The Glass Teat

Jan182007

We Only Have 14 Hours to Save the Earth

According to a brief article referenced over at SF Signal, the SciFi Channel is planning a new Flash Gordon series. A full 22-episode run (that’s a complete season for a weekly series these days) has already been greenlighted.

Although I’m normally opposed to remakes on principle, I find that I’m okay with this one. That’s probably because I grew up enjoying multiple (and radically different) versions of the Flash Gordon story, including the campy 1980 feature film that most readers of this blog probably know, the 1930s-vintage serials starring Buster Crabbe, and the comic books published by Gold Key in the late ’70s. Like Tarzan and Sherlock Holmes, Flash seems to endure in part because he gets dusted off and updated for a new audience every 20 or 30 years. So long as the basic premise of his adventures on the planet Mongo and struggles against the evil Ming the Merciless remain intact, I’m willing to give the latest version a try.

My biggest concern is that SciFi’s original productions generally look pretty cheap, and the involvement of Robert Halmi Sr. and his son suggests that this one will, too. Which is a shame. Personally, I’d love to see a Flash Gordon series that’s visually faithful to the original comic strips drawn by Alex Raymond, possibly even beginning as a 1930s period piece before the action shifts to Mongo, but I imagine that such a series would cost more than SciFi wants to spend. We’ll see, I guess. As I said, I’m willing to try it.

Incidentally, if you’ve never seen those original Raymond strips, the Checker Book Publishing Group has recently reprinted them in a series of nicely done hardcovers. I suggest you buy them from this guy, who has always provided me with fast delivery and excellent customer service.

And if you don’t get the title of this entry, you obviously don’t remember the best line of the 1980 Flash movie…

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Jan112007

The End of Standards and Practices?

Man, I must be getting old, because I was genuinely shocked — shocked, I say! — during tonight’s episode of ER to hear one of our hunky, idealistic young doctors called somebody an asshole. I remember when Hawkeye Pierce on M*A*S*H called someone a bastard — which is, to my mind, a far less vulgar and offensive term — and it made headlines. I find myself wondering which expletives still remain on the verboten list for broadcast TV, and how long will it be before that list ceases to exist altogether? And is this a good thing?

I used to think it was cool that TV standards were loosening and that characters were starting to speak more like real people. But now I think this new-found realism comes with a price. You see, these words used to have real power when I was younger, and part of their power was that you only heard them in the movies. You only heard grown-ups use them, and often only under very specific circumstances. Today… well, today profanity just doesn’t accomplish much. For example, a certain four-letter word that starts with “f” has become as common in casual conversation as “you know” and “um,” and it’s just as meaningless. And that bothers me. Not because I’m a prude, but because the word has been drained of its effectiveness. It used to be the ne plus ultra of cussing, the atom bomb of expletives, the one you reserved for extra-special occasions when nothing else was strong enough to make your point. What are we supposed to say now when we’ve just dropped a sledge hammer on our foot?

I’m telling you, the world has gone to hell. And those kids today… I swear.

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Dec212006

The Funniest Photo I’ve Seen in Weeks

I just ran across this while I was surfing:

The true cost of remakes.

So typical. You do good work, attain some measure of fleeting fame, then slide into semi-obscurity when the money runs out. Twenty-five years later, you think you’re about to get your big chance at a comeback only to have your legs cut out from under you by a younger, flashier model. No doubt this photo was taken somewhere on Sunset Blvd., just to make the humiliation complete.

You know, something just occurred to me: I remember many people saying 25 years ago that the Cylon Centurions of Battlestar Galactica were obviously a rip-off of the armored Imperial stormtroopers from Star Wars. I never really saw the similarity back in the day… but it seems to me that the modern “reimagined” Centurions bear more than a passing resemblance to the Super Battle Droids seen in Episodes II and III. Hmmm…

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Dec152006

Geek Wars: The Twelve Colonies vs. The Empire Edition

You know, when I was a kid and my friends and I would debate over which side would win in a cross-universe match-up of apocalyptic proportions — the most common of which was, of course, the Starship Enterprise against an Imperial Star Destroyer — we had to imagine what it would look like. Maybe we were lucky enough to know a kid with some drawing skills who would doodle something in the margins of his Mead spiral-bound that he felt worthy of sharing with us, but mostly it all happened in our heads.

Not these days. Now the wonders of CGI and YouTube enable us to actually see all the action. Curiously, I don’t find it nearly as satisfying as seeing it all in my mind’s eye, but then I’m old fashioned that way. Your mileage may vary, of course. And on that note, here’s the latest example of the genre, in which a fleet of Colonial battlestars goes up against a fleet of Imperial Star Destroyers:

Continue Reading…

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Dec112006

The Origins of Frasier, and WKRP is Coming!

There aren’t many television spin-offs that even manage to stay on the air, let alone surpass their source material in quality. Frasier is the exception that proves the rule. I enjoyed Cheers, but I loved Frasier. You may recall that I gushed at length about this series when the show wrapped production; briefly, however, I thought it was a near-perfect mixture of sophisticated wit, lowbrow farce, and genuine human emotion (as opposed to the ersatz variety displayed by the sarcasm-bots on most sitcoms), specifically the complex emotions that exist between grown men and their fathers. In the end, it was a very different series from its parent show, and that was a big part of what made it great.

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Dec082006

Thundaar

I know what you’re thinking: “My god, another entry? What is this, five or six today? Doesn’t this guy have anything better to do?” Well, actually, I probably do, but I don’t feel like doing it. It’s a pretty dull afternoon here in the Comma Mines. Much more fun to post silly blog entries about silly things… like, say, one of my favorite Saturday morning cartoons when I was a kid, a bizarre and violent mash-up of Star Wars, post-apocalyptic scenarios, and Alex Raymond-style background art called Thundaar the Barbarian. Author Chris Roberson (who credits this show as the [subconscious] inspiration for his excellent novel Paragaea: A Planetary Romance) reminded me of Thundaar this afternoon by posting a video clip of the opening credits. Here it is:

A shattered moon hanging in the sky over the ruins of our world? A hot babe with magical powers? A giant cat-man sidekick? A hero who wields a lightsaber rip-off? Tell me how a ten- or twelve-year-old boy could not be enthralled with this stuff. I understand the show is on DVD now. I might have to throw it into my ever-lengthening Netflix queue…

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Dec082006

Mary Really is Scary, and The Fonz is a God!

So, if that trailer the other day wasn’t enough to convince you that there’s something deeply disturbing about Mary Poppins, perhaps this will do the trick: it’s a lengthy essay that details all the ways in which the 1964 “children’s” film fulfills all three dynamics that typically characterize horror films. (The average horror film is usually predicated on only one of these dynamics, so Mary must be extra horrific!) Consider:

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Dec082006

The Return of an Old Favorite

Although most of my all-time favorite movies are natural choices for someone of my generation — i.e., they were made during my childhood and adolescence in the ’70s and ’80 — I also have a great deal of affection for movies that pre-date me, often by decades. I guess I’m kind of unusual in that regard; I’ve met a lot of people who have no tolerance for old movies, “old” being a highly subjective definition, of course. (I know of one guy who flatly refuses to watch anything that was made more than five years ago, even if it’s something he saw and enjoyed a mere ten years ago. Yeah, I don’t get it either.) Personally, though, I’ve never seen much difference between “old” and “new” movies, aside from the obvious stylistic and technological details. Movies are movies, in my book, and they’re either effective and enjoyable or they’re not.

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Nov012006

Carrie Fisher’s Likeness

Carrie Fisher was on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson last night. For my money, Ferguson is the best late-night talk-show host we’ve got — Letterman and Leno are both way past their sell-bys, and I have never really warmed to Kimmel or Conan. Craig, though, is a hoot with his self-deprecating streak and naughty attitude, and Carrie is much the same; put the two of them together, and it’s guaranteed entertainment. Most of last night’s segment consisted of Craig giving her a bad time for having played Princess Leia in Star Wars and how, 30 years later, that’s still what she’s best known for. Carrie gave as good as she got, though; her funniest line, and the one I want to share with you now, was this:

George [Lucas] owns my likeness, you know. That means everytime I look in the mirror I have to send him a couple of bucks.

Ah, good times, although I imagine Carrie’s delivery is better than mine. If I can find a video clip, I’ll post it up…

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