Tropic Thunder is taking heavy fire, not for Robert Downey Jr.’s blackface performance, but rather for Ben Stiller’s spoof movie-within-a-movie, Simple Jack. Is this a case of political correctness gone too far? Or does Hollywood have serious flaws in how it portrays people with disabilities? The latter may have been Stiller’s point all along…
Our friend Kevin Kelly shares the tale of his journey to the fabled Skywalker Ranch to see Clone Wars and meet the elusive George Lucas. The film, essentially a two hour trailer for the upcoming animated series, gets into some pretty wonky territory when it asks the question we’ve all wondered: What would Truman Capote be like as a Hutt?
In the Terminator series an advanced computer system called Skynet makes a spontaneous leap from AI to full-fledged intelligence, which endows the network with a will and opinions of its own. This concept was considered science fiction until today, when google revealed its horrendous prejudice:
If we expect google to be an ethical entity it must be held accountable for its moral shortcomings. However, google has already proven it doesn’t only mean us harm.
Do a google image search of “belongs in prison.” The first person to appear is Chris Elliott. I thought this was a mistake–how could the man behind Cabin Boy belong in prison? So I asked google web search to clarify, “does Chris Elliott really belong in prison?” The first complete sentence on the page made its answer crystal clear: “Of course he does.”
I don’t know how google knows this, but let’s get a warrant first and ask questions later. We don’t know how many lives it could save.
Chuck Tryon points to this story, in which he’s quoted, about an upcoming Luke Wilson film called Tenure, set in the wild world of academia. Tryon, a tenure track professor himself, notes the challenges the filmmakers will have in making his lifestyle cinematic: “[S]ince my ongoing pursuit of tenure typically involves me sitting in front of my laptop until 1 a.m., I don’t know how interesting that would be to watch.”
At io9, Charlie Jane Anders assesses the problem with sci-fi prequels: “I love small, intimate portrayals of people’s lives. But that’s not what I look for from movies with “Star” in the title. (Well, maybe A Star Is Born.)”
Buffy The Vampire Slayer creator Joss Whedon recently gave a lengthy interview to the GeeksOn podcast, and half the blogs in my Google Reader are talking about it (yes, the mostly the nerdy ones). You’d assume that the geeks would be most excited about what Whedon had to say about future movie projects, or maybe the his new TV series, which stars Buffy/Angel vet Eliza Dushku. Wrong. All anyone is talking about is a throwaway diss from Whedon on the subject of John Hughes’ Weird Science:
I hate Weird Science not a little. I find it offensive. The boy fantasy of building a girl. Obviously, we were doing the nasty version of it, because I find it grotesque.
When Whedon says “we”, he’s talking about a storyline on a late season of Buffy, in which ancillary character Warren built a robot version of Buffy for the sexual gratification of Spike. Warren eventually got flayed by Buffy’s lesbian witch friend Willow, and the Buffybot was destroyed by demons, so I guess everyone got their comeupance for engaging in the “grotesquerie” of the robot girlfriend game. Except for Spike, who moved to LA and partnered with Buffy’s other vampire ex-boyfriend to fight evil lawyers. But whatever. Back to Weird Science…
Annalee Newitz looks at the five most prevalent themes in Clinton-era sci-fi. I would have thrown in a shout-out to strippers, who appear prominently in both Armageddon and Independence Day. But then, I’m usually on the lookout for chances to throw shout-outs to strippers.
LIBERTAS accuses “millionaire filmmaker” Morgan Spurlock of –– SPOILER ALERT!! –– being too chicken shit to actually hunt down Osama Bin Laden and put a stake through his heart.
Bob Rehak contemplates the impact the HD format wars will have/are already having on the porn industry. “How will viewers respond to the pathos and suffering at the industry’s core — of capitalism’s antihumanism writ large across the bodies offered up for consumers’ pleasure-at-a-distance — when those excesses are rendered in resolutions of 1920×1080?”
NBC has decided that Access Hollywood will be the “news” division to cover the Golden Globes. Defamer mocks the ensuing outrage: “If the network had any interests but its own at heart, it would have made some attempt at incorporating the solemn ritual that usually begins each Globes ceremony–the consumption of Orson Welles’ transubstantiated body and blood in the form of filet mignon and stiff vodka-tonics–as a show of good faith.”
Spout’s CEO, Rick DeVos, and Paul chat about David Denby’s article, “Big Pictures,” on the state of the movie industry for 2007 (or at least January). Also discussed, Alfonso Cuaron’s Children of Men, is it more omen than sci-fi? And words inspired by Guillermo Del Toro’s new film, Pan’s Labyrinth.
Funny how 
Annalee Newitz
Snarkerati’s got the 
