Extraordinary Claims

Note: There are NO spoilers here. I don’t say anything about these movies that you don’t find out in the first few minutes.

I recently watched Happy Accidents (2000), starring Marisa Tomei and Vincent D’Onofrio. It was on instant play, so I took a chance, and was pleasantly surprised. Here’s the premise in a nutshell: She meets him in the park and likes him. They start to date. He seems like he’s hiding something, though, and he’s also strangely clueless about everyday things. When she confronts him, he “confesses” that he’s from the future—hundreds of years in the future—and that he’s come back through time to find her.

Because there’s an implication of time travel, this sometimes gets categorized as science fiction, which is how it got into my “recommended” list, but there are no time machines or fancy special effects. This is a romantic comedy-drama, mostly, but it’s also a movie of ideas.

The movie is well-acted, and is more subtle and profound than you might expect. Personally, watching Marisa Tomei for almost two hours is reason enough to see the movie, but that’s just me (actually, I think it’s a lot of people).

What I really want to tell you about, though, is the movie that this movie reminded me of. That movie—one of my favorites—also features a man making an extraordinary claim.

In The Man from Earth (2007), professor John Oldman has decided to leave his tenured position and move on. Some friends and colleagues come over to see him off and have a few drinks. They grill him about his reasons for leaving, and about what he plans to do next. After some hesitation, he poses a hypothetical question: "What if a man from the upper paleolithic survived until the present day? What would he be like?" Given that his colleagues are experts in various fields, they can actually take a stab at answering this question. Oldman suggests that he's researching for a science fiction novel, but he ends up claiming that he is, in fact, such a man.

Most of the “action” in this movie takes place in a living room. It’s a group conversation about hypothetical possibilities and consequences. Some of the characters treat Oldman's claim as an intellectual game; others are annoyed or upset by it. This movie has good actors, but no superstars, which is all the better. It says something when a movie can keep you riveted for an hour and a half with a continuous conversation.

If that doesn’t sound exciting to you, I suggest you try it. It’s on Netflix’s instant play, and if you’re not hooked in 10 minutes, then it’s not for you. If it is for you, though, you’ll be thinking about this one for days. I just checked to confirm that it’s still on instant play (it is); I started it, and I was totally hooked, again.

The Man from Earth was written by Jerome Bixby, who wrote a ton of science fiction short stories and a few scripts for Star Trek and The Twilight Zone. One of the four Trek episodes he wrote was “Requiem for Methuselah.” Great title, isn’t it? In this episode, the Enterprise crew encounters a man who, they eventually discover, is six thousand years old, and who has been many well-known people during those years. Apparently Mr. Bixby, whose own time on earth ended in 1998, wanted to give this idea a more thorough treatment.

Light Recycle

I saw the preview for Tron Legacy. It looks neat, and gave me the slightest shiver of anticipation, but I've learned to squelch my hopes in these matters. In any case, it made me want to watch the original again, so I did.
I saw Tron in the theater when it was released, and I am still reeling a bit from realizing that that was 28 years ago. This movie is still fun to watch, and very pretty. Obviously, the animation will seem outdated at first, but once you give it a minute, you'll stop comparing and get into it. The computer animation, along with rotoscoping and other lighting and coloring techniques, all of which were cutting edge at the time, make for a movie that is still visually brilliant and absorbing. Ebert gave this movie four stars when it came out, mainly for the visual effects.
Tron is criticized for being light on plot and character development, and it is. But there's enough story and suspense to string together this eye candy necklace, and it's fun to see the young Jeff Bridges and Bruce Boxleitner in action. Also, there are ideas about deity incarnation and avatars in there - pretty cool!
Furthermore, now that it's 28 years old, the movie is also interesting as an artifact of the [then] young computer and video game culture.
Interesting lil' side note: According to Wiki, the Motion Picture Academy refused to nominate Tron for special effects because the creators "cheated" by using computers.

Qapla' petaQ!

I know, I know. That title is not a sentence you’d hear often in Klingon, as it seems a little contradictory. But According to IMDB, some Trek fans claim that the insult is derived from the name of Michael Pataki, the character actor who played a Klingon on the original Star Trek series. Specifically, he’s the guy named Korax who started the bar brawl in The Trouble with Tribbles by goading Scotty into throwing the first punch. In the scene, Scotty, as the ranking officer in the bar, urges other officers to remain calm as Korax roundly ridicules the Captain Kirk and the crew, but when the Klingon insults the Enterprise itself, Scotty stands up and slugs him. That was just going too far.

Pataki was a well-respected character actor who, during a long career, played parts on stage and in over 150 movies and TV shows. He died of cancer on April 15 at the age of 72.

'Tis a gift to be simple

We love post-apocalyptic scenarios. I think the reason is that we’re drowning in a sea of gadgets and information, and sometimes we’d just like it to all go away.

In an interview with Conan O’Brien last year, Louis CK jokes about how “Everything is amazing and nobody’s happy.” His routine, which went viral, is hilarious because we see the truth in it. Referring to the possibility of total economic collapse, he says, “…maybe we need that; maybe we need some time where we’re walking around with a donkey with pots clanging on the sides.”

I recently saw Book of Eli. It was a lot of fun, with some cool photography and symbolism to boot, and the setting reminded me a lot of the Mad Max movies. There are countless examples of books and movies taking place in a world that has been ravaged by war, disease, environmental collapse, or the total failure (or rebellion) of computers and electronics. In these stories, the unpleasantness is often glossed over – the crisis is just the vehicle to get us to a world that is familiar, but simpler than our own and full of adventure. After all, who wouldn’t like to camp in the desert with a nice fire, especially if your ancient iPod still works?

But really, I want modern medicine when I get sick, and I want a cell phone when my car breaks down. I want my kids to be safe and healthy, and technology can help, a lot. I geek out when I ask my phone (as in, with my actual voice) for a pizza place near my hotel, and it pulls up a map and a phone number. I love watching post-apocalyptic movies on my decidedly pre-apocalyptic high-def TV. Screw the good old days!

I think what really attracts me to fanciful settings is the combination of simple pleasures and adventure – and the lack of clutter and trivia. The cozy scene by the fire at the inn is as fun to read as the fight with the dragon. Even in most futuristic sci-fi, day-to-day life is often uncluttered. The folks aboard the Enterprise are not worried about answering email or finding their laptop cable. They are getting into scrapes on a wild planet or playing chess in the officer’s mess. They are laughing it up with friends in the ship’s lounge, not updating their Facebook status.

I find I need to make a conscious effort to occasionally unplug and sit by a fire, under the stars, with my cell phone turned off. Or at least set to vibrate. Then again, Google Sky Map could tell me what that constellation is…

Long-lived and prosperous

This week are the birthdays of William Shatner (March 22) and Leonard Nimoy (March 26). Yes, Kirk and Spock were born within a week of each other in 1931, making them 79 this year. Wow. They both continue to work and create. They seem to have a lot of energy and show no signs of slowing down. Fascinating! These guys are a real inspiration.

This photo is all over the Internet, but I'm sure it's copyright Paramount.

Spock gestures

A few weeks before the newest "reboot" Star Trek movie was released, I watch the oldest one again. The original series pilot, The Cage, was made in 1964 but not shown on TV until 1986, though most of it was embedded in the regular season two-parter called The Menagerie. Early in the episode, Spock makes a hand gesture to change the image on the computer screen. I don't know of an earlier example of a gesture computer command on film, and he isn't even wear silly glovelets like Tom Cruise in Minority Report.
According to what I've read, this first pilot was rejected by studio executives because it was too erotic, Spock looked like the devil, and the first officer was a woman (played by Majel Barrett). I believe Barrett and Nimoy were the only actors in this first pilot to have regular parts in the series. Luckily, they were given the chance to make another pilot.
Whatever the case, The Cage still good sci-fi!

Aliens say God could exist

According to BBC News, Father Gabriel Funes, the official Vatican astronomer, declared in a recent article that alien life could exist in outer space, and that belief in extraterrestrial life did not contradict belief in God or the teachings of the church.

Catholic sci-fi fans the world over breathed a collective sigh of relief.

In response, Gok Grabbclrttttk of the Mu Arae star system and president of the Fomalhaut League of Intelligent Races, said that God could exist, and the belief in God did not violate any rules he knew of. “However,” he added, “It does seem kind of silly.”

Father Funes also said in his article that some aliens could be free from original sin. President Grabbclrttttk snorted at this statement, saying, “He’s not talking about any aliens I know.”

A man breathes into a saxophone

Yesterday, while I walked to my favorite coffee shop in this little upstate NY town, it began to drizzle. As I passed in front of the computer repair place, a skinny guy with white hair and a white beard, and holding a beat-up saxophone, stepped out. He stood in the shelter of the recessed door and started to play. It sounded great - smooth and mellow. When I reached the coffee shop a few doors down, instead of going right in, I stood under the awning, looked out at the increasing rain, and listened to the music a while.
I saw the guy the next day and complimented him on his playing, but it turned out that not everyone appreciated it. He had been playing one door down from a little diner, and apparently the owner came out and asked him to stop. "I don't want to hear your saxophone in my diner," she said. "I don't want to smell your meatloaf on the sidewalk," he shot back. So, she called the cops. Oh, well. At least I got to hear it.
While I was in the rain listening to the music, I suddenly felt like I was in a movie. An old detective movie, of course. This sensation is common now, but just think, none of the ancient Greeks felt like they were in a movie, ever.
Since I don't have any appropriate pictures, I leave you with the following album cover and the following question: Did they give much thought to the alignment of the bass sax mouthpiece?

Cruisin'

I read recently in Variety that Tom Cruise and United Artists have hired Ronald Moore (Battlestar Galactica!) to create a big-screen sci-fi trilogy for Cruise. Three big-screen sci-fi movies by Ron Moore? Yay! Starring Tom Cruise? Um....

This news got me thinking about Tom Cruise movies, which alone make up the following category: Movies I Like Starring Actors I Don't. It's nothing personal - I just don't like Cruise - his acting, his voice, his teeth, etc. But, man, he's been in a lot of good movies, a few of them just outstanding. He's starred in a some solid sci-fi, too, like Vanilla Sky, Minority Report, and War of the Worlds. In the top-notch movie Magnolia, he plays a slimy misogynist bastard, and he is just great at that role, but he usually plays a guy you're supposed to like, and I just don't. (Come to think of it, he was a believable bastard in Collateral, too.)

It seems to me that Cruise movies are good in spite of him, not because of him. But he keeps getting the parts, so I'll keep watching. It's kind of like following a pig to the truffles.

Melting, melting

Two of my arteest friends blogged this week about the spring thaw, which we are finally enjoying here in upstate NY. I'm just going to pass these on:
Dave Huth made a video called Long Time Coming (click on the picture on the bottom half of the page on Huth's page), and Nicole Maynard painted a painting called Thaw. You should check these out, if you haven't already.

Don

Flowers courtesy of the universe and my back yard

Mistah Crushah!

I while ago I posted about a childhood memory of taping Star Trek with a cassette recorder. I was inspired to write that down after reading some good essays by Wil Wheaton in his new book The Happiest Days of Our Lives. These are entertaining and sometimes poignant stories about growing up a geek and being a grown-up geek. The best thing about these stories is that they are generally hopeful and happy, even when he relates sad memories. Happiest Days is currently available only through Wheaton's blog. It's a rather slim volume for the $20 price, but I liked it a lot. You can experience his writing with little investment, though, by checking out Dancing Barefoot or Just a Geek, both available for peanuts on AbeBooks. Of course, you can also find his essays in a library or on his blog for zero dollars and zero cents.

The Sci-Fi Pie author as a young geek

For those of you who don't know, Wil Wheaton got famous as the wiz-kid Wesley Crusher in Star Trek: The Next Generation. Since then, he's been writing books and blogs, acting in a few movies/TV shows, playing Celebrity Poker, and living life with his family like the rest of us.

More Dreams with Sharp Teeth

I went to NYC to see the New York premier of Dreams with Sharp Teeth, a film about Harlan Ellison, which I’ve already yapped about here and below. I’m not going to bore you with a review or preview or whatever. If anything I've already said about the movie interests you, see it when you get the chance. You won’t be disappointed.


At one point in the movie, Ellison is shown signing a script for a fan, who then says, “Awesome!” Ellison rebukes him, telling him that earthquakes and Michelangelo are awesome, not his signature. Wrong. I’d say the signed script is pretty awesome. The movie Dreams with Sharp Teeth: Awesome. The fact that writers Peter David, Josh Olson, and Norman Spinrad, among others, were in the audience: Awesomer. The on-stage, hour-long chat between director Erik Nelson and Harlan Ellison himself: AWESOMEST.

Tanks Hoots

Thanks to Dave Huth, graphic artist and shaper of many media, for making me a nice header for my blog! His vblog movies are a real treat - funny, interesting, meaningful, and other sorts of good.

I’m geeking out. I discovered that Dreams with Sharp Teeth, a movie about Harlan Ellison that I mentioned a few posts ago, is premiering in NYC, and Ellison will be there. The movie’s being presented by the Film Society of Lincoln Center on Tuesday, April 8th at 7pm. I plan on traveling about 7 hours to see the movie and coming back the next day.


Now, I realize that this is a fairly idiotic thing to do. It’s made more sensible, though, by the fact that my nice friends Rob and Kathy are going to the movie with me and putting me up afterwards. I look forward to seeing them, and their hospitality saves me many monies. I'll also give myself a few hours to kick around the city. These considerations bring the endeavor into the realm of “almost normal,” I think. Thanks, guys, and see you in a couple days!

Common Interests

This tasty morsel just in from my Google news alerts: the website LesbiaNation has published their top-ten women of sci-fi list, the result of a reader survey. (Note: my news alert search terms are “science fiction” and “sci-fi,” not “lesbians.” Not that there’d be anything wrong with that…). The article starts, “Lesbians and strong sci-fi women go hand-in-hand….” I never thought about it that way, but now that I do, I like thinking about it.

Anyway, I am totally down with this list, because the winning actors play characters who are intelligent and competent, as well as smoking hot. For a geek, hotness, by definition, includes smarts and competence. Bimbos need not apply. After all, why is Dr. Crusher hotter than Deanna Troi? Because Crusher can take over the ship without batting an eyelash, while Troi tries it once and crashes the boat.

Number ten is Natalie Portman. You’ll have to click on over for the rest: LesbiaNation Top Ten Women of Sci-Fi

Geek Genes

A few weeks ago I was taking the bus into Rochester, watching an episode of Stargate on my iPod, when I had a flashback to my childhood. When I was six or seven, I had one of those ubiquitous cassette tape recorders – the ones about the width and length of a shoebox and half as high. I often used it to record Star Trek (the original), which I watched in syndication almost every day. I’d set the recorder on top of the TV, and then wrap the mic cord once or twice around the channel knob so the mic dangled in front of the speaker. I recorded many episodes like this, jumping up to turn off the recorder during commercials. Later at night, when I was supposed to be asleep, I would lie in the dark and listen to the show using one of those little white mono earphones. I was geek before I knew what geek was.

A couple years ago I was team-teaching a programming class an hour and a half from home, and staying at a friend’s house one or two nights during the week. I had episodes of Trek with me on my laptop, and I’d watch them right before I went to sleep. I didn’t consciously think of it at the time, but I missed my wife and kiddies, and these shows were comforting. It seems kind of pathetic to have an emotional connection to a TV show, like I’m a baby rhesus monkey clinging to a wire mommy. But these are early memories of good times in the comfort of home. Even if I was hiding behind the couch, afraid that Kirk would not escape the doomsday machine, it's still a good memory. I suppose everyone my age has a show or two like this. For some it’s Little House on the Prairie, or Happy Days, or Charlie’s Angels. I have early memories of Charlie’s Angels, too, but they are not really warm and fuzzy. They’re…other adjectives.

We’ve been watching the old Treks with our kids. It’s fun and surprisingly educational for them—there’s a lot that needs explaining. It makes me wonder how much I understood when I first watched. Anyway, I get a real charge when my kids ask to watch a specific episode by name. Yeah, brother!

Robot Schmobot

Yesterday, several news sites reported that a man was shot by a robot. Headlines like this, conjuring images of Cylon toasters mowing down Colonial civilians, will certainly get a few readers. The sad truth, though, is that an old man killed himself.

Apparently, an 81 year-old man in Australia was distraught because his family was pressuring him to move into a nursing home. He decided to kill himself instead. He found plans on the Internet for a machine that could pull the trigger of a handgun remotely. He built the machine, set it up in his driveway, and killed himself with it.

I haven’t seen this machine, but calling it a robot is cheerless sensationalism, given that it was probably made from a power drill and a vice. Leave it to Fox News, though, to go over the top. I’m not making this up. This is their headline:

Australian Man Gunned Down
in Driveway by Killer Robot

Do these idiots really want to parody themselves? If Fox News were on the Comedy Channel, along with The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, they would be pretty funny. But they're not, and they are always making up slogans claiming impartiality. Their latest is this: We Report. You Decide. OK—I’ve decided. I’ve decided that Fox News is a bunch of assholes.

Dreams with Sharp Teeth

I love Harlan Ellison’s stories, and I recently learned of a movie about him, called Dreams with Sharp Teeth, which premiered at the South by Southwest (SXSW) film and music fest last week. Ellison is an outstanding and prolific writer of short stories, longer fiction, TV scripts, and more. Most of his work would be classified as speculative fiction or science fiction. He eschews the label of science-fiction writer, though, for the same reason Vonnegut did when he wrote this classic line years after some early success: "I have been a soreheaded occupant of a file drawer labeled 'science fiction' ever since, and I would like out, particularly because so many serious critics regularly mistake the drawer for a urinal."
Like Vonnegut, Ellison wants his work to be considered seriously, and on the same level as any published fiction, and it should be.
The movie shows Ellison giving a tour of his eccentric house to Robin Williams. It has interviews with Dan Simmons, Neil Gaiman, and Peter David, among others. They all say Ellison is great, and he is. He’s also famously abrasive and grumpy. He rants a lot. But he’s a writer’s writer, and a staunch supporter of artists' rights in any media. The trailer for the movie shows a lot of rants, but reviews have it that there’s more to it than that.
If you are at work or with the kiddies, be warned: the following clip contains BAD WORDS.

It would probably be hard to live with a person who rants a lot, but they’re fun to watch for a while. Most of us won’t get to see this till summer, and I can’t wait.

P.S. While looking for that Vonnegut quote, I found this nifty article:
15 Things Kurt Vonnegut Said Better Than Anyone Else

Citizen TR-20216691 Reporting

I got my new passport in the mail. I’m pretty excited because I’m planning a trip to the UK in the fall. I also got back my old passport, which I had to submit as proof of ID. It happens that my old passport is almost exactly 20 years older than my new one. I held the pictures side by side and showed them to my wife. “Depressing,” I said. But it wasn’t really depressing, just interesting. Twenty years – POOF.

The new passport has the following warning on the last page:

This document contains sensitive
electronics. For best performance,
do not bend, perforate, or expose
to extreme temperatures.

For best performance? What exactly is it going to DO? They could have left off that phrase, and the imperative would have followed perfectly from the first sentence. More interesting than writing by committee, though, is that sensitive electronics part.

That little rectangular symbol means it's an "electronic" passport. Passports now contain your personal data encrypted on a chip. The chip is accessed using short-range radio waves—the same tech that’s common in credit cards, car keys, security fobs, and lots more. According to the State Department web site, the passport has a shielded cover, so it has to be opened and passed directly over a scanner to be read. I’m fine with this. It makes sense and seems secure enough.

But then there’s the passport card. This is offered as a cheaper and more convenient alternative for travelers who frequently go to and from Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Bermuda. It’s good only for land or sea travel—you can’t use it to fly. The card is wallet sized, and is billed as more convenient because it’s smaller and—get this—the data can be read at a distance. If you have a passport card in your wallet, the boarder guard will know who you are before you pull up to the gate. Really.

The government says not to worry, though – it’s secure because there’s no personal data on the card – just a number that they can link to your records in a “secure government databases.”

Let’s see, why doesn’t that make me feel better…Oh! I know; because THE GOVERNMENT IS WHO I’M AFRAID OF. If the passport card catches on as a national ID card (or is mandated), is there any doubt that the government will put readers in every government building, highway toll booth, bank, hospital, and anywhere else they can get away with? I don’t think I'm being too paranoid here. I mean, I would do it if I were them. It would be very handy in all sorts of situations.

But it is scary, in a delightfully sci-fi dystopia way. I refuse to get a passport card. I'm holding out for the really convenient subcutaneous passport implant.

Gedo Senki

A few years ago the Sci-fi channel produced a film version of A Wizard of Earthsea. The production utterly and completely sucked. I mean, really. Such good material, and they totally blew it. Anyway, I recently searched IMDB to see if there were any other Earthsea movies out there. I saw that there is an animated Tales from Earthsea, directed by Guro Mayazaki, son of Hayao Mayazaki, the great director responsible for Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, and Howl’s Moving Castle.

Gedo Senki came out in 2006, but I hadn’t heard about it. It’s a beautiful production. The animation backgrounds are like paintings, and the music is interesting dramatic. Even the ambient sound, something you might not normally notice in an animated movie, is textured and detailed. This is Guro's first directorship. Maybe it's not as good as his father's work, but it's a little unfair to compare.

The movie isn’t taken from the original Earthsea trilogy, but from a later collection of stories. If you haven’t read the Earthsea books, by Ursula LeGuin, you should. They’re really worth the time. Almost 30 years before the first Harry Potter, there was Ged from the island of Gont. Ill-treated as a child, he discovered he had magic powers, and was sent for a school for wizards to develop his skill and learn to use it responsibly. The trilogy is short. The three books are under 200 pages each. LeGuin also wrote later books, Tehanu, The Other Wind, and Tales from Earthsea. These are also good, but a little darker and more grown-up. I would gladly have my kids (7, 9, and 11) read the trilogy, but I think I’d want them to wait on Tehanu.

I, Spotbot

I read two robot-related news stories on Reuters this morning, and I’m not sure which is more disturbing.

• Story one – scary robots. Robotics/AI expert Noel Sharkey, among others, has warned that GPS-guided robots are already cheap and easy to build, and it’s just a matter of time before terrorists use them to launch remote attacks. The robot tech is out there, easy to get and easy to copy. Toy plane + GPS device + grenade = …You get the [ugly] picture.
• Story two – cute robots. A study released this month says that elderly in nursing homes were equally comforted by a trained therapy dog and a robotic dog. That’s right. "They worked almost equally well in terms of alleviating loneliness and causing residents to form attachments.”

OK, I have a question: Why did they do that experiment?

Are they looking into cost-cutting? Saving on kibble? Who was sitting around one day and suddenly thought, Hey, I wonder if those old folks would be just as happy with a robot dog? I realize the story addresses those questions, sort of, but still...

What solution would the heuristics of Electronic Jesus yield?


One of my favorite Douglas Adams creations is the Electric Monk, introduced in Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency. Just like other labor-saving devices that took over tedious tasks for us, “Electric Monks believed things for you, thus saving you what was becoming an increasingly onerous task, that of believing all the things the world expected you to believe.”

Will aging robots be just as happy with live dogs?