It all too often seems the image of slave Princess Leia chained to the slobbering Jaba the Hut outshines the awesomeness of the Galactic Empire. Let's set the record straight with our Top 10 Storm Trooper Memes.
Harry Potter and the Raging Hormones / Longing Glance
I was very excited to see Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince but I forgot that this book was the, shall we say, "puberty book". The characters begin to experience some new feelings and as a result begin to feel a little bit uncomfortable around each other. But fear not fellow readers, there is more here than just teenage love/raging hormones. I have heard many people say "This one was so dark..." and to some extent I would agree. There are definitely much darker and more serious themes being brought to the fore front in this installment but lets not forget the unrelenting violence, tragedy and death that has surrounded Mr. Potter from the very beginning. I do, however, believe that "dark" describes this movie more aptly than the previous titles and I think this overtone has a lot to do with silence. Long shots of wordless gazes. Uncomfortable and awkward conversations with abrupt endings. These have added an edge to the film that manages to unsettle you more than the action and tragedy of the previous films. But of course it's not all doom and gloom for Harry and his gang and really how could it be with all of those teenage hormones raging? There is plenty of comedic relief dispersed throughout the film to keep you from giving up all hope. A few new characters also freshen up the cast including Professor Horace Slughorn who offers a bit of humor and also a touch of drama.
In the end I thought it was a well balanced, if not slow moving, addition to the Harry Potter series. The characters have come of age and darkness is surrounding them like never before. Major plot developments will leave those unfamiliar with the story line shocked and amazed. The style and effects are there in full force to create a wholly believable magical world that manages to blend in quite seamlessly with our own. I might be wary about bringing the little ones to this film before a parental screening. Though previous titles may have carried more violence, this one seems to strike a distinctly adult tone.
Sunil is an audiophile, bibliophile, cinephile, and X-Phile. When he’s not busy writing about clinical trials, he’s busy writing about television. He tends to like things with killer robots and explosions.
By Sunil Patel
After two great sci-fi action movies, one mediocre action movie that most people choose to ignore, and one excellent television series that most people did ignore, the Terminator franchise finally takes us into the future with Terminator Salvation, a movie whose title seems like it needs a colon because otherwise I have no idea what it means. “Terminator Salvation” sounds like the Terminators will save us all, and robot Jesus appears nowhere in this movie.
The title more likely refers to salvation from the Terminators. Those big bad robots have not been playing nice with humanity since Judgment Day. While we’ve seen glimpses of the War Against the Machines in flashbacks (or flashforwards?), McG takes us right into the thick of it. One of the most successful aspects of Terminator Salvation is that it’s not just a science fiction movie, it’s a war movie. A post-apocalyptic war movie, at that. Most of the movie is brown and grey, muted tones appropriate for the barren landscape of bleached skulls that haunts Sarah Connor’s nightmares. All the world’s a battlefield, now, and McG gives an awesome depiction of what the War Against the Machines would really be and feel like. In one of the more effective scenes, John Connor faces off against a T-600—one of those walking endoskeletons who enjoy grinning at the audience with their evil red eyes—and there is no music, just two foes trying to kill each other. It’s man vs. machine at its basest level.
John Connor is perhaps the movie’s biggest disappointment, though, given our obvious expectations that this would be a movie about John Connor. It’s not. It’s about humanity, which John Connor happens to be a part of. Christian Bale plays him with various gradations of intensity, and sometimes you want to tell him to just calm the hell down. We learn a little about what makes him tick, but not much. The inclusion of his wife, Kate (played by Claire Danes in the third movie and Bryce Dallas Howard here), serves to humanize him, but she doesn’t have very much to do. Ditto for Barnes (played by rapper Common), who seems to be John’s closest soldier-friend. At least Moon Bloodgood as Blair Williams, a soldier who runs into a robot who thinks he’s human, gets to run around and shoot things (and the character even has her own machinima web series). One detail I really appreciated was that the Resistance contains men and women of all colors, fighting side-by-side as equals. Race and gender are irrelevant in the post-apocalyptic future! Humanity has a common enemy in the machines and a common leader in John Connor.
The machines are a formidable foe. I marveled at the various Terminators Skynet has developed for specific purposes. We’ve already seen the Hunter-Killers, whose purpose is to ... hunt and kill. But humans are sometimes in the water, so they made Hydrobots that can swim like frenetic worms and eat your face. Humans are sometimes driving on roads, so they made Moto-Terminators that are like deathcycles who can do math way faster than you can in order to course-correct and avoid obstacles. Then there’s a gigantic Transformer-like behemoth with a gun for a head. They gave him a gun for a head! I spent the movie wondering how and why Skynet came up with these things. It’s a fun exercise, I tell you. Because they have all these awesome robots, and the Resistance has…jet planes? Show me a jet plane with a gun for a head, and then we’ll talk.
And in between is Marcus Wright, neither man nor machine, a convicted killer resurrected 15 years later as a cyborg (maybe he is robot Jesus?) for an unknown purpose. He runs into a young Kyle Reese and his pal Star, and they have all sorts of adventures running away from killer robots. Sam Worthington gives the most compelling performance in the movie; it’s easy to see why there’s so much buzz that he’s about be a big star (he’s also starring in James Cameron’s Avatar and the Clash of the Titans remake). You can’t help but be fascinated by him every time he’s onscreen. He completely steals the movie. And, possibly, your girlfriend. Even I may have a small crush on him now.
If it seems like I’ve spent more time talking about the characters and the worldbuilding than the plot, it’s because the movie does too. About halfway through the movie, I realized that there’d barely been any plot at all, but I didn’t care! Because there were lots of killer robots and explosions and it was awesome. McG has certainly grown since Charlie’s Angels; he’s no longer hyperkinetic but just kinetic. The action set pieces are impressive and tense, bolstered by the amazing CGI and production design that make you feel like they took a camera into the future. And once the plot gets going, there’s still more human-on-robot violence to look forward to.
Terminator Salvation is more ambitious than T3: Rise of the Machines, which I can’t remember much about, although the same writers, John D. Brancato and Michael Ferris are credited. The script superficially addresses the question of what makes a human different from a machine, but it doesn’t even come close to the subtle complexities of The Sarah Connor Chronicles. There’s something about the human spirit, too, I think, and how it will not be crushed under a robot foot or something. Ultimately, the movie is not as deep as it wants to be, but that doesn’t detract from the immersive experience of spending two hours in the War Against the Machines. Make no mistake, it’s dark and grim with some glimmers of hope and thus not nearly the crowd-pleaser Star Trek is. But I think the movie delivers on the promise of the recent trailer that uses Nine Inch Nails’ “The Day the World Went Away.” Because on Judgment Day, the world went away. In its place, Skynet and Terminators. The human race will not lie down and be slaughtered. If you’re reading this, you are the Resistance.
Our pal Roger usually shares his rants at NYC Rock Star. But today he's giving his two cents about Star Trek for us lucky folks. Can Englishman Simon Pegg do a better Scotty than American James Doohan? Should Kirk quit chasing hot green chicks and admit his love for Spock? Is Karl Urban fit to fill old Bones's shoes, or should he go back to fighting Orcs? Dammit, Jim, we're bloggers, not reviewers! Oh wait, here's the review! Read on ...
Fans and non-fans may look at the new Star Trek movie, classify it as "science fiction", a "summer popcorn blockbuster," or even a "nostalgia trip," but I'm here to tell you that they're all right, and all wrong. Star Trek may the biggest, loudest love story ever. And it's fantastic.
Director J.J. Abrams honors the show's legacy without alienating and antiquating its best qualities. Whereas Abrams is indeed a solid director, he's truly enabled by a strong, smart script by Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman that contains just enough winks and nods to ring true to the Trekkies. But there's none of the cringing that I expected. There's really so much that could have gone wrong with this reboot—in fact, I was waiting for it to. Just about 10 years ago, I was at this very same theater (the Ziegfeld) to see Episode I of a much-loved science fiction icon. Awaiting the premiere of this Star Trek was a lot like that for me ... except without the massive letdown afterwards. Somehow accomplishing the enormous task of appealing to the wider, un-indoctrinated audience while satisfying the established base, one of the most astonishing qualities of this new Trek, is how it consistently fires on all thrusters and keeps from sucking.
So, where's the love?
You can sense the love that went into writing the script, with nods to older movies and episodes, in the form of lines, themes and symbols. The optimism of Trek, absent in most recent science fiction like Battlestar Galactica, is present. My favorite Trek has always been Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan; this movie both shows and references the Kobayashi Maru test (keep a lookout for a familiar apple) that sets the stage for Khan, along with that film's revenge theme. Time travel, another familiar Trek plot device (see Star Trek IV, or City on the Edge of Forever), once again figures prominently in this outing, but I won't talk too much about that, so as not to ruin any of the fun.
The plot is almost secondary to the much-more-interesting "origins" story that's being played out simultaneously. All props to Eric Bana as a great Romulan baddie and an exciting "destroy the galaxy" storyline, but it's been done before in countless tv episodes and movies, Trek or otherwise. Kirk's "saved the galaxy/Earth/alien" many times before—it's like his specialty. The real fun is seeing the characters enter the canon of Trek history. Characters in this case not only includes the members of the Enterprise crew/family, but all the great toys that we've grown up watching them use, like the transporter, phasers and even the Enterprise herself, who's gotten a facelift enough to hold her own with any other sci-fi starship of the genre, but stayed true to her iconically-shaped profile.
The same can be said for the aforementioned "toys" ... they're all updated here, but with reverence for the originals—they're instantly recognizeable. The doors still swish, the communicators still beep, and the ship's computer sounds like she always has (Majel Barrett Roddenberry, a.k.a. Nurse Chapel, in her final Trek role). It adds a layer of familiarity and comfort for the longtime fans.
There’s love in the design of the sets and costumes, with a thoughtful updating of the original Sixties look and feel, with just enough refinement to lose the campiness and be reasonably acceptable as 23rd-century Earth. That's one of the defining differences with Star Trek than other sci-fi shows—this is our future that's being portrayed, so it has to feel right too. I even bought the officers in miniskirts.
The ensemble cast lovingly channels the spirits of the show's original characters, instead of just impersonating the actors themselves. Karl Urban retains all the country-doctor charm of DeForest Kelley’s "Bones" McCoy, yet restores a youthfulness to the character with a bit of a more believable edge to his eccentricities. Anton Yelchin's Chekhov predictably mispronounces his w's and v's, and Simon Pegg as Scotty is pitch-perfect.
There's love of mythic storytelling: Shades of Howard Hawks and Kurosawa (and by design, Tarantino and Lucas) when the young Kirk is encouraged to join Starfleet by Captain Pike, who issues a challenge to "do better" than his father, "a Starfleet Captain for thirteen minutes and died saving the lives of 800 men and women," including Kirk and his mother. This is immediately followed by a scene with Kirk, en route to ship out to Starfleet, rides his motorcycle to gaze at the sun as it rises on the dawn of his new destiny. A nod to Hidden Fortress, Star Wars, or maybe even Top Gun? Steadicam cinematography and stylized editing reflect the influence of Trek TNG alum Ronald Moore’s Battlestar Galactica reboot.
That brings me to the grandest love story of all: James Tiberius Kirk and Mr. Spock. Notwithstanding the parody videos of homoerotic relationships between the two, their story is of the budding of a lifetime relationship and iconic friendship (with the occasional triangular complications added by an alien hottie or Dr. McCoy). That said, in classic romantic-comedy fashion (like Cheers' Sam and Diane, Moonlighting’s Maddie and Dave) they initially can’t stand each other at Starfleet Academy.
Chris Pine, as the young Kirk, reminded me a bit of Good Will Hunting, which I find amusing, because there were rumors of Matt Damon being offered the role. Like Will, he's seen as an extraordinarily gifted young man, with lots of potential and an attitude problem (which is how many geeks see themselves). A father-figureless townie living in the shadow of Starfleet Academy (like Damon's Southie to Cambridge), he's kind of an ass—but that's as it should be. Zachary Quinto fully inhabits the young, more impulsively emotional, Spock. Nimoy's Spock was always fun to watch when he was mortally threatening, especially to Shatner's Kirk. Quinto convincingly plays Spock *just* in control of his emotions, with sometimes logic being the only thing keeping him from kicking Kirk's ass. As per tradition, Kirk, seemingly reckless cowboy, calls shots from the gut, in contrast to Spock's logical, deliberate decision-making as the Nerd-in-Chief. You can see how these guys are going to "grow up" to be the men that we've come to know.
Bottom line, it's a satisfying, warp-speed reboot of a franchise held dear (and sometimes as equally derided) to many. I loved it back. Oh, and there are tons of the pew-pew-pew and kickass that makes it a fun summer movie for everybody else.
Thanks, Roger! And don't forget to watch the man-on-the-street coverage from@sciencegoddess as well!
Guest blogger Joanne (@sciencegoddess) braved the wilds of her local cineplex to bring back this review of the latest Star Trek film. Dare we say it's out of this world? Thanks, Joanne!!!
By Joanna
Machinima is awesome. I feel cool just saying the word. But what--as a friend of mine recently asked me over chat--the hell is machinima? I wrote back with a knowing nod of my head: machinima uses 3-D rendering engines to produce computer animation. I was met with silence. She was at work and needed entertainment so I sent her the link to "Code Monkey."
Hello there, my name is Steven Page and I am a zombie specialist (well, at least someone who is ready for an outbreak). I don’t think of zombie movies as horror movies--more like catastrophe movies where the earth is a living body, zombies are a pandemic, and people are the immune system.
So—have you ever asked yourself, “What would I do in case of zombie outbreak?”
First of all, we’re at an advantage compared to most characters in zombie movies: we know what zombies are. Have you ever noticed that they rarely say the word “zombie” in those movies? It’s because they're in a world where nobody knows what a zombie is, making them vulnerable from the very beginning.
So, you wake up in the morning, you see two of your neighbours fighting in the street in front of your house. Then you look further and see that there are other people who seem to be running and fighting each other. You don’t think, "Zombie!" until you decide to go out and see what the hell is happening. These things try to attack. You run back inside and lock the door. Notice that those things don't try the doorknob—theyjust keep hitting the door. Now you're thinking Zombie.
Don’t lose your time trying to call 911. Instead, call your closest friends and try to regroup. Now is the time to make a group because the outbreak is only beginning. You can take the car but not for very long. In fact, a car is the most dangerous vehicle to use—you’ll ride right into them, going slower and slower as you roll on corpses. Then you'll completely stop, blocked by all those living dead under your wheels. What you imagined was a rescue vehicle transforms into an automotive prison where you will starve to death.
In Max Brooks' book, The Zombie Survival Guide it says that the best way to travel with is by bike. That’s up for discussion. But since we are still in the initial stages of the outbreak you should use the car ... but again, don't get attached to it.
The only way to kill a zombie is to destroy its brain. Everything under the brain will still work if still connected to the brain. So if you cut the head off it will still live, but won’t be able to chase you since it’s only a head.
Lastly, before leaving home try to get something to defend yourself. NEVER use blades unless they are as sharp as a Japanese Katana. Stabbing a head with a kitchen knife is not easy. All the effort and time it takes will end up killing you. The best items to kill zombies are mace weapons. Anything like a baseball bat or a long hammer; things that won’t enter the head, but just crush it so you can go on to the others.
You are now ready to leave your home. But remember those zombies banging on your door ? You don’t want them to get in your way. Here's a good strategy: Open the front door of your house, then turn around and escape by the back door. Go around your house and close the front door so the zombies are trapped in. Get in your car. You are on your way to your friend’s house ...
—Steven Page
Do West Coast nerds do it better? Are the real nerds down south? What about the unsung ones of the Midwest? Tell us here why your geek scene is the coolest, and you might become a rep for the city.
—The eds.
Heather Classen recently wrote us about the geek scene in Boston, and we agreed that the world needed to hear more. So voila! Please welcome our Boston Correspondent Heather Classen.
What's going on in your city? Write us here and be featured on our site.
Hearing about NerdAbout via a Facebook link, I saw that Nerdabout covers Austin TX, Portland OR, and NYC ... no Boston. what up? Boston is the central nerd hatchery as far as I'm concerned... the nerd "Hub", if you will. You can't close your eyes and toss your iPhone without hitting another adventurous knowledge loving brainiac... and here's how I know.
Looking to meet new people during the summer of 2007 I started wading into the Meetup waters, going to lunches, walks, and whatnot. Met great people and had a nice time, but the existing meetup groups weren't doing the sorts of events I wanted to. There was a Michael Palin book signing in Harvard Square that I wanted to go to and I couldn't get any of my regular crew to come along. So I took a chance, opened up Nerd Fun Boston, and posted it. No one came. It was just me and my red meetup sign. But, figuring there weren't many people signed up in my group by the time I ran my first event I gave it another shot. Harvard's Center for Astrophysics (CfA) has an open house night each month, lecture, telescopes, so I posted it. And they came. There's been no turning back.
As I write this there's 1429 members in my group.
My premise for Nerd Fun was to gather life-long learners together. I ran a bunch of events, and then with the help of superstar assistant organizers (i.e. T.J.) the group gathered steam, and people. Each event we attended recruited more and more members. We even started recruiting people who run the events that we attend. NerdFun Boston is a fantastic group of people from all walks of life. Younger people, older people, single, married, straight, gay, local, visiting, foreign, history geeks, science geeks, astronomy geeks, art geeks, geek geeks, everyone. It's fantastic.
Things that surprised me about the group:
1. history nerds.
I had no idea there were so many history nerds, I thought everyone would be all about semiconductors and bio-pharm in line with Boston's biggest industries. Our most prolific organizer, T.J. , started attending Boston By Foot Walking Tours and like the pied piper of nerds, T.J. collected a gaggle of history geeks, including the Boston by Foot tourguides themselves. But, I realized, it's inevitable in a city with Boston's past that curious people are going to want to spend time learning the history that's all around us here. Automatic.
2. transient nerds.
We're getting lots of members who are here in Boston/Cambridge temporarily, for school and work. It's perfect for them to attach onto a good group of active curious people and see and learn what there is to be seen here. Scientists and lawyers from Europe as visiting Harvard and MIT students, business travellers from Montreal in town for the weekend, students testing the grad school waters before they commit, again, I'm always surprised by who finds us.
3. my nerds are hooking up.
(Myself included.) Having this completely low pressure way of meeting other local brainiacs has really made dating easy. It's like being back in college without all the classwork and tuition. Many of us are working stiffs that, until now, hadn't had that "birds of a feather" feeling of community since our university days.
Our Events:
My favorite recurring event is the monthly Smithsonian Observatory Public Viewing Night, which involves an always interesting lecture followed by stargazing through the telescopes on their Cambridge rooftop. The CfA also has the occassional movie night (i.e. Destination Moon—see below.)
Photo by Aram Comjean
We attend talks and exhibits at the Harvard Museum of Natural History , the Museum of Science , the Museum of Fine Arts, the Institute of Contemporary Art, Northeastern University Marine Science Center, the Boston Public Library ,MIT Museum, Boston Duck Tours, movies like Coolidge Corner's Science on Screen series, John Quincy Adams home, cemetery tours, Paul Revere House, the Old South Meeting House and other Freedom Trail locales. The Longfellow House, Lexington and Concord's historical sites, Science in the News Seminar Series from Harvard's Medical School . yada yada yada. The list of events is endless. And our memberlist grows constantly as word gets out.
I'm thrilled at the direction this meetup group has taken, I had no idea that there would be so many really great, funny, intelligent, kind, good hearted, fun, adcventurous people out there looking to do the same sorts of nerd-tastic events that I like doing.
But, then again, this is Boston.
Join:
If you'd like to join, please connect with us at meetup alliance to collect similar groups across the US, please join the fun.
—Heather Classen
There’s a certain stereotype of a Nerd that includes skinny, wears glasses and likes to read a lot. Pierre Greene of Adaptation Wars—the newest club on the Lower East Side—has brought this stereotype to life through a new kind of book club.
The premise is basic and brilliant: Read books with cinematic counterparts; meet and discuss (The first book was American Psycho ). The process is democratic: Each meeting, members nominate and vote on the following month’s selection (The next meeting will feature One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest ). The environment is pleasant: Books, beer and pizza in a bar on a Sunday afternoon, followed by a screening of the film on the bar’s massive projector (The Skinny opens the bar up early for the book club. The 3pm start time means you can make it even after a late Saturday night). The crowd is casual: Smart and participatory but unpretentious.
The best part—all you have to do is read the book (or not), and show up and watch a movie (or not) while drinking beers on a Sunday afternoon. There are no pretentious, intellectual, hipster, “I only see films-not-movies at the Film Forum” airs anywhere near the club or it’s mission—The reason for this is because the club doesn’t really have a mission other than to provide a setting for people who like books and movies to talk about books and movies. Literary theorists argue that the purpose of adaptation is to fill a void or re-imagine an element from the original work—If you’re into it, discussing the disparities between the book and the movie is exciting. And the big screen projector is awesome.
I went to the December meeting without having read the book or seen the movie and enjoyed the hair of the dog while watching Christian Bale toy with Chloë Sevigny and the others and then passionately engaged in the post-film discussion before voting on Cuckoo (My impassioned nomination for Gone With the Wind was violently shot down).
How does the adaptation of the classic book club fit the aforementioned stereotype of a nerd?
Next Meeting:
January 4th, 3pm
Book: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey
The Skinny
174 Orchard Street (btwn Stanton and Houston)
I know, I know. You're probably wondering why anyone would want to be subjected to an evening of Beverly Hills Chihuahua or The Women. Truth is, "disposable film" is not a euphemism for the latest Hollywood swill, but a catchall term for short films captured, directed, and edited on casual media like digital point-and-shoots, cell phones, web cams, Flip cams, and still cameras. The results are usually shaky, poorly lit, and aurally garbled. Sometimes there's a narrative. Sometime it's more of an emotional response. Or just one of those magical moments captured on the streets. YouTube proves most of its totally throwaway, but it's also a genre with its own artistic potential. Kind of like the Polaroid is to Single-lense Reflex, so disposable film is to HD.
At least that's what the folks behind the second annual Disposable Film Festival seem to be out to prove. Held the other night at Anthology Film Archives, DFF 2008 featured a range of films as short as 1:44 minutes and as long as 10:45 minutes. One of my favorites was Expedition Everest, a 4-minute mockumentary following three generations of men on a ridiculous Disney ride. The Balloon Project showed two simultaneous narratives. One digital camera attached to a bundle of red balloons floated beautifully over Berlin, while a group of ex-pats filmed themselves on bikes trying to follow the balloons. After a brief intermission, the first ever disposable feature film (as far as they knew) was screened. Called Buttons, it's near 50-minute length was nothing more than a series of half-minute or less titled video vignettes, or buttons, "found" on the streets of various cities (mostly New York). Just in Cane followed a person with a walking cane that teasingly never touched ground. Cute, charming, about 5-seconds long, kind of French. But a feature? Mmm....Anyway, you can see the shorts on the DFF site. As well as these two offerings by myself and my buddy Arnulfo, submitted not to any disposable film fest, but for your Nerdabout viewing pleasure:
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