perfidy

Lileks speculates on why we won't be seeing a 9/11 movie:

And that’s the problem. I wonder whether Hollywood execs shy from a 9/11 movie because they think it might send the wrong message.

It would anger people anew, and we’re supposed to be past that. It would remind us what was done to us instead of rubbing out noses in what we do to others – I mean, unless you have a character in the second tower watching the plane approaching and saying “My God, this is payback for supporting Israel!” it’s going to come across as simplistic nonsense that denies the reality in the West Bank, okay? It would have to tread lightly when it came to the President, because even though we all knew that he wet his pants and ran to hide, we’d have to pretend and do scenes in Air Force One where he’s taking charge instead of crying help mommy to Dick Cheney, right? I mean the idiots in flyover people believe that stuff, and you’d have to give it to them or they write letters with envelopes that have these little pre-printed return address stickers with flags up in the corner. Seriously. Little flag stickers. Anyway, we would have to show Arab males as the bad guys, and that’s not worth the grief; you want to answer the phone when CAIR sees the dailies of the guys slitting the stewardess’ throats? And here’s the big one: if we make a patriotic movie during Bush’s term, well, it doesn’t help the cause, you know. People liked Bush after 9/11. Why remind them of that? Plus, you can just kiss off the European markets, period.

Richard Clarke’s book is available? Here’s a blank check. Option that sucker.

It’s like it's 1943, and Hollywood turns down a Pearl Harbor movie in favor of the gripping account of a Washington bureaucrat who warned FDR that the oil embargo would needlessly anger Japan. The attack on Hawaii would take up five minutes – and even then it would be a shot of the hero listening to the radio with an expression of stoic anguish. If only they'd listened.

As if the first effort didn't give me a full-body papercut and throw me in a deep pit of lemon juice, a group of soulless miscreants has decided that making a sequel would be a fantastic idea.

What movie, you ask? Why, it's Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation. From the Movie Web:

The Story: A small group of troopers who find themselves taking refuge in an abandoned outpost as they attempt to fight against the encroaching arachnids-not realizing that a much graver danger is actually infiltrating their unit.

But that doesn't begin to describe the horror. Notice this little tidbit:

Release Date: June 1st, 2004 (Straight To Video)

Starring a group of people you've never heard of, and directed by a special effects expert, you know this is going to be great, character-focused drama. Your hopes will be confirmed when you realize that the genius screenwriter from the first Starship Troopers has returned!

From some movie blog, guy goes to panel to listen to discussion of the abomination, I mean, movie:

Sammon kicked things off with a simple slide-show, and an outline of the movie's basic plot. The first analogy he came up with was that if Starship Troopers had been like World War II (with Gestapo like Psi-officers and a fascist, Aryan-friendly government) then ST2 is like the Korean War. The human-bug conflict has been raging for five years as the flick opens, and humanity is losing the battle - although through all-pervasive, pro-war propaganda, the majority of humanity doesn't know that.

Ross, sounds like an alegory for what's happening right now, doesn't it?

Then screenwriter Ed Neumeier shows up. I have never met the man, but I am certain that he is a sleazy, no-talent assclown. Our virgil in this hell describes the scene:

The other big question asked by Heinlein fans who still feel cheated is about power armour, and whether it'll appear in ST2. It was fairly obvious to me given the budget that it wouldn't, but Ed Neumeier confirmed that was the case... Inexplicably, Ed Neumeier blames himself for the lack of power armour in the first film, saying that it ultimately came down to a 'believable bugs or power armour' argument, and the bugs won. As he pointed out "Some people hate me for that movie," referring to some of the more extreme Heinlein fans out there (some of whom were present in the audience).

Really, why might that be? Aside from the fact that you based your first screenplay on a glance at the book cover and a cursory reading of the publisher's blurb? Jackass.

Fans of the original's sarcastic take on war propaganda will be pleased to know it's going to return for the second flick also, and that Ed Neumeier wouldn't have it any other way.

You mean someone actually was a fan of that clumsy, overreaching satire of something that wasn't even in the book? Great, we need more! Jackass.

I remember that HBO had a "Making of" special before the release of the first nightmare. In it, Veorhoven (or however you spell his retarded Dutch name) and Neumeier went on and on that their movie was an homage to the dean of sf writers. I thought ST1 was bad. It is bad. But now this collection of human trash has to go and make another movie even further removed from the original novel.

I need to go brush my teeth.

I've been thinking. For all that I read, the book title thing just wan't jelling for me. So, movies crams:

• Cheaper by the Dirty Dozen - a group of hardened criminals must lead unruly children into enemy territory.
• Enter Pete's Dragon Cute singing Dragon defeats small lonely boy in brutal martial arts duel to the death.
• -or- Pete's Dragonslayer - Lonely boy finds friendship with cute dragon, only to see dragon killed by smelly medieval knight.
• 28 Days a Week - the Beatles go into rehab, leading to psychadelic hijinks and musical numbers.
• -or- 28 Days of the Condor - After all of his coworkers are killed, Robert Redford gains sobreity while outwitting duplicitous CIA officials in rehab.
• 2001 Dalmations Lots of cute puppies go to Jupiter and become superbeings. Many are killed en route by a malevolent computer.
• Threefer: Planet of the Apes of Wrath Intelligent apes fight Bugs Bunny in a dust bowl landscape of existential despair.

I won't even start with the porn titles.

See, it works better when the books are incongruous. Kundera and Sartre are just kind of a bread sandwich made with bread in the middle and garnished with dense, depressing bread. Black bread made with sawdust.

Anyway, I just wanted to apologize to our three and a half readers for slacking off my usual feverish pace of posting. I'm not stupid; I know that most of you come here for Buckethead's right-wing eggheadery and outer-space knowledge, Ross' dyspeptic erudition and GeekLethal's trenchant milblogging rather than for my ill-informed centrist handwringing and music wonkery. But even so, sorry. "Real life" intrudes.

Like you want to hear what a 29 year old white college administrator has to say about the deployment of image in rap music, anyway.

The folks at CT have hit the farking mother lode! Via several other people, they have hit upon the pastime of cramming together two book titles into one odious-- I mean, glorious-- über-concept. Witness:

The Joy Luck Fight Club: Chinese American daughters and mothers bond over fist fights, family history, dim sum and bouts of anarchy.

Heart of Darkness at Noon: English explorer misreads map, winds up in gulag.

The Way The Things They Carried Work: Children’s pictorial guide to the functioning of Vietnam era military hardware.

Tropic of Cancer Ward: More sex than you’d expect.

The Sun, the Moon, and the Stars My Destination: Five struggling artists share a studio and discuss teleportation, rape, tattooing and synaesthesia.

Remains of the Longest Day An old-style English butler is drafted to cater the invasion of Normandy.

Goodnight Moon Is a Harsh Mistress: Goodnight penal colony on the moon. Goodnight earth controlling the penal colony on the moon. Goodnight supercomputer named Mike.

Mason & Moby Dixon: Explorers cross the plains in search of giant mechanical white duck.

Moby Dick Tracy: Call me Ishmael…on your wrist radio!

The Sum of All Fears and Loathings in Las Vegas: A nuclear bomb is planted on American soil in the midst of an escalation in tension with the Soviet Union in an attempt to rekindle cold war animosity and prevent reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians. Then the ether kicks in…

I have proven to be singularly inept at such tomfoolery, and as such my paltry contributions are so far not worth sharing. Don't let that stop you from trying.

[wik] I'm just not very good at this...

The Wonder Boys of Summer: The sentimental tale of a past-his-prime Brooklyn novelist and the talented rookie who reminds him of his faded glory. A dog is shot, a car is stolen.

The Man from U.N.C.L.E Vanya: Retired secret agents sit around the samovar griping about lost love, old age, and declining property values.

Ham On Catcher In The Rye: Charles Bukowski’s autobiographical memoir about youth, prep school, existential anomie, and banging prostitutes.

Al Franken has launched his new liberal talk radio show, the O'Franken Factor. His most famous book has, as its title, a reference to a hugely successful conservative talk radio host. The name of his new talk radio show is a rather lame rip-off of the name of a hugely successful conservative TV host's show.

Franken might have more success if he didn't appear to be reacting to conservatives; and instead was offering his own ideas, humor, or whatever.

Meanwhile, Marcland has some good thinks on the whole Air America phenomenon.

It occurred to me, reading Johno's recent post on the New Puritanism, that we have options.

We could:

• Use the Agreed Alternative Cursing Standard (AACS), where fork=fuck, spoon=shit and dog=god. Along with defending any use of "dick" as someone's name, and "ass" as referring to a donkey, this method covers the vast majority of American English cursing.
• Use the Johnny Dangerously System, where farging=fucking, ice=ass, and bastiches=bastards/bitches. And you can always throw in jokes about last names being adverbs.
• Or we can tell the FCC to fuck off, go to hell, and realize that most of the cretins in this soceity are not going to stop dropping the f-bomb every third word just because they levy thousands of dollars in fines on Janet Jackson and Howard Stern, or that we won't realize what is going on behind the filmy curtain of the "bleep."

Nat at Imustnotthinkbadthoughts (the most frantical of all blog names) has posted some good houghts about the American South and the possibility that its particularism is fading as younger generations embrace more universal cultural norms, and as urbanization draws people into broader social spheres. (He also has some thoughts on the effects of de-urbanization that I'm going to have to chew on for a while.)

By way of making his argument, Nat draws an intriguing parallel between the American South and the German South; that is, Bavaria. Since he is an actual European historian of France and Germany, I will defer to his analysis, except on one thing. I think he's too cautious. Nat points out that Bavaria remained relatively autonomous when Germany unified, that it has remained more rural and culturally its own region than other parts of Germany have, and that (partly thanks to this) it was the region that gave rise to a certain political movement. In these ways, Bavaria is certainly like the South. (Also, my good friend the Excitable German has noted that his native Swabia, in the South of Germany, is sort of the West Virginia Of The Hun).

However, Nat closes his piece with this: "My feeling is that the fate of the South is something more like Bavaria–perhaps less picturesque and without the tragedy." I beg to differ. The South is very much like Bavaria in those ways too. The entire self-identity of the American South is intimately tied to a romanticized, picturesque history of self-determination, rugged individualism, and languid rectitute. As much or more than Bavaria, Southern writers have struggled with this self image-- both to reinforce it and to crush it-- for two centuries. And as for tragedy... well, we don't really know exactly how many slaves died, but if there's a big leagues of historical tragedies, American slavery will at least be on the wild card bubble for the playoffs.

It's been a funny week in Hollywood. Over the weekend, Australian hunk Mel Gibson's splattercore gore-fest "Mad Max Beyond Gethsemene" was knocked out of the top box office spot by a no-fun all-spectacle remake of George Romero's [ed: hat tip: brdgt] 1956 zombie classic "Dawn of the Dead" (as Jon Stewart observed: one guy back from the dead, good. Thousands back from the dead, great!). All in all, the Lazarus/Elvis schtick did boffo box-office biz.

And now things are getting even funnier. Monty Python have announced the theatrical re-release of "The Life of Brian" at the end of April. It's the film's 25th anniversary, and conspiracy-minded folk might whisper that all this furor over Brother Mel's House Of Pain &c &c &c has all been in the service of drumming up attention for a certain British group's film about a guy mistaken for a certain other dude with the initials J.H.C. who was nailed to a tree.

[wik] Star wars geeks lined up weeks in advance for the theatrical re-release of "Star Wars IV: A New Hope." Wonder if Christians (or perhaps Bible-scholars) will be lining up for this one?

A while back, I posted a list of my top five, all-time favorite science fiction novels. A recent conversation made me realize that this needs revisiting. This list originated when my mom asked for a list of the best science fiction, so that she would not need to go through the oftimes perilous process of winnowing the wheat from the chaff.

As Ted Sturgeon pointed out, 95% of everything is crap. Here is the original list:

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, by Robert Heinlein
Starship Troopers, by Robert Heinlein
Player of Games, by Iain Banks
The Stars My Destination, by Alfred Bester
Mote in God's Eye, by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle
The Dosadi Experiment, by Frank Herbert
Dune, by Frank Herbert
A Fire Upon the Deep, by Vernor Vinge
A Deepness in the Sky, by Vernor Vinge
Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card
Diamond Age, by Neil Stephenson
Cryptonomicon, by Neil Stephenson
Sundiver, by David Brin
Startide Rising, by David Brin
Lest Darkness Fall, by L. Sprague de Camp
American Gods, by Neil Gaiman
Good Omens, by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
Mother of Storms, by John Barnes
Killing Star, by Charles Pellegrino and George Zebroski
Doorways in the Sand, by Roger Zelazny
The Greks Bring Gifts, by Murray Leinster
Pebble in the Sky, by Isaac Asimov
The City and the Stars, by Arthur C. Clark

I have never been able to narrow this list down I can only add to it. My top five list, it is large, it contains multitudes.

On further reflection, and by recommendation from Johno, I added these:

Canticle for Liebowitz, by Walter Miller
Hyperion, by Dan Simmons
The Earth Abides, by George R. Stuart
Shockwave Rider, by John Brunner
Voice of the Whirlwind, by Walter Jon Williams
Pattern Recognition, by William Gibson
The Man In The High Castle, by Philip K. Dick
Schismatrix, by Bruce Sterling
Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson

Here are some new ones:

Norstrilia, by Cordwainer Smith
Bring the Jubilee, by Ward Moore
The Lensman Series, by E.E. "Doc" Smith
Cities in Flight, by James Blish
Tactics of Mistake, by Gordon R. Dickson

And as an added bonus, and actual list of five, for fantasy:

Lord of the Rings, by some guy, think his name begins with "D"
Freedom and Necessity, by Emma Bull and Steven Brust
American Gods, by Neil Gaiman
Age of Unreason series, by J. Gregory Keyes
The Earthsea Trilogy, by Ursula K. Le Guin (and I do mean trilogy)

[wik] Here's a link to another page with a good top 100 list.

[alsø wik] Ted points out that Orson Scott Card's Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus is a damn fine novel, and I agree that it is an oversight. He also gave me a couple new titles to hunt down. If anyone has any suggestions for the list, please leave them in the comments, and I will make additions to the list as needed.

Policy wonks and political geeks worldwide are celebrating the 25th Anniversary of C-Span's first broadcast on March 19, 1979. That day, the inaugural broadcast was a speech by Al Gore, described in this article as "characteristically wooden."

C-SPAN, happy birthday. You have brought joy to my life, and sleep when I needed it.

As a sort of follow-up to Johno's I, Excrement post, slashdot is saying that the sci-fi channel has greenlighted a miniseries based on Ursula K. LeGuin's Wizard of Earthsea trilogy/tetralogy whatever.

That series is on the very short list of fantasy that I like. It is probably too much to hope that the TV version will not be excrement.

[wik] Spielberg and Tom Cruise are going to make a movie version of War of the Worlds. Its a total crapfest!

[alsø wik] After a closer reading of the article I linked above, I noticed that Paramount has tapped Robert Rodriguez to make a movie out of Edgar Rice Burroughs' classic novel A Princess of Mars. It really is a crapfest - though of all these projects, this one has the best chance of not being a steaming pile of poop.

In this fascinating Hollywood Reporter article, Martin Grove discusses how Mel Gibson defied to conventional Hollywood wisdom in the development and marketing of his film, The Passion. And more to the point, how defying that wisdom will earn him between a third and a half billion dollars.

Phil Dennison has an indignant post up about the flaming bag of poo that is the 20 Century Fox film version of "I, Robot" starring-- get this-- Will Smith as the wisecracking future cop. Forget "Starship Troopers," "Johnny Mnemonic," and "Lawnmower Man." This will go down in history as the worst science-fiction adaptation of all time.

And it will, of course, make a fortune.

I am such a fan of Firefly...even though it's the show that permanently wrecked my enjoyment of any other sci-fi series. Everything else just sucks in comparison. So imagine my surprise tonight when I read this:

Universal Greenlights Firefly.

For fans of the series, this is great news. For the rest of you, buy or steal the DVD set and watch'em in order. You'll love it.

I hope it's a success. The Firefly two hour pilot episode was better than any given Star Wars movie; most of the episodes that followed it were better than anything any other sci-fi franchise show has ever produced...

I have discovered a new version of the famed whack-the-penguin game so graciously shown to us by Minister Buckethead in January. Check out the gory version here. The trick is to get the severed penguin head to hit several landmines in succession, launching it much farther than the yeti can do on its own.

... and a case of scotch. Let's go to Disneyworld! Well, not quite . But Roy Disney did lament the lack of rifles at the stockholder's convention, and expressed frustration that things will be much harder to sort out using peaceful methods. In another surprising statement, Roy compared the prospect of Eisner's departure with the death of the Wicked Witch of the West in the Wizard of Oz. Many were shocked that Roy referred to a Warner Bros. film.

It is the centenary of the birth of Theodore Geisel, the man who made it possible for Jesse Jackson to read "Green Eggs and Ham" on SNL and permanently damage my brain. For all kinds of nonsensical activities involving crude and perversely drawn creatures and words that don't mean a thing but rhyme very well, go here, or here. 

"The Lorax speaks for the trees!" If there is anything aside from the sanctimoniousness, lies, arrogance and delusion that turned me away from the environmentalist movement, it's that phrase.

[wik] It has been pointed out that I got the quote wrong. Here is the correct quote, in context - we're all about context:

"Mister!" he said with a sawdusty sneeze,

"I am the Lorax. I speak for the trees.

I speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues.

And I'm asking you, sir, at the top of my lungs"

he was very upset as he shouted and puffed

"What's that THING you've made out of my Truffula tuft?”

It should be noted that the Lorax' fear is overwrought. Clearcuts are, after all, only temporary meadows. Who hates meadows?

[alsø wik] While looking for the actual words the actual Lorax spoke instead of the wrong words in put in my quote, I found this:

Rejected Dr. Seuss Books:

1. One Bitch, Two Bitch, Dead Bitch, Blue Bitch
2. Herbert the Pervert Likes Sherbert
3. Fox in Detox
4. Who Shat in the Hat?
5. Horton Hires a Ho
6. The Flesh-Eating Lorax
7. How the Grinch Stole Columbus Day
8. Your Colon Can Moo---Can You?
9. Zippy the Rabid Gerbil
10. The Cat in the Blender
11. Marvin K. Mooney, Get the Fuck Out!
12. Are You My Proctologist?
13. Yentl the Lentil
14. My Pocket Rocket Needs A Socket
15. Aunts in My Pants
16. Oh, the Places You'll Scratch and Sniff!
17. Horton Fakes an Orgasm
18. The Grinch's Ten Inches

I will be mostly absent from this site for a little while: "real life" intrudes.

But I would like to take a second to plug Bravo's series "Keen Eddie," which is one of the best new shows on TV. Watch it in reruns this weekend, and start tuning in Wednesdays at 10:00. Really fantastic.

From murdoc, we hear that there is a new Heinlein movie-book-adaptation thingy in the works. Heinlein's classic juvenile novel Have Spacesuit, Will Travel has been given to the Oscar winning screenwriter David Reynolds (Finding Nemo) for conversion into what hopefully will be the first decent adaptation of a Heinlein book. No word on when the movie is planned to be released.

As I commented in mudoc's post, the track record for Heinlein movie adaptations is abysmal. %$#&^&#$#*ing Verhoeven crucified one of my favorite all time novels. He and his @#$%head screenwriter completely missed the point of the book. And worse, in the HBO 'making of' special, they went on and on about how this movie is a tribute to the master, and how much they admired his work. After seeing just the preview, I wondered if they had even read the blurb on the back of the book. The Puppet Masters wasn't quite as bad, but didn't go beyond mediocre.

What I would most like to see would be for some talented indie-type director to create a film noir version of Heinlein's novella "The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag." First, because it's a great story. It's creepy, ingenious, and has some of Heinlein's better dialog. Second, because short works make better movies. A page of a movie script is equal to about a minute of film time. And also roughly equivalent to a page in prose. So, for a two hour movie, you need about 120 pages of text. Anything more, and you have to start cutting. Get a really big novel, and you have to cut a lot. This is one reason why Dick's stories make better movies - they are the right length. And also why Dune and LoTR are so difficult.

Heinlein's early novels tended toward short, most are less than 200 pages. Better targets for adaptation. Though they can still be screwed up, as witness the two Heinlein movies we have. (And I hope they never make a movie out of Stranger in a Strange Land) There is great potential in several Heinlein books. Double Star is a great political thriller - and could even be removed from the science fiction context and still be a great movie. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is a ripping yarn about a revolution, an intelligent computer who likes practical jokes, and dropping really big rocks on the Earth. Starman Jones is a great adventure, as is Red Planet. The first half of Glory Road could be better than all but three fantasy movies ever made.

And frankly, I'd still like to see a real version of either Starship Troopers or Puppet Masters.