scientific advances in the last half century? It amazed me, too. Step back into a carefree world of spaceships, human-neanderthal orgies, and polio as I pick up a fifty-five-year-old copy of Astounding Science Fiction.

The November 1954 issue begins with a big swing-and-a-miss by editor John Campbell, who writes in his editorial,

I am willing to bet that the next major advance in human understanding – the really big advance – will be initiated by working with something that is detected by organic entities . . . probably human detection systems.

He goes on to talk about how the first device used to detect electric current was a pair of frogs legs and how science has become more about meter reading than human inventiveness.

Campbell's sentiment echoes, though never directly references, Ernest Rutherford's famous statement "All science is either physics or stamp collecting." An unsubtle jab, this statement ridiculed the orthodoxy and classification that Rutherford believed characterized biology and chemistry, representing physics as the only branch of science which allowed for true scientific exploration.

Campbell's idea that human perception cannot be usurped by mechanical tools is perhaps inspired by one of the stories in the issue. "Pilot's License," by William T Powers tells the story of Lysle Cruthers, the son of a disgraced spaceship pilot, who spends fifteen years working to get his own pilot's license. He makes a difficult landing, detached from the danger of the situation, and tells the doctor who checks him out afterward that he was "flying the instrument panel," and not the ship. After a final confrontation with Lysle, the doctor walks off thinking about what a fantastic pilot Lysle will be since "no man with that degree of presbyopia could have read his instruments accurately enough to fly on them."

The human spirit, not cold, precise instrumentation, will be the next breakthrough in science, the issue seems to declare. Read in its own time, it would have made a very good case. Read fifty-five years later, though, the most memorable part of "Pilot's License" is the blurb which gives us the emotional thrust of the story; "The only man who you can be sure won't get polio is the one who's had it – and won the battle."

This was a true statement at the time. Five months later, Doctor Jonas Salk announced to the world that there was going to be a very reliable way to be sure that a man wouldn't get polio. While the polio vaccine didn't usher in the golden age of biochemistry, in which our focus has literally turned from our stars to ourselves, it could be seen as one of its early heralds. As for modern research, we turn to scanning electron microscopes, the Hubble Telescope and the Large Hadron Collider, which all detect things that we can never hope to witness with our own eyes.

What struck me, the first time I read this issue, was how antiquated much of the science seemed and how contemporary the capitalism felt. Sure, the ad that said "Prepare Now for Leadership in the New Industrial Revolution," was a scam, but it was a prescient one. And sure, the ad on the back cover that promises "Free Round Trip Reservations to the Moon," looks quaint. Until you read it a little closer and see that it's basically an early forbearer of the current Star Registry programs. You know the ones. You pay a company to tell you that, as far as they are concerned, such-and-such star is named after you, International Astronomical Union be damned. In 1954, they were selling the same thing, only this time it was labeled as an application to be on the ‘list' of the first company selling commercial flights to the moon.

Capitalism isn't the only thing that stands the test of time more than science does. Reading an article entitled "Our Hairy Ancestors," by Poul Anderson, the most contemporary sentence is, "These days, the subject of race is so touchy that intelligent discussion is almost impossible." The sociological awkwardness, and the carefully-worded-to-seem-off-hand disclaimer have held up far more than the scientific content of the article. Poul claims that despite evidence of "Australopithicus, the mysterious South African fire ape," the modern human race originated in Southeast Asia. Africans are, therefore, the "youngest race," having broken off last from the main Homo sapiens group. Europeans, meanwhile, have almost doubtlessly interbred with Neanderthals. It makes sense, since Neanderthals weren't too different from modern humans. They had developed stone tools, speech, and religion. They had much to offer, and their genes may be the reason some modern Europeans have fair hair.

To my mind, this essay was as much science fiction as "Pilot's License" was. While most of what Anderson wrote was at the time backed by solid scientific evidence, almost none of it is regarded as fact anymore. In Before the Dawn, Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors, Nicholas Wade summarizes various genetic studies to paint a very different portrait of both Neanderthals and early Homo sapiens. Wade uses various studies to dismiss the idea that Neanderthals had anything worth contributing to the gene pool, let alone the thought that they might actually have a relative or two alive today. There is no genetic evidence that shows Neanderthals and humans interbred, Wade writes. More damningly, analysis shows that Neanderthals lack the FOXP2 gene, the so-called language gene. A population that lacked the capacity for language, and therefore long-term planning, religion, and creative development, would be unlikely to have contributed much to the human race.

"The title's not even right," I said to one of my friends, as I looked over the issue. "They aren't our ancestors."

"Actually," he replied. "They might be."

While reading Before the Dawn, I was again doing a little time-traveling, though this time only to 2006 instead of 1954. Since 2006, there have been a few developments that put Anderson's essay back in the running for scientific fact again. In 2006 and 2007, scientists discovered bone fragments which suggested that human-Neanderthal interbreeding was a possibility after all. In early 2009, though, studies in Germany, Spain, and Italy, ruled out the idea that Homo sapiens inherited any traits from Neanderthals. This looked to support Wade's theory, until it was discovered that Neanderthals did, in fact, have the FOXP2 language gene. Now, despite Wade's probably-correct assertion that Neanderthals did not interbreed with humans to any significant degree, Anderson's view of Neanderthal society, complete with language and religion, looks to be the correct one. At least, this year it does.

(Left: Nicholas Wade, seen here being wrong about Neanderthals.)

It was sometime between sorting through articles on Neanderthals and looking up studies on the FOXP2 gene that I understood why the science seemed so hokey and antiquated while the social issues and shameless marketing did not. Social strife and human acquisitiveness might not change much in fifty-five years, but scientific knowledge does. Constant inquiry and the rigorous testing of ideas, theories, methods and facts, has produced an stream of knowledge that might meander or loop back, but never stops progressing.

What we see in this issue of Astounding Science Fiction is the reason why science fiction will never surrender its grip on the human imagination. While most other genres focus on the static human condition, science fiction utilizes social themes while turning our gaze outward, on the ever-changing, ever-expanding field of scientific discovery. Perhaps, in time, John Campbell will be proven right about his faith in "organic detection systems." Perhaps, in fifty-five years, we'll be detecting dark matter with a pair of frog's legs.

This Is One Of The Most Exciting New Comic Characters Of The Century? [Monkey Comics]

Graeme McMillan — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 14:00:11 -0800

Marvel's getting back into the Monkey Business. The above image was sent out on Friday in an email asking "Who Is One Of The Most Exciting New Comic Characters of The Century?" Start your suggesting engines now!

The company promises an explanation tomorrow, but fan rumors already have the gun-toting monkey as either a new character from Marvel's Marvel Apes franchise, an oddly-primate version of a potential comic adaptation of the Hitman videogame or, most surreally and excitingly for us, a new character from Jeph Loeb's upcoming New Ultimates series rebooting Marvel's Avengers franchise one more time. Until then, just appreciate the image for what it is: A monkey, in a suit, with two guns.

It's Not Too Late To Escape From "The Prisoner" [The Prisoner]

Charlie Jane Anders — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 13:00:00 -0800

The remake of the 1960s' trippiest program, The Prisoner, starts airing tonight — and instead of an acid trip, it feels like you've taken one of those psychoactive drugs that makes time slow almost to a halt.

I won't provide any spoilers for The Prisoner 2009 here — we'll save those for tomorrow — but suffice to say, the remake of the paranoid thriller, starring James Caviezel and Ian McKellan, is dreadfully dull. It feels as empty and as dry as the endless deserts that provide its main setting. The "WTF" of the original has been replaced by a listless, unengaging "What the hey."

(To be fair, I haven't yet watched the last two episodes (out of six total). But I'm not getting my hopes up at this point. The first four episodes are so screamingly dull, I'm only still watching out of a sense of duty and masochism.)

To be honest, I went into this remake with severe doubts that The Prisoner could be remade — it's so odd, so quintessentially 1960s, that it's hard to imagine it working for a 2000s audience. The core message, about distrust for the artificial, conformist institutions of a braindead society, feels both too dated and too true for current television to handle. On the other hand — Ian McKellen! A man I would watch read the ingredients off a cat food label!

Sadly, it's worse than I feared. The makers of this new Prisoner apparently realized that they couldn't really recapture the gonzo spirit of the original — so they made radical changes to the basic storyline. And some of these ideas sort of make sense, whether you agree with them — but the most important change to the original is something that makes no sense whatsoever. They really wrecked the most basic element of the show, in a way that feels both baffling and heartbreaking.

As for McKellan, he's definitely the one saving grace. In tonight's two hours, he gets all the best lines and has a few genuinely classic moments. But there are also long stretches of McKellan that seem to be intended to deepen or humanize his character, but instead just make him feel less iconic and less interesting.

Sadly, Caviezel is not nearly as interesting to watch, and you'll quickly find yourself missing Patrick McGoohan's savage conviction.

There are a few other bright spots, though — the cinematography is great, the desert looks really vivid and beautiful, and the production values are amazing. There are one or two moments of amazing subversiveness and cleverness sprinkled in, and you wish the rest of the show could have been more like them. The show seems on the verge of saying something really interesting once or twice.

But for the most part, watching this new version of The Prisoner feels like you're doing hard time. I would avoid at all costs.

The Prisoner airs tonight, and for the next two nights following on AMC at 8 PM.

The 5 Stages Of Fan Grief [Dollhouse Cancellation]

Graeme McMillan — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 12:00:05 -0800

Wednesday's announcement of Dollhouse's cancellation came as no surprise to most, but that doesn't mean that we're not here to help those for whom the news means emotional turmoil. Let us walk you to happiness, one step at a time.

Psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, in her 1969 book On Death and Dying, introduced the concept of the Five Stages of Grief to help those dealing with personal tragedy get through it as easily as possible. We've discovered that those Five Stages are almost applicable to less serious emotional issues, such as the cancellation of a favorite television show. As The Aristocats' Thomas O'Malley once said, let me elucidate here:

1: Denial
How many times did fans deny Dollhouse's falling ratings, or tell themselves that miracles could happen despite a tiny audience and uneven quality - A self-delusion not helped by the series getting a second season in the first place, admittedly - and everything could turn out okay ("Look what happens when you add in the time-shifted audience!")? The writing may have been on the metaphorical cancellation wall for sometime, but that doesn't mean that plenty of people were pretending that they couldn't read when they saw it.

2: Anger
As those who've survived the loss of Firefly should remember, the cancellation of Dollhouse will have one clear effect on fans: Blaming Fox. Never mind that they gave the show two seasons with a promise to show the complete second season despite reruns of House getting more viewers and making them more money in the same timeslot, Fox will very clearly be the bad guy in the fan version of this story; as Preston Beckman, Fox's VP of strategic programming told Broadcast & Cable, "I'll still get hate mail and death threats." But why stop there? There's lots of mad to go around: Why not get mad at Joss for going back to Fox after the clusterfuck that was Firefly (By which I mean, the way Fox treated it, not the show itself. I'm not pissing off those River Tam fans)? Or at the rest of America who, quite clearly, didn't see the entertainment value in a morally-ambiguous show about brainwashed slaves even with the amount of gratuitous T'n'A thrown in? Or Smallville for somehow managing to build on its ratings on a Friday night even in its ninth season? Or Ghost Whisperer just for existing in the first place? There's a lot of mad in there. Just let it out. You'll fell better afterwards.

3: Bargaining
We'll throw this one over to Syfy's senior VP of digital Craig Engler's Twitter stream from Thursday November 12th to illustrate this point for us:

Whenever some other network cancels a sci-fi show, I've noticed a distinct trends in the type of tweets I receive about it: 80% Polite: Could you please pick up X show? I think it'd be a great fit with your network! 8% Analytic: X shows has more viewers than your show Y so why wouldn't you pick it up! 5% Bribe: I'll star watching/will watch more of your network if you pick up X show! 4% Less Polite: Why don't you pick up X show? It's better than any of the crap you air! 3% Blame: You suck for canceling X show and/or not picking it up from another network! (OFTEN SENT IN ALL CAPS!!!!!)

I think you get where we're coming from here.

(And in case you were wondering, Craig directly addressed Dollhouse later that day:

Leaving aside viewership, the biggest issues are, we simply can't afford network budgets and no one has even offered it to us AFAIK. Then you have to consider, it had much more exposure on Fox than it would ever get on Syfy, but the audience never quite materialized. We'd of course LOVE to do a project with Joss Whedon for Syfy that was affordable. Overall we're big fans of his work... If we could hold [the audience size from the Fox airings] (doubtful), it *could* be a good number if the budget were remotely in our ballpark.

So now you know.)

4: Depression
What's the point in watching any new shows? Won't they all run into network interference issues (V) or get canceled early (Eastwick, but, really, does anyone care that much about Eastwick?), like Dollhouse? Isn't Fringe also supposed to be having cancellation woes - and it's on Fox! If Joss Whedon can't make television work, what chance does anyone else have? We understand that it can be hard to believe in the healing power of television at a time like this, but think of it like this: Sometimes early cancellation can be a good thing. Imagine a world without Angel Starbuck or Deanna Troi being turned into a cake in Data's dream, and suddenly your silver lining has been found.

5: Acceptance
Yeah, okay, this is the one that - for some fans - may never happen. Fandom in all its forms knows how to hold grudges, and if Firefly has taught us anything, it's that fandom never forgets. Now that Fox has killed two Joss Whedon shows (and Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, for that matter), there's going to be an element of fandom that will never be able to trust the network again, never believing that Fox had good reasons to keep us from the full run-up to "Epitaph One."

Of course, identifying all the stages doesn't mean that you should rush through them, especially when there are nine episodes still to air, and an ARG still to decipher. We're not saying that you should hold onto your sadness until mid-January, of course... but if you want to, we're going to be here for you no matter what. And possibly going through exactly the same thing.

Smallville's Scary Hacker Threat Surprisingly Unscary Shocker [Smallville Cliplet]

Graeme McMillan — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 11:00:41 -0800

Who is the most dangerous member of the Smallville cast? Friday's Idol managed to prove it's not Chloe, as this hilariously unconvincing threat demonstrates. Seriously, that's the best she could threaten the Wonder Twins with?

California Company Offers Genome Sequencing on the Cheap [Genome]

Alex Eichler — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 10:00:47 -0800

The research company Complete Genomics has figured out a way to sequence the human genome for less than $5,000 in chemicals, making it seem more likely than ever that affordable genetic profiles will become a thing of the mainstream.

Complete Genomics, a biotech start-up based in Mountain View, California, announced last week that it had produced three complete genome sequences for an average cost of $4,400 apiece. The error rate of these sequences is thought to be extraordinarily low, estimated at one in every 100,000 bases.

A number of companies, among them IBM, GE Global Research and Helicos BioSciences, have spent the last few years competing to develop low-cost sequencing technology. One of Complete Genomics's sequences used only $1,500 in materials, making it the least expensive genome to date.

The $4,400 figure doesn't tell the whole story; that's just the average value of the chemical enzymes used, and it doesn't reflect the labor or computational costs. Still, when the Human Genome Project finished the first sequence of a human genome in 2003, the cost is believed to have been at least $500 million. The latest results from Complete Genomics amount to an incredible markdown, and the company's competitors in the sequencing industry have promised even lower prices down the line.

If and when personal genome sequencing becomes something a majority of people can afford, it's likely to change almost everything about how care is administered. Whatever variations might be present in an individual's genetic code will show up in a genome sequence, including those associated with disease. Physicians would not only be able to offer preventative suggestions to their patients, but, since the genome also contains information about a person's metabolic reactions, they'd have a better chance of prescribing medicine that wouldn't cause unwanted side effects.

Earlier this year, Jay Flatley, CEO of the biotech firm Illumina, predicted that by 2019, genome sequencing will be not only affordable but routine, administered to newborns before they leave the hospital.

Of course, it might not always be a good thing to have access to the secrets of one's own genetic code. Certain genomic profiles could predict a dramatically shortened life expectancy, and it's not hard to imagine that some people wouldn't want to go about their lives with that knowledge hanging over them. The susceptibilities and predispositions revealed in a genome sequence would also be of likely (and possibly unwelcome) interest to insurers and employers.

If nothing else, the advent of routine genome sequencing is sure to complicate the vocabulary of care providers. If a baby displays a genomic marker for Niemann-Pick disease, does that count as a pre-existing condition? It's not a question we have an answer for, but we'll probably need to come up with one before long.

A detailed account of Complete Genomics's discount sequencing methods can be found at Ars Technica.

Photo by mknowles, used under Creative Commons license.

MGM Is Up For Sale, But Who's Buying? [Movie Bargains]

Graeme McMillan — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 09:00:38 -0800

Never mind the Terminator franchise - the entire MGM studio and back catalog is up for sale, meaning that anyone with a few billion dollars can finally make that Capricorn One remake they've been dreaming of.

Actually, the MGM library is pretty impressive, including such sci-fi classics as Forbidden Planet, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Soylent Green, Westworld and Logan's Run, as well as the original Clash of The Titans, Species and the upcoming Robocop remake (Also, Spaceballs... but that's not really a major selling point). If some interested - and rich - parties picked up the studio and the Terminator rights, they'd have an immediate in with the geek dollar, if they were so inclined (Who wouldn't want to see Robocop Vs. Terminator In Westworld?).

The sale of the studio isn't the only option for MGM's current, beleaguered owners; they're also said to be considering looking for a partner or restructuring debt repayments, but we can't help but think about potential buyers for the studio. What if Disney somehow managed to purchase it along with Marvel, for example? If we had a few billion lying around the offices, we'd be interested ourselves, but that's only because they also own the television rights to Lifeforce.

California Falls From Start To Finish [2012]

Graeme McMillan — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 08:00:23 -0800

The end of the (known) world doesn't come easily, even when Roland Emmerich is involved. 2012 required 1300 effects shots, and Popular Mechanics followed the fifteen-shot process in making just minutes of disaster happen smoothly.

It's a sad state of affairs that, even with all the work effects company Uncharted Territory put into the three-minute sequence that PM traces from storyboard to finished shot, the part that amused us the most was what Emmerich had to do with the real life actors:

As animators molded the virtual city, Emmerich was filming his actors in front of a blue screen. He put the actors on a "shaky floor," an 8000-square-foot steel platform on airbags. Special-effects coordinators jiggled the bags with pneumatic pumps to inspire authentic reactions from the actors. "It was the most complicated scene we created," Emmerich says. "And it's one of my favorites."

"Shaky floor"? Oh, John Cusack, what has become of your career?

The Anatomy of a Disaster Scene in the Movie 2012 [Popular Mechanics]

Is Joss Whedon's Post-Dollhouse Plan Already Underway? [Dollhouse]

Graeme McMillan — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 07:00:30 -0800

Commenting on the cancellation of Dollhouse, Joss Whedon teased that by the time the show ends in January, we'd know what his next project will be. Some fans think that we're already being given hints.

Fans at Whedonesque have been following the seemingly-Dollhouse-related ARG as its grown to include all-new elements which may cast doubt on just how Dollhouse connected it all is... Namely, a detective agency that is curiously long-lived. Those able to enter the Wipe The Future site (Username: 69B Password: 478, as per Twitter user @tombness) see this:

Those who take that and go to Spectrin.com will find an interesting detective agency:

Aside from our work, one of the things that the Spectrin team is most passionate about is history. Each of us is aware that our present is a direct result of our past, and for every action there is indeed a reaction.

Though having undergone several re-inventions during the company's lifetime, the core of Spectrin's business - our methodology, research, and services - have been family-directed and passed down from generation to generation. Founded by Augustus Hunter and Jonas Lockerbie in New York City, Spectrin's direct corporate ancestor (Hunter & Lockerbie) had its first offices on Bridge Street in lower Manhattan. Our current company was chartered in 1724 and we are proud to be New York's oldest investigative firm. Our case study archives chart their own story of the city's history, expanding in recent decades to cover our investigations throughout the U.S. and the world.

By enlisting Spectrin's services you benefit from centuries of knowledge, experience, and integrity. We are the partners who listen™. And we've been doing so for a very long time.

"Sara at Spectrin" would be Sara Kingsley, the company's Emeritus Investigator:

She graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University with a Bachelor of Science degree in Astrophysics and Biology, and has been employed by Spectrin for the past 14 years. Her doctoral research, on recent advancements in synthetic thought, was referred to in "The Phenomenon of Man", a book by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, one of the primary scholars in the field of matter and consciousness.

It's that last sentence that made some of Whedonesque's commenters pay attention:

Sara's page at Spectrin shows someone's having fun... or can't write. Anything she wrote couldn't be referred to in de Chardin's writings, since he lived in the World War I era.

ETA: ...unless that's part of the mystery. De Chardin wrote of an evolved human consciousness he called "The Omega Point."

The company seems to investigate the supernatural, so it's possible that Sara's older than we think. Especially given that "Our current company was chartered in 1724 and we are proud to be New York's oldest investigative firm."

I'm thinking either this will be the company that will take down Rossum or the company to supercede them. Didn't Joss say that by the time the last episode of Dollhouse airs we will already know what his next project is? A Temporal Displacement Investigative Agency? I'd like me some of that.

So is this ARG actually a stealth launch for some new Whedon project? We're doubtful. Although we'd love to see a time traveling detective agency show (Like Moonlighting, but with more period costumes!), there're three things that make this unlikely:

1. Why launch a new project off the back of a failed show? Yes, Dollhouse has its fans, but it also has those who've been disappointed by it, including some of the previous Whedon faithful. Wouldn't it make more sense just to start fresh, especially if the new project doesn't specifically share the same world as the old one?

2. Wouldn't Fox own some part of any spin-off? Presumably, Fox would have some ownership over material used in any Dollhouse promotion, and if a spin-off got started in this way, wouldn't they have some claim over it? Legal eagles, feel free to weigh in here; I may be entirely wrong.

3. Someone claiming to be from one of the sites connected to the ARG commented online that everything in the ARG is Dollhouse-related:

The Dollhouse ARG is not connected to Joss' new project or other future projects. Its purpose is simply to promote the current Dollhouse universe and the show, which returns on Dec 4th at 8/7c on FOX.

If this comment really comes from someone behind the ARG - which, in itself, seems unlikely, because why break the fiction to leave that comment? - then we're left with unexpected clues to how Dollhouse may end... and a frustrating lack of clues to what kind of "internet ventures/binge drinking" Whedon will be getting up to next. Although if he does want to do a time-traveling detective series online, we're already there.

[Whedonesque, (2)]

On Supernatural, the Meta Outweighed the Mega [Supernatural Recap]

Annalee Newitz — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 16:00:00 -0800

Thursday night's Supernatural, "The Real Ghostbusters," continued the meta arc that has been developing (possibly too much) this season. The brothers find themselves at a Supernatural fan convention, complete with Wincest references and LARPing. And, of course, a real ghost.

Like the episode two weeks ago, where the Winchesters wander through a TV show hell, this week we got more of the jokey meta-commentary on TV genres and fandom. Chuck the prophet and Becky the superfan were back, as headliner and organizer respectively at a Supernatural fan convention. (If you recall, Chuck published a cult-fave series of novels called Supernatural, based on his prophesies, before he realized that he was a prophet.) Everybody at the Con is dressed up as characters from the show, and Chuck is even asked questions by a stereotypical annoying uberfan during Q/A. In a silly German accent, Annoying Uberfan nitpicks his way through several question about how Sam could have been so stupid about Ruby, and asks why the brothers don't put their weapons on bungees to prevent losing them in fights.

The latter is a good point, which Dean acknowledges later in the episode as their weapons are knocked from their hands as usual.

It turns out that the LARP the fans are playing at the Con is based on an actual haunting at the hotel, formerly an orphanage, where they're staying. Several orphans were slaughtered by their schoolmistress, and now their spirits torment hotel guests on the anniversary of the murders. So you guessed it - the LARPers encounter the real deal and don't know what to do. Except for two guys, playing Sam and Dean, who wind up helping the real Sam and Dean track down the ghosts' bones and burning them before several people are scalped.

There are a lot of in-group fandom jokes at the Con, and a few hilarious moments when Chuck is on stage telling his life story ("And then at sixteen I lost my virginity, but the next day my girlfriend told everybody in school it didn't count.") And he reveals that an anonymous Scandinavian patron is going to fund the publication of his unpublished Supernatural novels, as well as any he writes from now on. That's sort of an interesting moment, because of course Chuck can't live on prophesy alone - if he's going to make enough money to eat, he has to pretend his books are cheesy paranormal romances, not archangel-protected prophesies of the Lord. I've always loved the way Supernatural equates trashy genre writing with prophesy.

But, as Maureen Ryan said over at Chicago Tribune, "I like my meta as much as the next person, but the show does seem to be stalling a bit about getting to the mega." We've got the Apocalypse going down all over the place, Sarah Palin is going to president in 4 years, and Sam and Dean are farting around with another silly meta plot complete with Becky the batty fangirl?

There is an emotionally satisfying (and Wincesty) moment when the LARP Sam and Dean tell the real Dean that he "doesn't understand the point of Supernatural" because he thinks being a Hunter is a horrible job. LARP Dean says, and I paraphrase, "In real life, I fix photocopiers. That's a sucky job. Getting up and saving the world every day, and having a brother who would die for you, that's incredible." And Dean has a kind of Buffy the Vampire Slayer moment where he realizes that even though he nearly dies every day, his life might be more meaningful than LARP Dean's. Then he thanks LARP Sam and Dean for their help, and they cuddle up together and tell him they are partners who met in a Supernatural chat room. Yay, it's a gay Sam and Dean moment!

But heterosexuals get their time in the sun too, when Becky reveals that Chuck is her true love. (She fell for him when he heroically protected Con-goers from one of the ghosts.) There's a winceworthy moment where Becky tells Sam it's over between them, because she's had this ongoing fantasy that they're soulmates, and we wonder why such an irritatingly delusional person is all that Chuck can hope for. Seriously, I know Becky is supposed to be zany, but I hate the way her character is treated. She acts like she's about 10 years old.

Becky has her usefulness, however. It turns out that in her fannish zeal, she read one of Chuck's novels/prophesies so carefully that she discovered something none of them realized. Ruby never gave the magical, potentially-Lucifer-vanquishing Colt gun to Lilith. Instead, she gave it to one of Lilith's henchmen. Aha! Obsessive fandom saves the day, and gives the boys some much-need direction on their quest to find the Colt. Can't wait for next week's episode (the last of the year!) when by all accounts Lucifer will bring on the mega.

Real-Life Stargate Discovered? [Industrial Design]

Annalee Newitz — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 15:30:00 -0800

This is actually a massive boring device, captured by the Department of Energy. Geoff Manaugh of BLDG BLOG came across it a few days ago.

Learn Sign Language With Sanctuary's Creature from the Black Lagoon [Sanctuary Recap]

Lauren Davis — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 15:00:00 -0800

Bigfoot, a werewolf, and the Creature from the Black Lagoon walk into an episode of Sanctuary, and what do they do? Mostly, they trade sign language, perform mundane medical procedures, and wait for the episode's true villain to emerge.

I'm not sure what I could have hoped for from this classic monster match-up — certainly not a cage match, but maybe abnormals playing poker? Alas, Sanctuary has not time for such frivolities. Our rubber-suited movie monster is Jack, a creature called a Plesky who has been living in captivity with werewolf Henry's pal Rachel. Rachel has been socializing Jack and teaching him sign language; he's basically like Koko the gorilla if Koko occasionally shot out deadly spores. Yes, Jack has shot his deadly, deadly spores into Rachel, who will die if Magnus and her team can't find a cure. Meanwhile, everyone is trying to figure out why the supposedly tame abnormal poisoned its foster mom. While it's true that people who keep dangerous animals around often wind up tiger chow, the Sanctuary team isn't paying enough attention to Rachel's twitchy husband who obviously has it in for Henry and at one point grabs a gun to shoot up the Plesky's containment cell (nice security, folks). It turns out that Rachel's husband set in motion the events that led to the Plesky's poisonous eruption, and once again we learn that humans are the real monsters. This struck me as a particularly bland entry from Sanctuary, but at least we got to see Henry wolf out a bit, and it was nice to have an abnormal that wasn't computer generated.

Still, next time, I'd like to see abnormals playing poker — or at least a few rounds of Go Fish.

Is Clone Wars One Big Advertisement For The Dark Side? [Clone Wars Review]

Graeme McMillan — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 14:00:10 -0800

Last night's Star Wars: The Clone Wars may not have been as brutal as the week before, but "Weapons Factory" also showed off one of the strange things about the series: Celebrating the non-Jedi emotions that'll turn Anakin Darth-like. Spoilers.

Skipping over the lack of logic in the McGuffin necessary to get the plot going where it was supposed to (Seriously, it was a better idea to send the two apprentices off alone to complete a mission than one apprentice and one Jedi? Or, for that matter, two Jedi, and leave the apprentices leading the clone troops, as we've seen many times before?), the moral of last night's episode seemed to be "Sometimes that Jedi training is a drag." Without the mad improvisational skillz taught to her by Anakin, Ahsoka and Barris would've failed in their mission, after all, and if Anakin hadn't let his emotions overwhelm him and keep looking for the missing Padawans, then... well, they still probably would've been discovered eventually, but still.

I'm all for morals being "Sometimes you have to do what you know is right, irregardless of peer pressure/authority/whatever," but everytime we see Anakin save the day by listening to his inner voice instead of other, more experienced Jedi, I keep thinking "Wait, so he's just taking another small step towards killing all those kids in Revenge of The Sith, right?" I mean, I get that we're not really supposed to think about the fact that the hero of the show turns into a child-murdering galactic dictator too much - It kind of makes you think of that whole "What if you could travel back in time and kill Hitler" thing, and makes you wish that Ahsoka would accidentally slip and chop Anakin's head off, or maybe that's just me - but by repeating the schtick so often, it draws attention to it so much that it's impossible to avoid: The thing that saves the day so often now will end up being the biggest problem of all soon enough. Suddenly, the show becomes more ambiguous and subversive than it probably meant to be.

Of course, it all makes sense in the larger context (Luke combines Jedi training with emotion to bring "balance to the Force," like Anakin was supposed to before he was manipulated by Palpatine and became too emotional), but nonetheless, it makes episodes like "Weapons Factory" feel curiously off-balance. Shouldn't we get some more episodes about the value of calming down and thinking things through, every now and again, just to even everything out? Before The Clone Wars ends, whenever that may be, it'd be nice to see that addressed - and if it takes the death of Ahsoka to do that, then that wouldn't be too much of a problem for me.

With Double Star , the Hugos Start to Shine [Blogging The Hugos]

Moff — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 13:00:01 -0800

The original Grand Master brings us the first Hugo-winning novel truly worthy of the award. Hot jets, kiddies! It's Double Star, by Robert Anson Heinlein, from 1956.

A quick recap, for those of you just joining us: The first Hugo winner, Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man, was, in my humble opinion, possessed of some interesting ideas whose execution didn't do anything to elevate science fiction as a genre. The second, They'd Rather Be Right, by Mark Clifton and Frank Riley, has more merit than it probably gets credit for — but that's not saying much.

But now — now we come to number three. And fittingly, one of SF's Big Three is at the helm this time, and it really is a charm.

I'm gushing. I am, actually, mildly giddy. It's because, I'm a mite abashed to admit, until I picked up Double Star last week, I hadn't read any R.A.H. in longer than I can recall.

And since I can't say too much about the book itself without spoiling it — it's not a complicated story, and to summarize the plot in even the bare-bonesiest way might ruin the action for those new to it, as I was (it will be more fun if you don't even read the flap copy, I promise) — let me first talk about the author, and why, for all the criticisms typically leveled against him, he deserves his place of primacy in the canon.

For starters, that voice. Now, assuredly, by the time you get to the end of his oeuvre, especially in the case of anything written in the first person, like The Cat Who Walks Through Walls, Heinlein's style and tone and general sensibility can seem more like an impediment than an asset — the problem being that every one of his protagonists sounds exactly the same. The journeyman Heinlein fan can pick up a single page torn from any piece of his fiction, whether they've read it before or not, and recognize it as such within seconds.

But there's also something very comforting about that. Some io9ers will remember that I am an inordinately die-hard U2 fan. I'm not about to make any serious comparison between them and Heinlein, except to say that slipping into Double Star, rediscovering him after a few years away, reminded me of the sensation I get when I go back to my favorite band: Oh, yes — I remember this. Even when it's a story I haven't read or a song I've never heard, the general feeling of familiarity is there, and when you don't overdose on it, it's awful pleasant.

Heinlein's voice, too, is deeply accessible. And I think that's really important for a Hugo winner. To me, SF's other big award, the Nebula, decided on by the genre's writers and not just its fans, has always struck me as slightly less concerned about approachability. (Slightly — there's a lot of crossover between the two. But still: Samuel Delany's and Gene Wolfe's novels ain't won no Hugos.) Whereas when I pick up a paperback with "Hugo" on the cover, I expect a text that will exercise my brain but never strain it.

Double Star does that. And although it's not technically one of Heinlein's "juveniles," it's hard to imagine it didn't draw many of their readers — which, given its pre-civil-rights-era publication date and not at all subtle anti-racism theme, can only have been a good thing. And it's on this point that, to me, he truly earned his spot in the pantheon.

He is not an author frequently associated with Star Trek. People think of Harlan Ellison, or Isaac Asimov, or even James Blish. But honestly, I can't think of a more well-known SF writer than Heinlein who consistently beat the drum for those values for which the show (and much of the SF I love best) is famous: Equality among not just humanity, but among all species. Justice and fair treatment of others. Confidence in science and reason, but never at the expense of our emotional capacities. An unwavering belief that, though eminently fallible, Homo sapiens has within itself the ability to attain untold heights.

That's not to say he's perfect in this regard. Double Star is a product of its time and features all of one female character. And we don't hear too much from her, but she's more or less the same female character he usually wrote.* Still, he improved on that front as the years went on. (While no Beverly Crusher, a late-era Heinlein heroine is a hell of a lot hardier than Lt. Uhura ever has been.)

In other ways, too, Double Star is no masterpiece. I called out The Demolished Man for a predictable end reveal, and the one here is even easier to guess at. However, I'll say that the final passage, written from a different perspective, time-wise (and even character-wise), than the rest of the book, compensates for it, and then some. It's not anything groundbreaking, but it's elegantly, even movingly executed, and a rather neat trick for Heinlein, relying as it does on as an awareness of that persistent, instantly recognizable voice that pervades everything leading up to it.

Heinlein would go on to earn three more Hugos for his novels, tying him for the most with — and maybe this is kinda fitting too, given the notes above about women — Lois McMaster Bujold. Double Star is probably the least known of his four winners, but it's nonetheless where the award becomes worth paying attention to.

*In Heinlein's defense, I will say that an SF editor once told me that same female character he always wrote was essentially a not-that-idealized version of his wife, Virginia, who apparently was as pretty and brainy and horny and able to shoot a gun as we're told. Also, again, he basically wrote the same male character over and over again, too, so.

"Blogging the Hugos" appears every other weekend. In the next installment: The Big Time, by Fritz Leiber, from 1958.

Moff's real name is Josh Wimmer, and he can usually be found here.

What Comes After 2012 ? 2011 ! [Steal This Pitch]

Graeme McMillan — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 12:00:06 -0800

With this weekend's release of 2012, we remembered 1984's 2010: The Year They Make Contact and wondered, "How did we get from Roy Scheider and aliens to the end of the world?" Then we realized: The answer is Nic Cage.

If 2012 is as successful as those Hollywood Insiders expect it to be - and with a $23.7 million Friday opening, that looks to be a sure thing right now - then the obvious follow-up isn't the 2013 television series that director Roland Emmerich has been talking about, but a prequel: 2011... explaining not only what happened in the year before the end of the world, but just how how the Monolith-led transformation of Jupiter in 2010 led into the whole thing. That's right: We're talking crossover territory, and who better to take us there than Nicolas Cage?

This is what we're suggesting: While Danny Glover's President and Oliver Platt's chief of staff are hurredly making plans to survive the oncoming apocalypse that they've secretly discovered (as per 2012), a maverick government scientists played by Cage is studying the data captured the spaceship Alexei Leonov (in 2010) and comes up with a plan to contact the aliens behind the Monoliths to try and convince them to cool the Earth from the core temperature-induced collapse we've been promised. Part of this involves going public with that whole "end of the world" thing, which means that before too long, Cage and his family (including surly son Shia LeBeouf) are on the run, being chased by US government agents ordered to keep him quiet at all costs.

While on the run, Cage meets up with 2010's Roy Scheider - or a CGI-animated version thereof, using motion capture technology of John Turturro, just because - who was there when Jupiter got turned into a second sun by the Monoliths at the end of the very-confusing-when-I-was-a-kid second Clarke movie, who is suitably shocked that the government is keeping this whole end of the world thing under wraps, and helps him contact the aliens through some ridiculous-yet-exciting sequence that doesn't really matter in the long run, before dying to add pathos to (a) Cage's mission, and (b) seeing Roy Scheider live again, even if it's only as a CGI character probably animated by Robert Zemeckis, let's face it. Then! Dave Bowman - again, computer generated to look like Keir Dullea, but this time, it's a motion captured performance by Ewan McGregor - appears to Cage and gives him temporary superpowers to fight off the government agents, leading to a series of Matrix-esque action sequences that don't seem dated at all, before listening to Cage try to emote while pleading for the survival of the planet.

Moved by Cage's nervous, jerky-headed plea, Bowman explains that the mysterious aliens can, in fact, save the Earth, but in order to do so, they'll have to abandon Jupiter and come and hide inside the Earth in order to do so. Acting as the ambassador for all of humanity, Cage says that that sounds like a great idea and thanks a lot, and so we're treated to an overblown moment where thousands of Monoliths emerge from the star that was Jupiter, fly towards Earth - Cut to scenes of men in front of radar screens freaking out about all the UFOs flying towards the planet, but just before they call the President, the space radar goes quiet because all the Monoliths have gone into stealth mode - and then float gently to the ground, and then through the ground, before we get a cameo of 2012's Adrian Helmsley (Chiwetel Ejiofor) looking at a computer saying "The core temperature has dropped! Now there's a chance we just might survive this damn thing!" to someone on the phone, with the additional "And that's how the end of the world didn't actually end the world, and how there aren't two suns in 2012!" being optional depending on how much the audience needs spoonfeeding.

As Dave Bowman disappears, US agents catch up with Cage and his family, killing Cage and causing Shia to not only realize that he loves his dad after all, but also swear to carry on his father's work of talking to aliens and saving the world through diplomacy, car chases and being a maverick. The movie ends with a title card of "ONE YEAR LATER" and shows Shia - with a beard, to show that it is "later" - wandering around the ruins of whatever major city is deemed appropriate, tears in his eyes and looking at the sky, telling his father that he loves him.

I'm telling you, Hollywood: This is the movie that everyone wants to see. Sure, some may dismiss it as shameless fanboy continuity pandering between two movies that are actually unconnected in all but their titles, but to them, I say: Nic Cage, Shia LeBeouf and the CGI reanimation of Roy Scheider. I'll take my 10% in gold bars whenever you're ready, thanks very much.

Dwight Shows Off His Lack Of Shooting Superpower In Super Tease [Super]

Graeme McMillan — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 11:00:06 -0800

In preparation for the upcoming superhero comedy Super, The Office's Rainn Wilson learns how to shoot a gun. And, just to win our hearts a little more, quotes The Matrix in doing so. Click through for bad aim!

Super will see a distinctly non-superpowered Wilson try to become a real-life superhero (Shades of Kick-Ass?) to try and regain the attention and affections of his wife (played by Ellen Page). Hopefully, his skill with a shooter won't be a deciding factor.

Our Going Away Present to James Gunn: Michael Rooker and Rainn Wilson Go Shooting [Joke and Biagio]

Titan's Drone Boat Could Be Joined By a Nuclear Hot-Air Balloon [Titan]

Alex Eichler — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 10:00:45 -0800

It's been reported that a planned mission to Titan will use a robotic boat to explore the liquid-methane seas. But the project will also have eyes in the sky: a hot-air balloon will circumnavigate Titan and observe its multiform topography.

The Titan Saturn System Mission, a joint endeavor between NASA and the European Space Agency, hopes to launch probes to Titan by 2020 with the aim of better understanding the seas, atmosphere, surface composition and subterranean dynamics of Saturn's largest moon. One of the probes would be a seagoing vessel, designed to sail on Titan's hydrocarbon lakes. Since the surface of Titan is so wildly varied, though, TSSM is also planning to set a hot-air balloon drifting for six months at an altitude of 10 kilometers, recording as it goes.

Proposals for sending a balloon to Titan have existed for a few years now. NASA reports use the term "montgolfiere" to describe the craft, a reference to the hot-air balloon design pioneered by the Montgolfier brothers in 1873. Like these nineteenth-century airships, Titan's balloon would achieve loft by capturing heated gas in a bulbous overhead bag, called an envelope. While the first hot-air balloons kept live fires burning in their gondolas, the heat for Titan's balloon would be generated by an onboard plutonium isotope.

"Hot-air" is a relative term in this case. Titan's mean surface temperature is about -290 Fahrenheit, so a balloon flying over Titan would require only about 1 percent of the heat it would need on Earth. This is one reason a ballooning mission makes sense, though there are others: Titan's slow rotation produces generally calm weather, and a system of trade winds would carry a drifting aircraft all the way around the moon. Just in case the wind doesn't do the trick, the team at TSSM is considering a mechanical propeller to help guide the balloon.

Titan features some of the most diverse terrain to be found anywhere in the solar system. Aside from the massive lakes (the only stable bodies of surface liquid in our system besides Earth's own), Titan also sports deserts, craters, cryovolcanoes and mountains of water ice. A terrestrial rover would be impractical on a world with such eclectic geology. It's hoped that not only could a balloon cover more ground than a wheeled vehicle, but it might even be able to land and scoop a bit of surface material for study.

Most current projections don't put the balloon or the boat on Titan sooner than 2029. An overview of the Titan Saturn System Mission's plans and goals is available online.

Magic Vs. Technology: Batman Decides [Brave And The Bold Review]

Graeme McMillan — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 09:00:54 -0800

The battle between science and faith is over, and superstition won. Don't believe us? Watch the evidence, as Batman himself chooses magic over his own uber-science during last night's Batman: The Brave And The Bold.

For a season finale (which this was; it's officially the last episode of the first season, even though there was a gap of months between the most recent batch of episodes and the rest of the first season; the second season begins next month), last night's "The Fate of Equinox!" left us cold. Sure, the threat of the universe being destroyed in the battle between chaos and order sounds exciting on paper, but I've never been that interested in Equinox, the original(ish; he's based on the comics' Libra) villain chosen to hook the whole story around, and despite some nice moments, Dr. Fate wasn't up to the guest-star caliber of Aquaman, Blue Beetle or other heroes. It was fun enough, sure, but this - and last week's "Inside the Outsiders" both seemed like products of writers getting tired towards the end of the season, and especially after the "Mayhem of the Music Meister!" episode. We're hoping for a little more from "Death Race To Oblivion" when the show returns (If nothing else, there's some wit in the idea of Batman teaming with the Question to take on the Riddler), but what did you think?

Does Superman Returns Really Deserve A Director's Cut? [Superman Returns]

Graeme McMillan — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 08:00:00 -0800

Fans online are planning to lobby Warner Bros into releasing a re-edited, special features-laden version of Bryan Singer's Superman Returns, thinking that it could uncover the hidden masterpiece in the released version. But... is there a masterpiece hidden in there?

I'll admit to liking the failed 2006 relaunch of the Superman franchise more than most people, but even I think it's definitely more flawed than it should be; overlong, lacking a show-stopping action set-piece and that whole Superman-as-stalker-and-Lois-is-married-this-can't-end-well thing was... ill-considered, to say the least. It's possible that a Director's Cut of the movie would uncover all manner of Singer's original intent and improve the thing, but what I find myself worrying about is the idea that what didn't work for me were the parts that were Singer's ideas (Superman-as-stalker-and-Lois-is-married, etc.), and any Director's Cut would make it worse. And so, I leave it to you, dear readers: What do you think about the idea of re-editing and re-releasing Superman Returns?

[Superman Returns: The Bryan Singer Cut]

Davies: No Doctor Who Movie From Me [Doctor Who]

Graeme McMillan — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 07:00:10 -0800

In a new interview, outgoing Doctor Who showrunner Russell T Davies finally kills those movie rumors once and for all (Or does he?) and also talks about spoilers from the show getting released ahead of time. Should we be worried?

Talking to ShortList, Davies says that "there's not enough money" for the much-rumored Who movie, and adds that he "feel[s] like I've made 60 movies already," when asked about the possibility of one of his future projects being a big-screen turn for the Time Lord (In another interview, he denies working on an American version of the show, which I didn't even know was a rumor). It's possible that he'll just be too busy looking for guilty former Who staffers to think about a movie, of course; asked about leaks from the production keeping British tabloids (and sites like us) busy as the show gained popularity, he said,

When I was inside the programme it really p*ssed me off but now I'm outside it and seeing stuff that they're filming [for the next series] appear in the papers it excites me and doesn't put me off watching it in the slightest... [But] I don't want to go to my deathbed without finding out who leaked stuff. They will be found.

Confidential memo to those who leaked: Thank you. Now run and hide.

The Russell T Davies Interview [Shortlist]

What If . . . Jack the Ripper Were A Time-Traveling Chick? [It Hurts]

Annalee Newitz — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 19:26:31 -0800

From the department of questions you never wanted answered comes the belated sequel to cult fave Time After Time, where HG Wells and Jack the Ripper travel to the 1970s and duke it out. Now Jack is back as Jaclyn.

Jaclyn the Ripper is written by Karl Alexander, who also penned the bestselling Time After Time. That novel became a genuinely cool movie with Malcolm McDowell as HG Wells (who invents a real time machine) and the always-scary David Warner as his buddy who (unbeknownst to Wells) is actually Jack the Ripper. If you recall, at the end of Time After Time, HG banishes Jack to a nethertime and he and his modern-day love Amy return to the late nineteenth century to live the steampunk romance dream.

Sadly Alexander fell prey to deadly sequelitis and churned out Jaclyn the Ripper, published by Forge this month. Amy is lonely for her family, so she gets into the time machine and everything goes haywire immediately. She winds up in 2009, and some of her DNA swirls out into nethertime, unleashing Jack and turning him into Jaclyn! Yes, this novel is part of the fine tradition that brought you other astonishing "let's switch genders and make exactly the same story" tales like Dr. Jekyll and Ms. Hyde. Imagine - now Jack is Jaclyn! How will HG ever save his lady from . . . a lady?!

Over at The Big Thrill, Austin Camacho interviewed Alexander about this astonishing plot device and explains:

In the novel Jaclyn's beauty and gender change give her a huge advantage in avoiding Wells and the police. But her more complex female emotions drive her to do things she wouldn't do as a male psychopath. And she seems more intrigued with betrayal than she was as a man.

"As I wrote, Jaclyn's inner character became a psychological study of men and women," Alexander says. "An exploration of how the genders see and rationalize violence, how they respond to love, how they confuse each other."

In fact, in the midst of this rollicking thrill ride, you'll find yourself captivated by the thought of how Jaclyn will handle her first sexual experience with a man, and how she will handle falling in love.

Yeah, those "more complex female emotions" always make serial killing into something romantic and nurturing. And while you're contemplating that, just think of all the wacky fun you'll have reading about how HG deals with twenty-first century contraptions like cell phones!

I am left with two burning questions. Why bring out a sequel now, when the original book and movie have faded into warm, happy memories? But more to the point, since sequels and reboots are (yes I will admit it!) sometimes a good idea, why do a sequel whose premise is more like a Blake Edwards flick than a scifi-thriller?

Jaclyn the Ripper via Amazon

How Stargate Universe Can Win Back Your Love [SGU]

Meredith Woerner — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 18:00:00 -0800

Tonight's SGU is being heralded as a cast favorite. Ironically, it's the episode where everyone on Destiny dies, which should make some Gater-haters happy. Still, we think there's a lot good in this series; it just needs a few tweaks.

Robert Carlyle, Ming-Na and David Blue claim it's their mind-blowing favorite. But can it win back the fans that the series has lost?

The Watcher, a long time Stargate critic, had a run in with the Gate just this week. After criticizing the show she received a message in her comments section from the show's producer Brad Wright. The response is well worth a read. On top of that SGU writer Joseph Mallozzi took to his blog telling various trolls and SGU haters to back off, well technically, he called them idiots. And let's not forget when everyone called the new gate sexist.

So can the series still pull out from under all of this drama? We actually think so, if the show starts giving the fans what they want. So we rounded up a few hopeful ideas for how SGU could win back all the haters.

What We Want More Of

Colonel Everett Young

Louis Ferreira is the glue that is holding the Destiny, and this show, together. In these last few episodes, Young has become a much larger part of the story without revealing much, if anything, about his past. And yet I'm riveted. This character and actor haven't had a misstep yet. It's an absolute delight unraveling the secrets behind this character. Even when he's a bit gruff, Young has a reassuring and realistic manner that sets the crew at ease by merely saying, "I've done this 12 times, no big deal" mention. No need for the wink and nod routine, he sets the standards merely by being himself.

Plus, he can really pull off that something-is-boiling-underneath, tortured soul look — without being as cheesy as how I just described it. As opposed to Rush's character, who just screams, rants, and raves to a point where I don't really care what he's hiding. Rush's a petty little jerk who reminds me more of the Nick Burns IT guy than a tortured genius. Even when he's quiet he's just trying too hard to be a "frustrated dick." We know Robert Carlyle is a great actor, I'm just hoping they give him more to work with and soon. Because right now his mystery and ambiguous morals are lost in his Nick Burns antics.

Meanwhile, Young cheated on his wife and I still wish him obscene amounts of happiness. Either give us more Young, or invest in the other characters the way you have invested in Young.

The Women

What's Ming-Na's character's name? Seriously, what is it? I forget almost every time, because she has had absolutely no screen time or character development in this series. Apparently, because she's a hard ass and works for a company, that makes her important. Same goes for TJ. Sure it seems that she and Young had a thing going on at one time, but that's all I can tell you about her, besides the fact that she can keep a cool head under pressure.

Critics have been accusing SGU of being sexist for weeks now, and when the only female character with a large speaking role is sleeping with one male character and making out with another male character while crying and drunk, well... let's just say it's been a losing battle thus far. Let's hope tonight's episode changes all that, please? More women. I think I may like T.J., so write her into the story. Let me like T.J. please! Oh, and Ming-Na's character is named Camile Wray, by the way.

Flashbacks

While we're asking for more from our characters, whatever happened to all the flashbacks from the beginning of this series? I'd even take another super-religious flashback priest in the desert heat stroke flashback. Whatever, as long as it meant getting to know these people better. So how about it? More flashbacks please? You don't have to reveal all the secrets but maybe just a taste so we care when Greer continually acts like a psycho. Give us a reason behind it something not just a big "well he's damaged" stamp and expect us to just deal with it because he gets naked when he thinks it's death time. Even a blurry quickie jump similar to Eli's Mom vision helps. Something please.

Natural Humor

David Blue has been saddled with the amazingly huge task of bringing humor to this otherwise dark show. He's just about the only person who does anything light, and sadly it's usually incredibly forced. But that's his character, a socially awkward, but lovable dude. It's okay when his jokes come out forced, because that's what his humor was set up to do: act like a defense mechanism for the character.

So when you see Eli Wallace showing real emotion, it's hard not to get choked up. Even when they paint him as the panting, lovesick nerd, which they love to do, he cuts through his own BS with one killer knowing glance. This is why he actually works as a socially awkward sometimes funny, sometimes beating the joke to death character. But it get's muddled when SGU asks too much of Eli. It's near next to impossible to be funny, awkwardly funny, diffuse the moment funny and defense mechanism funny at the same time, and all alone. He needs some help here.

The show really needs a bit more unforced humor. This crew must lighten up somehow; that way, we won't be expecting everything Eli says to be funny. If we lighten his humor load, we could view him as a fully formed character with flaws, and not just the character who's supposed to make you laugh, because no one else is. Stargate writers are funny, we know this, so blend the darkness and the humor they way we know you can, and promised you would.

Team Adventures

The best part of a Gate series is putting the crew on a strange planet and watching what happens. Thankfully, I think tonight will welcome back this tradition. Sure, it's been fun seeing pairs here and there on the snow planet and desert planet, but I want to see the team flee for their lives from native beasts or angry hostiles. It's more interesting than "What has Destiny run out of this week?" Still, I think we'll be seeing a lot more of this in the future.

What We Want Less Of

The Slow Burn

It's high time some secrets were spilled. I think we all realize that survival is the first priority on Destiny, and watching humans freak out about a lack of air, water, or power is interesting, but only if I'm emotionally connected to the characters who could die. And they already killed off Shooter, so the only characters we're really invested in right now are Eli, Scott, the Senator's Daughter, and Young. I'd like to get to know the rest of the crew, so the next time there's a lottery for who gets to live and who has to stay and die, I'll be worried.

Destiny Taking The Wheel

The ship is jumping all over the universe, and there's nothing the crew can do to stop it. That should be all the work a mechanical being should have to do. But every time there's a problem or an issue, it seems like the ship figures out the solution. Meanwhile, every time the humans interfere with Destiny... disaster strikes. It would be nice to see the humans figure something out on their own for once.

Boob Lens

Show me the scenes where the other female cast members were subjected to this "yowzer" camera angle and I will take it all back. But as far as I can tell this little move was character-... nay, actress-specific. And not only did it cause internet outrage, it was disappointing. You have to treat each character equally, or else you're just undoing all the hard work this actress is trying to accomplish fleshing out a minor character. Just two episodes ago, Lt. Vanessa James was given a chance to show a little depth while battling with possible jealousy over her past broom closet fling, Scott. I wonder how many people were actually thinking about what James was going through as opposed to, "When is she going to take off that itchy jacket?"

She's gorgeous, that's for sure. But displaying this character in a different light than the other women sets her apart, in a bad way. And no, I'm not suggesting SGU institute a mandatory chest angle for each female (or male) character; to the contrary, they should do away with the image entirely. And hopefully that's that case, as "Darkness" was the last time I've seen the terrible boob lens. Perhaps this was just a fluke angle, but I highly doubt it. Still, if it's gone forever, great. Hopefully with one more episode, we can all put the Boobgate conundrum to bed and get to know more about this character.

Sex

I can't believe I'm saying this but, I could do with a lot less sex in this show. Much of the bumpin' and grindin' just feels like sex for sex's sake — especially with the Senator's daughter and Scott.

I get it: sex sells, and sideways naked shots of young people in front of a yellow window look pretty, but what's the point? I just can't see or feel the importance of this action. It just seems like, "We can have sex now on this Stargate, so we did." Especially when it's paired next to a Richard Dean Anderson scene with him being, well, his old adorable self, it's jarring and serves no purpose.

I honestly have no idea why these two kids are sleeping together. Is it a "We're young and wild" thing? A High Fidelity "put cigarettes out on me or sleep with me" emotion? Are they using each other, in love, in lust? All I we know is that Chloe feels "closer to Scott than anyone she's ever felt closer to ever," or something terrible like that. It's annoying, and they are annoying together whenever they start making out in a hallway like high school kids. "Hey remember when your dad died over there? We should make out." Same goes for the broom closet sex. What was the point of having it if James was only going to be jealous of Scott's new Saturday night lady for five seconds?

It's one thing to pull a gimmick like a mid-sex ancient stone partner switcheroo, which they did with Young and Colonel David Telford in "Earth." It may have been an exceedingly lame gimmick, but at least it meant something. There was build up for Young's character, and even the switch means something — well we hope so, or else would Telford show up at Young's wife's house at the end of the episode? Either way, I'm intrigued and entertained, but all this bland other sex should stop. It's ruining the good sex.

Just a few among many suggestions we've heard. Basically this show needs more time to build up these characters. I want to like every single Destiny crew member, I honestly do. It's just been a lot of watching with very little connection thus far. And while I'm happy everyone got water a few weeks ago, I'd really rather connect with another character the way I have with Young. Let's hope tonight's episode takes some of these caricatures and flesh them out into characters.

Here's the preview and a clip for tonight's episode, it kind of reminds me of old Gates, what with them shooting in the woods and all, so far so good.

Could This Be The Weirdest Fetish On Youtube? [Found Footage]

Charlie Jane Anders — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 17:30:00 -0800

A blonde heroine fights her evil clone, while her superpowered male friend is too busy drying his hair to help out. I have no idea what TV show this is from, but it's one of dozens on this Youtube channel.

Youtube user Clonelab79 has posted 37 videos to date, most of them having to do with women and their evil clones. In particular, many of the most popular headlines are "Wife uses double of herself to seduce her husband" or "Blonde superhero clones herself" or "Alien plant grows clone of redhead." (The hair color is part of it apparently — it's just not as hot, for Clonelab79, if the alien plant was cloning a brunette.)

Here's "Wife has clone seduce her husband for her":

And here's "Brunette female cloned impersonated by android robot doppelganger", which is from Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles:

And here's "Brunette superhero clones herself." The description is great: "Brunette is cloned by scientist to clear her original's name. The clone glitches and the real girl must fight her clone."

Here's "Alien plant grows clone of redhead":

Does anybody know what any of these things are from?

Cheating Villains At Cards Shouldn't Be That Easy, FlashForward [Flashforward Recap]

Graeme McMillan — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 16:30:46 -0800

This week on FlashForward, the series settles into its "one bad episode to follow every great one" rhythm, everyone wonders (again) whether they've definitely seen the future, and Charlie from Lost demonstrates why he's a crappy villain. Spoilers!

It seems that every week I get a Friday off, the previous night's FlashForward will be good. Last week's episode finally had someone try to change everything by killing themselves, thereby ensuring that their FF won't come true. Sadly, this week's episode struggled to play catch-up to what that meant.

Look at what's going on with Mark and Olivia; the FBI's most flat agent is so inspired by the suicide of colleague Al Gough (Yes, the show is killing off creators of Smallville; we can only hope that Miles Millar is watching his back as we speak) to prevent his future from coming true that he shoots a suspect who may or may not be one of the men who were coming after him in his FlashForward, killing him. Of course, he also buys his wife the lingerie that she's wearing in her FF (and which she opens at work, because... Actually, I have no idea. Am I missing some kind of American tradition of holding lingerie up in the air at the workplace?) and learns that his AA sponsor Aaron's daughter really is alive, as per Aaron's own FF, which seems to throw his "Maybe it won't come true!" thing into some doubt after all.

Aaron's daughter's return seems to open up another subterfuge subplot for the show, as she explains that she was ambushed by some Blackwater-esque "good guys" in Afghanistan, which led to her leg being blown off and presumption of her death (The leg, by the way, was the explanation for how the corpse they exhumed earlier in the season had her DNA, which seems... unlikely, to say the least. Did they only test the leg for DNA?). I hope that this subplot actually connects with the rest of the show, because otherwise, what's the point? There's too much going on with the rest of the show for us to really care about a completely separate plot about corrupt warzones that could be (and likely has been) done better elsewhere.

Meanwhile, Charlie's apparently-supposed-to-be-bad guy Simon continues to disappoint with almost every scene he's in. This week, after Lloyd tells... someone (his fellow scientists?) that they have to own up to having caused the FFs in the first place, Simon tells him that they can't, and then surreally decides that they'll play cards to decide whether or not to go public. A stupid idea, you think? Well, yes, but it gets better: Lloyd wins, as you'd expect, and then admits to Simon that he cheated, and Simon doesn't even say that he wants a rematch, or that Lloyd can't go public, he's just "Oh, you sly devil." Simon, seriously: What the fuck kind of bad guy lets himself by conned, and then doesn't even get upset when he's told that he's been conned? You're a disappointment to your evil brethren.

Just to make something about the episode worthwhile (Because, really? Janis deciding that she's going to have a baby because her FF told her to doesn't cut it), the Feds get an enhanced version of the photo of Suspect Zero, and see that he's wearing a ring, which seems pointless until the end of the episode where a case of rings is delivered to a man talking about Robert Oppenheimer, who comments that it's missing a ring, and then shoots the delivery man dead. What do the rings mean? Besides cute shoutouts not only to episode co-writer Marc Guggenheim's Green Lantern movie script and Dominic Monaghan's Lord of The Rings past, I mean. Maybe we'll find out soon - I just hope it happens on a week when I do a recap.

The Shiniest Stories On io9 Last Week [Best Of The Week]

Lauren Davis — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 15:45:00 -0800

Spend all week mourning Dollhouse? Don't fret, we have the best stories of the week right here. This week, we got addicted to brain implants, spent time in Star Trek's alien bazaar, and listed the worst disaster movie moments.

5 Comics You're Not Reading (But Should Be)
You're not new to comics, but you've read all the big names and you're not sure where to go next. Luckily, we're here with five suggestions to make your November bookshelf that little bit heavier.

10 Favorite Faux Deaths In Science Fiction
Death really isn't the end in science fiction... It just depends on whether or not it can be written around later. Here are some of our favorite NotDeaths that prove that the Grim Reaper should really up his game.

The Lost "Cantina Scene" From Abrams' Star Trek
James Kirk stumbles into an exotic alien bazaar on a desert world, in some concept art from a sequence that never made it into J.J. Abrams' Star Trek. Check out more exclusive views from the Trek art book below.

V's Mothership Already Landed In Milwaukee In 2001
Early concept art shows the assymetrical arches and white coolness of the mothership in ABC's V remake - and it turns out the startling similarity to a cutting-edge art museum isn't accidental at all.

What If Moviemakers Swapped Franchises?
The problem with big movie franchises is that you always know what to expect; it's always the same guys making the same movies. But what if you swapped creators and movie franchises around? Here's what'd work - and what wouldn't.

First Kick-Ass Trailer Gets Graphic With Kiddie Vigilantes
The first Kick-Ass teaser trailer is out. Watch the costumed kid cops deal out justice with guns, knives and blood. Proving you don't need superpowers to, well you know...

Seven Ways the World Could End in 2012
So, the world probably won't end in 2012, but that's the date for plenty of imagined apocalypses. We look at the various ways the world ends (or at least radically changes) when the Mayan Long Count Calendar runs out.

The Curious Case of a Woman Addicted to Her Brain Implant
One of the cutting-edge cures for chronic muscle tremors is called a thalamic stimulator - it's a brain implant that delivers current to your thalamus. But it can also cause intensely pleasurable erotic feelings, leading one woman into implant addiction.

Pop-Culture Cyborgs Through The Ages: A Gallery
Cyborgs kick ass with their super-powered robot legs - but they've changed a lot over the years. Here's our roundup of awesome images of cybernetic organisms, bionic superheroes and cyber-villains, from the 1960s to today.

Disaster Movie Moments That Pissed Us Off The Most
Sure, disaster movies are just empty calories of mass destruction - but even when you don't take them seriously, there are always some scenes that you just can't excuse. We've collected the most infuriating moments from the biggest disaster movies.

Top image from Player vs. Player. Read full comic here.

"Flight of the Conchords" Might Have Been Science Fiction [Alternate History]

Annalee Newitz — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 15:15:00 -0800

Most people first heard of Jemaine Clement and Bret McKenzie after their robot-overlord song "The Humans Are Dead" became an internet sensation. And their HBO show "Flight of the Conchords" was almost a scifi epic - with dinosaurs and astronauts!

Fresh off his hilarious role as the cheesy epic fantasy writer Ronald Chevalier in Gentlemen Broncos, Clement talked to Sarah Kuhn about what his TV series might have been in an alternate universe.

After being approached by HBO to develop a series, Clement said he and McKenzie were "sick of" singing. He continued:

We'd been playing our live show for a month, like, 30 nights in a row, and we'd been writing the month before that. So we were sick of that, and we were like, "It's going to be science fiction; there's no songs. It's set in 1970." They were like, "Where did the songs go?" [Laughs.] Different people had different ideas-we talked to lots of writers . . . Some ideas other writers pitched to us were, like, "You're a band and you play from town to town and you play those real-life gigs and then you go and save people in the town." Or, one of my favorites was, "Every episode's different. In one episode, you're racecar drivers and it's a musical about racecar drivers. And then the next time, you're astronauts. And the next time, you're dinosaur hunters." I really liked that one.

We really like that one too! Please let the next Clement/McKenzie joint be a swashbuckling musical series set in space with dinosaurs who race cars.

via Backstage

A Galactic Jam Session To Celebrate 400 Years Of Stargazing [Space Porn]

Charlie Jane Anders — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 15:00:00 -0800

It was the 400th anniversary of Galileo's first telescopic view of the heavens the other day, and NASA unveiled this incredible panoramic view of the center of our galaxy. It's a composite of images from all of NASA's great observatories.

The first image consists of a near-infrared view from the Hubble Space Telescope, an infrared view from the Spitzer Space Telescope, and an X-ray view from the Chandra X-ray Observatory, all mashed up. This is one of the most detailed images ever of our galaxy's mysterious core, and exposes the whole range of stellar evolution, from areas bursting with star birth, to hot new stars, to cooler old stars, to black holes.

The X-ray light reveals gas that has been heated to millions of degrees by outflows from the supermassive black hole as well as winds from nearby stars and stellar explosions. The infrared light reveals all of the areas teeming with bright newborn stars.

Check out the other images in our gallery.

Hubble Space Telescope image

Spitzer Space Telescope image

Chandra Observatory image

[NASA]

3 Ways To Meet (And Get Nasty With) Your Opposite-Sex Duplicate [Triviagasm]

Charlie Jane Anders — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 13:53:01 -0800

The most frustrating, annoying thing about the opposite sex is that they're not you. Why can't you just meet your exact duplicate — except for sex? You'd be a perfect match. Luckily, science fiction suggests 3 ways it could happen.

This has been the dream of science-fiction fans and science-fiction authors since the days of "Clone Of My Own" (which is usually attributed to Isaac Asimov, but who knows if it's actually by him?) "Clone Of My Own" goes:

Oh, give me a clone
Of my own flesh and bone
With its Y chromosome changed to X.
And after it's grown,
Then my own little clone
Will be of the opposite sex.

Clone, clone of my own,
With its Y chromosome changed to X.
And when I'm alone
With my own little clone
We will both think of nothing but sex.

There are about 29 versus more, but you get the idea. Actually, after reading authors like John Varley and Ursula K. Le Guin, the whole idea of the "opposite" sex has been thrown into question — surely, once we can all reconfigure our bodies at will, eventually we'll have some sort of sex tesseract.

But for now, here are the ways that science fiction offers, for us to meet our opposite-sex duplicates (and in some cases, have sex with them):

1) Cloning.

House Of Suns by Alastair Reynolds:

Abigail Gentian, a wealthy woman, decides to explore the vastness of the stars — she she has herself cloned a number of times, and some of the clones are male while others are female. They all share Abigail's memories, and Abigail herself joins them without knowing which of them is the "real" her. And these "shatterlings" have sex — a lot. Especially in the novella Thousandth Night, there are tons of orgies in which all of the clones get together, making it a certainty that the "real" Abigail has been with her clones.

Time Enough For Love by Robert A. Heinlein:

Lazarus Long is the world's oldest human, and he decides not to undergo rejuvenation therapy, thus sentencing himself to death. His descendants convince him to keep on living, but he'll only do it if he gets to have a new experience — so two of his descendants become impregnated with opposite-sex clones of Lazarus. And after the opposite-sex clones of Lazarus are born, Lazarus raises them as his own daughters... and then has sex with them, of course.

"Nine Lives" by Ursula K. Le Guin:

This Nebula-nominated novelette, first published in Playboy, features a set of clones of a man named John Chow who died in a car accident, and some of them are female:

"All chips off the old block," Martin said valiantly. "But how can . . . some of you be women . . .?"

Beth took over: "It's easy to program half the clonal mass back to the female. Just delete the male gene from half the cells and they revert to the basic, that is, the female. It's trickier to go the other way, have to hook in artificial Y chromosomes. So they mostly clone from males, since clones function best bisexually."

Sadly, nine out of ten clones are killed, forcing the remaining clone to deal with unaccustomed solitude.

The Ophiuchi Hotline by John Varley:

The character Tweed has clones who are male and female clones of the same individual, called Vaffa or sometimes Hygeia. They're super-strong, super-big and lethal.

NYX and various other X-Men comics:

X-23, a female clone of Wolverine, first appeared in the X-Men: Evolution animated series, but then made the leap to comics, just like Harley Quinn. Despite looking kind of silly, she's manage to stick around long enough to get her own miniseries and have her backstory explained. I don't think she and Logan ever hooked up, but they have fought, which is almost the same thing when you come down to it.

The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy:

As Zaphod Beeblebrox explains, the girl Lintilla "has now been cloned over five-hundred-and-seventy-eight-thousand-million times - and has thus created a problem in some quarters." All of the Lintilla clones are female — but the anti-clones, sent to get rid of the infestation of female clones, are male versions of Lintilla called Allitnil. When a Lintilla and an Allitnil come together, he gets the Lintilla to "agree to cease to be" — but Arthur Dent takes a liking to one of the Lintillas, and kills her particular Allitnil.

Hunted by James Alan Gardner:

Edward York is an illegal clone of one of the Admirals on the High Council, and due to genetic problems he's a bit stupid. But a female clone of the Admiral, named Samantha, turns out super-smart and resourceful. Together, Edward and Samantha travel, as brother and sister, travel to the planet Troyen to try and negotiate a peace between two alien species, the Mandasars and the Fasskisters.

Kyle XY:

Kyle and his fellow vat-baby Jessi aren't strictly speaking clones, because I think they had different genetic stock — as far as I can remember, Kyle came from Adam and Jessi came from Sarah. But they do come from the same vat, and they resulted from the same super-baby program. So they could be considered akin to clones, sort of. Worth mentioning, anyway.

Ultimate Spider-Man: Ultimate Clone Saga:

Can't believe I forgot this one, since I have the trades at home. In the Ultimate version of the Clone Saga, they clone Peter Parker several times... including a female version called Jessica Drew. And Jessica has all of Peter's memories — S.H.I.E.L.D. wants to erase Jessica's memories and set her up with a new identity, but she escapes and takes on the identity of Spider-Woman. Thanks, kwschuttler!

2) Alternate universes

Parallellities by Alan Dean Foster:

Max, the main character of this novel travels through the multiverse, and finally meets an alternate female version of himself — and has sex with her. Later, he manages to find an entire planet populated by copies of himself. As the back cover copy explains:

Now Max was lost in a virtual sea of collateral worlds, confronting man-eating aliens, dinosaurs, talking frogs, dead Maxes, girl Maxes, old Maxes, even ghost Maxes. His only chance to escape the space-time continuum was to find Boles and hope the loony genius could rescue him. But how could he be sure which world was real, which Max was Max, and which Boles was the Boles who could stop the madness—or trap Max in the wrong world forever. . . ?

Red Dwarf, "Parallel Universe":

Our gang finds a device that's supposed to transport them home to Earth instantly — but instead it zaps them into an alternate universe. There, they meet alternate versions of themselves, including female versions of Lister and Rimmer (and Cat's counterpart is a Dog.) Rimmer has to fight off his female counterpart's sexual advances, while Lister actually does wind up in bed with his female version, Deb. And because in this alternate universe, it's the men who get pregnant, Lister winds up carrying his alternate self's baby.

Sliders:

Thanks to Xicer for pointing out this one: in the episode "Double Cross," Quinn meets an evil female duplicate of himself from (of course) another universe, and almost makes out with her:

Transition by Iain Banks:

This dimension-jumping novel mentions that it's quite common to enter the body of your alternate-universe self and find that the alternate self is the opposite sex. This is a known syndrome, which causes some discomfort or confusion among the universe-hoppers whom it happens to.

3) Time travel

"All You Zombies" by Robert A. Heinlein:

This story features a young man who's tricked into impregnating his younger, female self — because it turns out he had a futuristic sex change at some point, which the reader doesn't realize at first. And then it turns out that he's actually the child of that union, meaning that he's his own mother and father — the mother of all time paradoxes, in other words.

The Man Who Folded Himself by David Gerrold:

Daniel Eakins travels backwards and forwards in time many times, meeting himself and having sex with himself — over and over and over. But after a ton of trips, he actually meets an alternate-universe version of himself who was born female, and they shack up together at the beginning of time. It goes great for a while, until they get fed up with each other, and then Daniel's time-traveling female counterpart manages to erase herself completely from Daniel's timeline, so Daniel can never find her again.

Needless to say, this post would not have been nearly as fascinating without TVTropes.org, the fountain of all greatness. Additional reporting by Josh C. Snyder.

Always Wear Your Tinfoil Hat Inside Massive Dynamic [Fringe Recap]

Lauren Davis — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 13:30:00 -0800

Last night's episode featured a mind-controlling teenager with a penchant for violence. But that's not why Astrid has her tinfoil hat firmly in place. We also learned something sinister about our corporate friends at Massive Dynamic.

Once again, we had an episode that looked like a mystery-of-the-week from the outset, but ended up connecting to the show's overarching mythology. The episode itself was fairly straightforward: teenage boy with mind control powers fakes his own kidnapping, tries to extort Massive Dynamic (where his father works) for the ransom, then kidnaps Peter for a fun killing spree (with time out at a strip club). But, as always, there's a little more going on beneath the surface:

Mommy Issues: The relationships between fathers and sons has been a big theme on Fringe of late, but this time we also got into the issue of absent mothers. Tyler, the 15-year-old who can control people's minds, is on a quest to find the mother he never knew, and Walter finds himself reminiscing about Peter's mother. There's been a lot of foreshadowing in these episodes, and given that William Bell recited Peter's mother's maxim to Olivia, we could be preparing for a meeting between Peter and his over there mother. Plus, how great is it that Walter tries to counteract Tyler's mind control by playing the sounds babies hear in the womb?

Leading Walter by the Nose: It's a little distressing how well Massive Dynamic knows how to manipulate Walter, though I suppose they know more than enough about him and his research from William Bell. They know exactly what kind of research to fabricate, what questions he'll ask. They even know to tell him that Tyler is taking ADD medication. Walter says he doesn't trust them, but the team took this one a bit too much at face value.

Penrose-Carson Experiments: So, at the end of the episode, we learn that Tyler's mother is not actually his mother, but a surrogate, and that Tyler is the result of one of Massive Dynamic's experiments, namely the Penrose-Carson Experiments. Carson is Tyler's father, but we've also met Penrose before. Clause Penrose is the creator/father of Christopher Penrose, the pituitary-eating fellow from last season. We know that there are multiple Christophers, and it sounds like there may be multiple Tylers as well. So perhaps we will be seeing Dr. Penrose soon and get more of these shady experiments Massive Dynamic is performing.

Astrid Action: Astrid managed to tiptoe into the field this week. She's the one who noticed the odd searches on Tyler's computer and she drives the car while

Walter Moment of the Week: Walter and Astrid discussing what human brains might taste like was a close second, but this week's winner goes to Walter's tinfoil hat — to keep Massive Dynamic from reading his mind. It's a legitimate fear, but I'm not sure the hat is going to keep Nina Sharp at bay. But hey, he even got Astrid to wear one, and it looks kind of chic on her.

A Frozen Reservoir of Water Found On the Moon [Moon]

Annalee Newitz — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 12:49:11 -0800

Remember that experiment a few weeks ago where NASA smashed a probe into the Moon to see if any water would squirt out? The research is in, and it turns out there is a lot of water on the Moon.

This is huge news. Over at Bad Astronomy, Phil Plait exults:

The infrared spectrometer on [probe] LCROSS definitely detected absorption lines from water, and the ultraviolet spectrometer saw it in emission. Not only that, the emission got stronger with time, which clinches the deal! That's exactly what you expect by a plume containing water. Wow. The amount of water they found in the plume was a couple of hundred kilograms in total, but that indicates there is a lot more still lying on the surface.

In the diagram below, you can see the absorption lines from the water - they're the yellow bands.

Even more interesting is a comment from one of the researchers who studied the LCROSS readings. NASA scientist Anthony Colaprete said:

The full understanding of the LCROSS data may take some time. The data is that rich. Along with the water in Cabeus, there are hints of other intriguing substances. The permanently shadowed regions of the moon are truly cold traps, collecting and preserving material over billions of years.

Cabeus is the crater basin on the moon that NASA picked for the LCROSS impact because its shaded location provides enough of a chill to keep water from evaporating. But now it sounds like there may be other surprises lurking in the lunar shadows. I sense the beginning of a great new discovery - or at least, a great science fiction story.

via Bad Astronomy and NASA

Avatar Awards: Too Soon? [Avatar]

Graeme McMillan — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 12:20:00 -0800

Avatar is a month away from opening, but James Cameron is already winning awards for it. The Visual Effects Society has announced that he'll get 2010's VES Lifetime Achievement Award for the as-yet unseen movie. Hope it's good. [Hollywood Reporter]

Turn Off Your Brain and Watch the World End in 2012 [Movie Review]

Lauren Davis — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 12:00:00 -0800

Roland Emmerich's 2012 is jammed with every cliche and trope ever found in a Hollywood disaster movie, while giving the Earth an over-the-top pummeling. It's a reasonably fun flick at times, if you don't think about it...at all.

It seems that once Roland Emmerich was done assembling all the CG components for destroying the world and gathering a full complement of "Hey, it's that guy!" actors, he realized 2012 had no script, and decided to cull characters and situations from every other disaster movie ever made. Despite its massive scale of destruction, 2012 will be familiar to anyone whose seen any movie about an earthquake, volcano, aquatic disaster, or celestial body striking the Earth.

2012 follows the parallel stories of several characters at the end of the world. John Cusack plays the sort of fellow John Cusack always plays, though this time he's also a struggling writer whose only novel sold roughly 400 copies. And Amanda Peet plays his Amanda Peet-esque ex-wife, who is dating a plastic surgeon named Gordon. Gordon is all kinds of perfect, adores Amanda, and is great with her kids, but of course she's only with him because she can't be with John Cusack. Oh, and John and Amanda (or Jackson and Kate Curtis as they've been named for the sake of the film) have perfectly generic children. There's the requisite daughter with a quirk (she's overly fond of hats) and the son who's mad at his father (and insists on calling him by his first name).

As it turns out, years earlier, an Indian scientist discovered that solar flares are causing mutant neutrinos to microwave the Earth's core, which will cause the tectonic plates to shift and the Earth's waters to boil (but somehow doesn't cause us humans to explode). He warns his friend and fellow scientist Adrian Helmsley (a blandly earnest Chiwetel Ejiofor), who in turn warns a Washington bureaucrat that the world is ending. World leaders are informed, contingency plans are made, precious art is stowed away, and important people mysteriously die. But the hoi polloi are left in the dark, and people in California gradually get used to the regular miniquakes and surface cracks that plague their streets.

After a chance encounter with a crackpot conspiracy nut (Woody Harrelson), and hearing rumblings of the aforementioned contingency plan, Jackson realizes just in the nick of time that the world is, in fact, ending. And through a mixture of superhuman feats and incredibly unlikely bouts of luck, puts his family on the path to safety.

Although 2012's main concern is Jackson and his family, the film shifts perspectives and introduces us to a range of characters, all straight from central casting: a stocky Russian billionaire, a trophy wife who loves her purse dog above all, a pair of horrid children who look like they should be touring Willy Wonka's factory, a world-weary and noble President, the beautiful and intelligent First Daughter, a young Tibetan monk, an interracial jazz duo. It's too few characters and too Western-centric to convey an epic scale, but too many for us to particularly care who lives and who dies. Caring is irrelevant anyway; following classic disaster movie tropes will give you a pretty accurate picture of who makes it to the end of the movie.

All in all, it's a very Hollywood view of how the world ends. With the exception of a few token minorities, it's American and European characters we're tracking, American and European high culture people are trying to save, and American and European monuments we're seeing destroyed. Yes, Emmerich didn't get a shot at the Kaaba, but surely there were other non-natural monuments he could have thought to break apart. There's a lot of menfolk making decisions while the women hang out with the children, and a lot of nice speeches about respecting all humanity while Western leaders are calling all the shots. Perhaps Emmerich is being cynical about the end of the world — suggesting that even then, Westerners and Western culture will get all the breaks — but if the non-Western characters fight as hard for their lives, we don't see it on screen.

But, if you can shut down the centers of your brain that demand logic, storytelling, or characters who aren't secretly Superman, 2012 can be an enjoyable experience. We were promised beautiful footage of the world falling apart, and on that point, 2012 delivers. Whole cities break apart, monuments crumple, volcanos shoot up from the Earth, and waves pull supercarriers from their watery homes and crash them into buildings. Save for a few odd seams, the computer-generated effects look incredible and there's something strangely satisfying about watching things break down so completely. And Emmerich recognizes that the apocalypse doesn't just demand disaster porn; it needs moments of absurdity as well. He manages to make room for some offbeat sight gags, some of which are genuinely funny and surprising. 2012 might actually be enjoyed most thoroughly on mute.

Emmerich has announced his plans to follow 2012 with a television series, 2013, which would pick up after the end of the movie. Perhaps now that Emmerich has finished blowing the world to smithereens, we can get back to characters and drama, and the year 2013 can prove more interesting than the year 2012.

Which Science Fiction Show Do You Feel Guilty For Not Keeping Up With? [Poll]

Charlie Jane Anders — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 11:40:00 -0800

Do you feel like you're failing your science-fiction heroes, by not getting around to watching their shows? Is your TiVo crammed with episodes you swear you'll get around to... eventually? Which show do you feel you guiltiest for neglecting? Vote!

This poll is simple: Which of the TV shows, listed below, do you feel guiltiest for being behind on? Your answer should be one of the shows you've fallen way behind on — but only the one you feel the greatest remorse about. Remember: if that show gets cancelled, it's your fault.

Large Hadron Collider Less Than Two Weeks Away From First Experiments [Mad Physics]

Annalee Newitz — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 11:20:00 -0800

It's been plagued by everything from liquid helium leaks to wayward baguettes, but the mega-physics experiment known as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is finally ready to start smashing protons into each other. Particle collisions could begin in two weeks.

The LHC is a 27-kilometer underground tunnel designed to accelerate atomic particles and smash them into each other. The goal is to see what happens when such particles interact with tremendous amounts of energy, the way they might under extreme conditions in outer space. The results of LHC experiments will reveal a lot about the origins of our universe, and the composition of matter within it.

CERN, the Swiss facility where the enormous underground experiment is located, has announced that test beams in the LHC have zoomed around most parts of the accelerator without incident:

Particles are smoothly making their way around the 27 km circumference of the LHC. Last weekend (7-8 November), the first bunches of injection energy protons completed their journey (anti-clockwise) through three octants of the LHC's circumference and were dumped in a collimator just before entering the CMS cavern. The particles produced by the impact of the protons on the tertiary collimators (used to stop the beam) left their tracks in the calorimeters and the muon chambers of the experiment.

One of the coolest parts about accelerators is that when the microscopic particles smash into the walls, they are moving so fast that they leave long tracks in their wakes. (Researchers can gain information from examining these tracks.)

If everything keeps moving smoothly, we could see some particle-on-particle smashage as early as two weeks from now. As long as the world doesn't end, we're going to get some long-awaited answers to our questions about our universe.

via CERN Bulletin

He-Man Kills Your Childhood In 13 Trials [He-man]

Graeme McMillan — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 11:00:36 -0800

Is that He-Man strangling Big Bird? Jon Vermilyea's unofficial Masters of the Universe book He-Man And The 13 Trials of Eternia is filled with all manner of pop-culture weirdness... and our dream reboot for the character. Click through for more.

Brooklyn-based illustrator Vermilyea's extremely limited edition project (Only 21 made!) is a particularly trippy take on the 1980s toy, filled with Porky Pigs, Bullwinkle Mooses and, yes, even Big Bird being strangled by the Eternian hero. What does it all mean? Is it a metaphor for cartoons and toys destroying childhood innocence? We have no idea, but we love it anyway.

He-Man and the 13 Trials of Eternia [Jon Vermilyea]

Oops, I Destroyed The Human Race Again! [Caprica]

Charlie Jane Anders — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 10:30:00 -0800

Remember a while back, when we showed you six draft posters for the Battlestar Galactica prequel Caprica? Syfy has chosen the final poster... and it's very naked. Would you Adam and Eve it? Full version at the link. [Chicago Tribune]

Jim Caviezel: We Turned The Prisoner Into A Friendly Gitmo [Exclusive]

Meredith Woerner — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 10:00:00 -0800

We spoke with the new Number Six, and let him take us inside the Gitmo Disneyland that is AMC's Prisoner remake. And he explains how he and Ian McKellen pretty much improved a large chunk of the remake's script.

Were you a fan of the original? Is that why you got involved with AMC's Prisoner series?

No, I never knew anything about the original, I had just read the six screenplays that were brought to me and I was actually going to shoot another movie and I was able to get out of that to do this. What got my attention first was Ian McKellen.

The second part of that was AMC and what they were doing, but I didn't really fully understand everything AMC had been doing with Mad Men. I hadn't seen Mad Men yet, and I became a huge fan of the network because I really got to see the ins and outs of what they were doing in The Prisoner. But what truly brought me to The Prisoner was the first two screenplays... I had no idea where the story was going, at any time as an actor when you get a role like this, it's kind of like one of those little trophies you can put on your mantle and be proud of. I'm definitely very proud of this.

One of the interesting things about AMC and their shows right now is their attention to detail in their production design, it's really evident in The Prisoner, it's sort of "sandy sleek". What was your favorite little world-building moment that AMC or the production crew created?

Well, I can be more specific to you, and in fact when I see movies like Giant, when I see George Stevens or any classic fimmakers, or when I see Gregory Peck and Charlton Heston but it [The Prisoner] reminded me of classic Hollywood great fimmaking... Every time I get a movie I think, "oh I'm never gonna be working in this town again if I don't get this one right," and I certainly felt that way making this because of the rapid fire of all the screenplays that were there and also the reediting and rewriting the scenes literally right there but I think we were able to pull out something pretty special here.

I'm so focused on the story and just trying to survive and the frustration of wanting it to be good and not knowing if it's going to turn out and in fact I remember one day we got to one particular scene with Ian McKellen and myself and we realized in that moment that I'm not supposed to be in this scene. So there's an element of running around like a chicken with your head cut off. So I'm sitting here acting, thinking what did I take away from that, I think the most valuable thing I got from it is I can work in some of the most extraordinary circumstances and be able to pull up performances in dire strait situation and I really kind of like that.

It was roughing the elements out there, wasn't it?

Yes, the lack of sleep, number one. Last night watching it [The Prisoner screening] and talking to Bill Gallagher [the writer], for me, it was a bit of a surreal experience, it looks so easy but knowing that what looks easy is usually rather difficult, there were hours and hours of rehearsing and then saying let's throw that out and try something else and being able to have a director come in with literally very little time... it's really a six hour film with two intermissions.

How many on site rewrites do you think you guys did?

Thousands, I can't even… at the last minute we'd say, "Do I need that line?" "Yes you do." "okay, what about this?" Then we'd try but you know for the most part, I thought that we were able to. It's like putting a square peg into a circular hole and that's what we do, and we get paid well for it and part of it is you gotta be a little bit of an adrenaline junkie.

Now your character, one of the things that's different abut him in the new series is there's a little bit more revealed about his life before The Village. Do you think that you're still "every man" even though you go into specifics running around in the desert?

I knew what Patrick McGoohan did. I knew that he was a legend, I knew who he was and I didn't totally understand the whole Prisoner thing, I never watched any of the episodes but wanted to bring something to my own performance that was original, that I wouldn't be compared to, and even I was I could say well it was a coincidence because I never watched any of his previous stuff. I remember talking to Mel Gibson one time about Patrick McGoohan and I said, I happened to ask him about Longshanks in Braveheart and he says "Well that's McGoohan" and he told me the whole story, he tried to have a run at making The Prisoner.

Mel Gibson tried to make The Prisoner?

Yeah he looked at it. Yeah, it's been attempted by several people.

Finally the political undertones in The Prisoner, do you think it's more like a friendly Gitmo, or a warning sign?

JC: Absolutely. You know its how you look at mornings. Mornings can either be a good thing or a bad thing sometimes. Some people just get disturbed and would rather be an ostrich and put their head in the sand. And you know, this is an allegory for peace...Nowadays you have one guy walking around who's willing to exchange his life for millions and for an ideal. And I think people can relate to that. At the same time, very much juxtaposed to that, this is Disney Land, the music, the way they feel, it is a bit of a ride and there's a romantic element to it too, and I hate to go too far to the right and say well understand from the left here you also have this romantic undertone, you're also going to be drawn to these characters, you're going to love these characters.

It Turns Out Spider-Man is a Crook After All [Superheroes Gone Bad]

Lauren Davis — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 09:30:00 -0800

Christopher Loomis, who portrays Spider-Man on Hollywood Boulevard, was arrested yesterday for slugging a tourist while in costume and held on outstanding misdemeanor warrants. Somewhere, J. Jonah Jameson is lighting a cigar and gloating. [Hero Complex]