For the Benefit of All

Some time tomorrow, NASA are holding a press conference to announce... something.

Nobody's quite sure what it's about, but dollars to donuts (or even doughnuts) the announcement will be groundbreaking news about a new scientific discovery which will have repercussions in acadamic fields for decades, but because it's not "Look! Here are pictures of aliens! And they're wearing hats!" it will be ignored by the mainstream media and the public at large.

Trust me. It's happened before.

But until that inevitable moment of crushing despair about the state of the media and of the world at large arrives, let's have some fun speculating on what the announcement might be...

The Debt Crisis on Infinite Earths.

Ladies and gentlemen, Ireland is currently in the midst of a financial crisis that may have no way out. The IMF black helicopters are circling Dublin, while Angela Merkel is having the Irish Central Bank measured for new carpets.

In times like these, it may seem pointless to look for one man who can get us out of these dire straits. Surely, no single person who has the financial and leadership skills to navigate the way to economic stability would be willing to take over, once the current government inevitably leaves office in disgrace.

But fear not! There is one man who would be more than qualified to run the show, and he is one who I am sure would welcome the challenge.

The following are the reasons why Lex Luthor should be the next Taoiseach of Ireland.

Kitchen darwinism, and other things I learnt from prime time advertising.

So, there I was sitting in front of my television minding my own business, when I was suddenly assaulted in the face by an advertisement for some form of household cleaning product.

When it was done, the ad left me with two facts:

1. A single bacteria can become two million overnight
2. Their product could kill 99.9% of bacteria

This, needless to say, raised several questions and concerns in my mind.

Four things that you may not know about the worst film ever made.

1999 was a strange year for cinema. Along with modern classics like Fight Club, The Matrix and American Beauty, Hollywood graced us with The Phantom Menace, Virus, and Inspector Gadget.

But perhaps no other movie drew as much hate that year as Wild Wild West.

I watched it for the first time recently. Partly because I thought I might get a blog out of it, partly out of some morbid curiosity, but mostly... Mostly I watched this crap so you don't have to.

Please, I mean it. Do not watch this film. There are many things you can do in the 101 minutes it would take, all of which are better for you. You can watch The Matrix again, and still have 10 minutes left over to try and figure out why Will Smith turned down the role of Neo.

What really bothers me about "Jumper"

Short article this time, folks. For two reasons:

1. There's not a lot that bothers me about the movie "Jumper". It's simple, good fun, with some nice ideas and special effects.
2. I've scheduled this post for tomorrow, and that's like tomorrow or something.
   

Jumper's not a bad movie at all. It's main problems arise from the fact that it was intended to be part one of a longer series. You can tell by the way Hayden Christiansen never uses his powers to become a hero, how he spends the entire movie - and I mean the entire movie - learning, and the fact that almost no-one at all dies over the entire course of the movie (Except some faceless paladins, and they may as well have shown up in red shirts to begin with, and his Dad)

Dear Messrs Goyer and Snyder,

So it seems there is a new Superman movie in the works, to be written by David Goyer. Goyer is the writer of Batman Begins, The Dark Knight and err, Nick Fury: Agent of Shield (the Hasselhof version)

Also, it was just recently announced that Zack Snyder, director of 300 and Watchmen, will be donning the baseball-cap.

I've been toying with the idea for a Superman movie for the past few years. It's mainly a thought exercise as I read the books ("how would this work on the big screen?" and so on) but I have the bare bones of a plot in my head.

Seeing as how the makers of the new movie haven't called me yet, I've decided to stop keeping my ideas to myself.

The Pyramid of Villainy!

There are only three types of villain in movies and comic books.

Let me clarify that by defining what I mean by "villain". Every movie has protagonists and antagonists. Protagonists are your main characters: The guy you root for and who - in Hollywood at least - wins at the end. Antagonists are the guys who don't win. The ones who try to stop the protagonist achieving his goals. They're usually dead by the time the final credits roll and they have many different motivations, depending on the plot of the movie. But not all protagonists are Heroes and not all antagonists are Villains.

Oceanography.

As an experiment, I recently sat down to watch Ocean's Eleven, and then immediately afterwards watched Ocean's Eleven.

Comparing a movie to its remake is an interesting exercise. It's not like comparing a book or play adaptation, or even an early draft of a screenplay to its finished version. You get to see exactly what the writer based the remake on, and compare the director's choices to his predecessor. This includes overall style, cinematography, casting, hell even the music choices can be compared directly.

I hadn't watched either film in years, and certainly never both in a short period of time (let alone the same evening) and what I found was something unique - something I didn't expect to see at all.

Beep. Beep. Beep. Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee....

So I watched "Flatliners" a few days ago. Those of you born after the cold war have probably never heard of it. Quite successful when it was released in 1990, it promoted its then B-list stars into the heady stratosphere of B+.

Basically the movie is about how Kiefer Sutherland's character - a med student crazier than a jacuzzi full of weasels - ropes four of his fellow students into an illegal and highly dangerous experiment to see what happens when you clinically die and are then brought back to life.

To the power of four.

Sequels! They're great, aren't they?

(By the way, this will be my geekiest/nerdiest post yet. I might have to find a couple of Julia Roberts' movies to rant about next, just to balance out the scales a bit)

But back to sequels, and how great they are. You get to see the characters you know and love face new and exiting villains in new and exciting situations.

What's that you say? Movie sequels are generally crap? A desperate attempt by the studios to wring every last nickel out of its fans without having to generate any original ideas or display any sort of creativity?

Oh, you. You're such a cynic.

Of hobbits and wizards and things that go bump in the plot.

I was trying desperately to come up with something to say about Back to the Future, part 3. I can’t possibly make fun of it or poke holes in it, I love it too much.

So I turned to another trilogy. A small series of indie movie you may not have heard of called "Lord of the Rings".

I watched these a while back. As the hobbits went from where they lived to where they were going, to do the thing they needed to do (admittedly, I may not have been giving it my full attention) I started thinking about what all the Hobbitses have done since.

Consider Back to the Future (part II)

Right, last time I talked about the diverging time-lines of "Back to the Future", and how the movie finished with a sort of loose end, if you analysed it to a stupidly obsessive degree.

With the sequel, there are no such loose ends. It's a perfect harmony of looping causality, dovetailing together with no problems whatsoever.

What I will talk about is the fact that the "future" they visited is 2015. That's only five years from now.

Consider "Back to the Future"

One of my favourite scenes in that film is when Marty arrives back to 1985 at the end of the movie. He races back to the mall just in time to see his earlier self jump in the DeLorean and vanish.

Or so I thought.

I realised some time ago that it's not 1985; it's 1985(i). A parallel world where the "Twin Pines Mall" is the "Lone Pine Mall". Where George(i) McFly is a successful writer, and smugly lords his success over auto-detailer Biff(i) (who, by the way, seems to be suffering some sort of severe emotional damage)