Micky Dolenz joins Debbie Gibson-Tiffany pic
This was sent to me by the intrepid DaleB, and involves SyFy’s casting choices for their upcoming movie Mega Python vs. Gatoroid, and you could not make this stuff up.
DaleB continued:
We have come far from that first night the Sci Fi Channel broadcast War
of the Worlds. Mind you, I am not sure just where we arrived.
True, SyFy = Troma in most cases these days, but it’s almost worth it for the headlines.
Adidas’ new “World Cup Party” ad splices an odd assortment of individuals into the Cantina scene. It’s on the “meh” side, but the ending is amusing.
YouTube user whoiseyevan specializes in “premakes:” Trailers for modern movies the way they might have been made 50 years ago.
There are lots more on his YouTube Channel. I like that the comments for each trailer include the “recipe” of clips used in its production.
(via Wil Wheaton)
Chris Sims, of Chris’s Invicible Super-Blog fame, has done a piece for the SyFy Channel’s SciFiWire site. It’s a scholarly retrospective of five decades of skintight catsuits in SF.
As he puts it:
It’s meant to be a comprehensive, chronological overview of the skin-tight outfits and what it means about our society that we’ve spent 50 years saying that’s what women are going to wear in the utopian/dystopian/video-gamey future. Which is a fancy way of saying “hey, go look at these pictures of pretty girls and enjoy my jokes about America’s most beloved astrophysicist.”
It’s all very refined and highbrow.
This month marks 30 years since the release of The Empire Strikes Back,* and artist Dave Lowe is celebrating by producing from-memory sketches of some of the characters and critters from the movie.
I’m not going for movie accurate versions here, nor any intentional “re-imagining”. I’m just gonna have fun drawing and see what spills out in the sketchbook. Not to sound too arty, but they’ll be nerdy impressionistic interpretations. To challenge myself, I’m not using any reference at all. Not even taking a quick glace up at my action figure shelves.
It’s fun to see what he’s been coming up with, and to read his self-critiques on how well the sketches match up with the real (so to speak) characters.
*Why yes, I do feel old.
They build their kids bunk beds that look like Imperial Walkers.
This triple-decker marvel has a sleeping area, a Hoth Lego display case, play/climbing areas, and a “clubhouse.”
The heck with the kids; I want one of these.
Lots more pics here.
BoingBoing posted about this essay by Terry Pratchett, wherein he claims that Dr. Who is not science fiction because he’s gone well beyond “sufficiently advanced technology” and seems to be careening into the realm of straight up magic.
People say Doctor Who is science fiction. At least people who don’t know what science fiction is, say that Doctor Who is science fiction. Star Trek approaches science fiction. The horribly titled Star Cops which ran all too briefly on the BBC in the 1980s was the genuine pure quill of science fiction, unbelievable in some aspects but nevertheless pretty much about the possible. Indeed, several of its episodes relied on the laws of physics for their effect (I’m particularly thinking of the episode “Conversations With The Dead”). It had a following, but never caught on in a big way. It was clever, and well thought out. Doctor Who on the other hand had an episode wherein people’s surplus body fat turns into little waddling creatures. I’m not sure how old you have to be to come up with an idea like that. The Doctor himself has in recent years been built up into an amalgam of Mother Teresa, Jesus Christ (I laughed my socks off during the Titanic episode when two golden angels lifted the Doctor heavenwards) and Tinkerbell. There is nothing he doesn’t know, and nothing he can’t do. He is now becoming God, given that the position is vacant. Earth is protected, we are told, and not by Torchwood, who are human and therefore not very competent. Perhaps they should start transmitting the programme on Sundays.
The comments on BoingBoing went from zero to wharrgarbl in about 30 seconds, arguing about the nature of SF vs. fantasy and where the Doctor falls on the continuum. I think I more or less agree with the commenter who argues that a deux ex machina weakens SF without necessarily derailing it entirely, but I do have to question whether the Doctor’s tendency to solve every problem that way perhaps moves him out of the sphere of science fiction and toward something more akin to fantasy.
What do you think?
The Hi-Fidelity Quartet participated in the Barbershop Harmony Society International Contest with this entry.
Part 1:
Part 2:
Discovery Magazine’s Discoblog has a feature called NCBI ROFL which covers particularly odd scientific studies, such as the one that correlates eye color and sports performance or the one examining indentity exploration in World of Warcraft.
They recently posted this gem from PubMed entitled, “The history of poisoning in the future: lessons from Star Trek.”
Out of the 79 Star Trek episodes, 28 (35%) involved toxin-related incidents. A total of 31 poisoning incidents were documented with 13 environmental, 9 intentional, 5 unintentional, and 4 homicidal circumstances. Biotoxins (10 incidents) were the most frequently involved toxin followed by neurotoxins (9), radiation (3), cytotoxins (3), temporal toxins (3), acids (2), and phytotoxins (1). Of these cases, 2 involved hazardous materials incidents, 1 was contamination of food, and 3 involved therapeutic misadventures.
Apparently there’s a place for Mr. Yuk even in the 23rd Century.
