Monthly Archives: March 2007

Mar202007

Pirates 3 Trailer

And now, just because I can, allow me to present the trailer for the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie:

I don’t know about you, but I think that’s a spectacular trailer. Whether the movie will be any good is, of course, an open question. The art of the trailer editing has advanced to a point where it’s no longer possible to tell what you’ll be getting yourself into, based solely on the previews. In fact, I find that the trailer is better than the finished film in something like seven out of 10 cases.

In addition, I’m rather ambivalent about the Pirates movies. I love the concept of them — the POTC ride has always been my favorite Disney attraction, and my boyhood fantasies were filled with blackhearted scalawags, buccaneers, and corsairs — and Johnny Depp has created an indelible, iconic, very likable character largely through the force of his own charisma and artistic daring (who’d have thought that playing an entire movie as a sexually ambiguous drunk would work?). But the first film probably could’ve been trimmed by 15 or 20 minutes without anyone ever missing anything, and the second one suffered from the “Bigger is Always Better — Except When It’s Not” syndrome that afflicts so many sequels. And why did this whole thing need to be a trilogy anyway? The first film could’ve stood on its own very nicely.

All of which is just me being my usual curmudgeonly self, of course. Everybody reading this knows that I’ll be seeing At World’s End. After all, I’m a sucker for a good trailer. And pirates. A good trailer with pirates? Irresistable…

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Mar202007

The A380 and Howard’s Folly

The new Airbus A380 superjumbo jetliner arrived on American soil for the first time yesterday (two of them, actually, one in LA and one at New York’s JFK) amid much media hoopla. The plane has been somewhat controversial because of production delays and the current inability of most airports to accomodate the behemoth, but to my eye, it’s still a pretty impressive machine, if not exactly a pretty one. (Its two-deck design makes the fuselage look rather stocky, but I guess there wasn’t any other way to accomodate over 500 passengers without going to a radically different configuration.) I’m especially intrigued by the “tail cam,” a continuous video feed from the outside the plane that can be displayed on the individual seat-back monitors. When I flew to Germany a few years ago, I spent a good part of the journey mesmerized by a map feature that showed the plane’s progress across the Atlantic in real time, a la the “red-line transit montage” in each of the Indiana Jones movies; the A380 tail cam sounds like a nice companion to that.

For all the talk about the A380’s size, however — every article I’ve seen mentions that it’s bigger than a 747, which, for anyone who’s ever flown on one of those venerable birds, is a pretty impressive statistic — this new liner is still not quite the equal of Howard Hughes’ infamous Hercules H-4, a.k.a. the “Spruce Goose.” Consider the following nifty chart (which I gleefully swiped from Telstar Logistics):

Continue Reading…

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Mar192007

Invading the Zeitgeist

I don’t have much to say about the following, except that I thought it was funny and it never fails to amaze and amuse me how thoroughly my favorite movie has infiltrated the general public’s consciousness:

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Original source here.

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Mar162007

Connery’s New Final Film

At this point, I’m considering any casting news I hear about Indiana Jones 4 to be solidly in the “rumor” category, but the word that Sir Sean is considering reprising his role as Henry, Sr., is both unsurprising and — if it’s true and if he agrees to do it — welcome news indeed. His attachment to the project will mean that (a) my chances of liking Indy 4 will go up by a factor of 12, and (b) The League of not-so-Extraordinary Gentlemen — pardon me while I spit the bad taste from my mouth — will no longer be the last feature film on the CV of one of my favorite actors. So let’s keep our fingers crossed, shall we?
Oh, and in related news, British scientists have determined that Connery is, in fact, the real James Bond. Duh.

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Mar162007

Bridal Veil Tram Coming Back!

Usually when I write on this blog about some local landmark, it’s to mourn that object’s seemingly inevitable passing. Happily, this is the opposite case: it appears that a landmark that was lost — the tram that used to soar high over Bridal Veil Falls — may be rebuilt within the next year or so.

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Mar142007

Richard Jeni’s Family: A Class Act

A few days ago, a comedian named Richard Jeni committed suicide. I’ll be honest, I can’t place his name or face, even though I’ve seen The Mask, a movie in which he appeared, a couple of times. He apparently never made much of an impression on me.

My ignorance aside, however, I wanted to link to the statement his family issued today because it struck me as such a classy way of addressing such a painful and potentially embarassing subject:

Rumors have been circulating as to the cause of his death and have included speculation of Richard being depressed over the state of his career or a physical ailment. …The truth is: earlier this year Richard Jeni was diagnosed with severe clinical depression coupled with bouts of psychotic paranoia. One only needs to have a family member or friend with a mental illness to understand that there is nothing rational, predictable, or fair about these diseases. Mental illness is as serious as any physical affliction and can be just as devastating.

 

He was not down or blue, he was ill. If you knew Richard, you could understand, this was as much a shock to those close to him, as it is to his fans and colleagues. Perhaps Richard’s passing will encourage people to have sympathy, compassion and understanding for those who are afflicted with mental illness. As we are all trying to make sense of this, take time to remember the joy and laughter Richard brought to the countless people he touched during his much too short life.

In just a few eloquent words, whoever wrote this satisfied the morbid curiosity we always feel when something like this happens while still giving Richard some degree of privacy and dignity. Also, kudos for the call to turn this one family’s personal tragedy into something with a social purpose and conscience. Very nicely done, and my condolences about Richard.

Also, my thanks to Evanier for bringing this to my attention.

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Mar142007

Kirk and Spock: The Real Story

We’re about to delve deep into the dark underbelly of geekiness here, folks, so you might want to strap yourselves in. Here there be dragons…

First, the background: There is within many fandoms a sub-culture of people who like to write their own stories using characters from whatever their favorite media obsession may be, and within this “fanfic” (short for “fan fiction”) scene, there is a sub-sub-culture of those who write so-called “slash fiction.” In broad terms, slash stories take established, heterosexual characters and reimagine them in homosexual relationships with each other. The original such pairing (as far as anyone can determine) was between Star Trek‘s Kirk and Spock in mimeographed stories that got passed around at early Trek conventions back in the 1970s; the name of the genre actually originates with the way these particular stories used to be categorized (i.e., “Kirk/Spock” or “Kirk-slash-Spock” stories).

All of which leads to my observation that some ideas never die:

(Hat tip to SF Signal for this. And if you haven’t dared play the video yet for fear of what you might see, go ahead and click it. It’s harmless, and more funny than anything.)

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Mar132007

New Personality Quiz

I spotted this personality quiz over at Scalzi’s AOL presence, and, me being me, I couldn’t resist checking it out. It appears to be a doorway into some new social-networking site, but it has a unique approach: rather than answering a bunch of text-based questions of dubious applicability, you select your favorites from a series of pictures. The results seemed to be reasonably accurate, at least as close as Internet quizzes, horoscopes, and card readings ever get. The site allows you to make a widget that shows your selections; mine is pasted in below the fold, if you’re curious:

Continue Reading…

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