Category: Pop Culture


“Cat’s Cradle” or how long does science fiction take?

Filed under: Blasts from the Past, Comics & Books, Pop Culture, Sci Fi — Leave a comment
February 20, 2012

By Jason McClain (@JTorreyMcClain)

I just finished rereading Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut as I go through my idea to reread his novels in the order that he wrote them.  (Why?  Possibly because I didn’t realize Player Piano was his first novel and I wanted to put it in context with what followed it. Maybe a love of order?  Maybe I just wanted an excuse to read Vonnegut.)

As I was reading, a passage from pp. 86-87 of the Dell Paperback, copyright 1963, struck me a little differently, especially due to the news out of Washington, New Jersey and Maryland.  I’ll give you most of the whole thing:

‘He’ll never marry her.’
‘Why not?’
‘I’ve said all I’m going to say,’ she said.
‘I’m gratified to meet an indexer who respects the privacy of others.’
‘Never index your own book,’ she stated.
…(paragraph break)…
Sometime later, Ambassador Minton and I met in the aisle of the airplane, away from his wife, and he showed that it was important to him that I respect what his wife could find out from indexes.
‘You know why Castle will never marry the girl, even though he loves her, even though she loves him, even though they grew up together?’ he whispered.
‘No, sir, I don’t.’
‘Because he’s a homosexual,’ whispered Minton. ‘She can tell that from an index, too.’

I point this out, not because I think Vonnegut is making a moral judgment or an opinion on homosexuality, but rather its place in 1960s America.  In a plane with only a few people on board, homosexuality is something to be whispered about and is not appropriate for regular conversation.  It’s almost fifty years later and now gay marriage is legal in some countries and states, but still not even viewed as decent in others.  In fifty years, that seems a pretty big difference in acceptability, from what I captured in less than a page in a book and then moving to Stonewall, Harvey Milk, Rock Hudson and many other moments as the conversation on gay rights has evolved.

Despite being assassinated in office more than 30 years ago and posthumously awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Obama, there's still no U.S. postage stamp to commemorate the "Mayor of Castro Street"

Fifty years can be examined in two ways. In the view of all of time, it is but a blip.  In the view of a single lifetime, it can be everything. (R.I.P., Whitney Houston, 1963-2012.)

For people fighting against injustice, they can fight their whole lives and never see change.  The Fifteenth Amendment, giving people the right to vote no matter, “race, color, or previous condition of servitude,” was ratified in 1870.  The Nineteenth Amendment reads, “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.”  It was ratified in 1920.

Along the way, both before and after these dates are times where rights for both groups improve and recede and there are many landmarks.  Just looking at one though, 138 years after African Americans had the right to vote, an African American became president.  92 years after women got the right to vote, there has yet to be a female vice-president or president.

Barack Obama, inaugurated as president in 2009, and made the cover of The Amazing-Spider-man

Unless you are very lucky, both of those time spans cover more than one complete life.  Fortunately there is happiness and joy from smaller milestones and hopefully those can make the setbacks of a lifetime more palatable.  To me and I’m sure many others, the U.S. Presidency is one of the ultimate proofs that you can do anything in this world, and until the time you see it done, open doors everywhere still might seem like a pie in the sky idea.  However, even the U.S. presidency doesn’t guarantee that racism or sexism will stop.

Those are the big issues and the important ones as far as equality and kindness to our fellow humans go.  However, generally when we talk about science fiction books, we talk about technology.  We talk about different ways of looking at things (ice-nine!) and future possibilities.  Does every aspect of our life really move that slowly?

In the 1890s, Thomas Edison and Louis Lumiere created the ability to make a motion picture.  Thirty years later came the first “talkie.”  Thirty years later and color pictures are ubiquitous.  Twenty years after that and most homes have a VCR and the ability to watch movies at any time of day in the comfort of their own home.  Ninety years from beginning to end of this timeline, and you see how the world has changed for viewing images, people and places from all over the world as you sit in your comfy chair, though the endpoint could be argued as arbitrary.

Another one I find interesting relates to baseball and F.C. Lane.  Almost 100 years ago, he argued that the press didn’t measure the contributions of baseball players correctly.  Today, after Moneyball and many, many blog posts by intelligent, interesting and rabid fans of the game, we have started to actually measure the contributions of baseball players in that way.

In his 99.5 years, F.C. Lane not only became the first sabermetrician, but wrote about a variety of subjects

In the even broader picture, for music we went from wandering minstrels to prominent people owning musical instruments in their homes. We went from having to know how to play an instrument to have music in our homes to pressed vinyl.  We went from pressed vinyl to reel to reel to 8-tracks to cassettes.  We went from a Walkman to a Discman to an iPod and its increasingly small forms.  Where we used to depend on a single person to crack their knuckles and tickle the ivories around 220 years ago (Mozart died in 1791 and if I remember my Amadeus correctly as my source for history, that’s exactly how life in those times was) we can now hold thousands of songs by thousands of artists in our front pockets.

You haven't heard Mozart until you've heard him in the original 8-track format.

As a friend likes to say, “Change equals death.”  (I don’t think he got it from Woody Allen, but who knows.)  Even on the small things and the things we know we want, it takes us a bit to adapt, to figure out how things work, to make things better.  As The Artist shows, not even the idea to make movies with dialogue was met with universal approval.  But, when change does happen, eventually we all adopt it and it comes to pass as “normal.”

When we look at science fiction, we look at the future, we look at what’s possible and at the same time, we look back to when the book was written to see from where we came.  Those dreams give us a chance to imagine a better world through love and technology in a time that so far to date, is always tomorrow.  (As it says in The Fourteenth Book of Bokonon, entitled “What Can a Thoughtful Man Hope for Mankind on Earth, Given the Experience of the Past Million Years?”  “Nothing.”)  Those glimpses back sometimes let us know how far we’ve really come and sometimes, it is a little bit more than nowhere.

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Video games: Skyrim – On playing games and the games of my youth

Filed under: Fantasy, Pop Culture — Leave a comment
February 14, 2012

By Jason McClain (@JTorreyMcClain)

After about exactly two months to the hour from when I purchased the video game Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim I finally finished the game.  How close to two months?  I bought the game on December 9th, a Friday evening around 9 pm.  I finished the reunification of Skyrim set of quests at around 12:30 am on February 10th.  Finishing that set of quests got me to 48 of the 50 possible achievements for the game on Xbox.  I don’t think I’ve ever written a more obsessive-compulsive geeky sentence than that one, or for that matter a more obsessive-compulsive lede.

I finished the 49th achievement by 1:30 am that same night (escaping from jail.) I completed the last achievement (get a 1000 bounty in each hold) at about 5:30 on Friday night.  Then, after I went to each hold again to clear my name, I went to my home in Whiterun, took off all my weapons and armors and sat down to rest.  I had become Arch-Mage of the College at Winterhold, I had become the listener for the Dark Brotherhood, and I had become a member of the Nightingales as well as the guild master of the Thieves Guild.  I had become the Harbinger of the Companions.  I had slain Alduin and I had reunited the factions of Skyrim.  I think my character deserved a little sit down time, a little time to sit and reflect before beginning more adventures.

I could easily see picking up the game again and playing more even though I’ve finished it. Starting it up, grabbing a selection of weapons, armors and magical trinkets from my storage locations in Whiterun would take about five minutes.  There are still areas that I haven’t explored.  I still haven’t mastered the schools of magic or the use of a shield. (I tend to be a bow and two-handed sword guy, both of which preclude the use of a shield.)  Then again, I could pick it up and start from the beginning and instead of doing everything, maybe just do quests that relate to being a mage.  It would be tougher to do, especially with my poor hand-eye coordination skills in the middle of a melee, but I could eventually get to the same place in the game, I’m sure.

That’s the beautiful thing about this game and it reinforces the idea that I had when I first started playing the game: it’s like automated Dungeons and Dragons (or D&D for those in the know and that don’t mind abbreviations and so that I can save quite a few characters going forward.)  I loved D&D because you could take the same character, find their strengths and flaws and update your style of play to that every time you went on an adventure.  You could play that same character again and again and just like a model airplane, a drawing or a long piece of writing, you saw it improve with each new addition and you took pride in getting it to that point.  On the other hand, each time you played, you could create someone new and start that process again because I found enjoyment just creating a new character.  Playing the game no matter the character or adventure was fun.

The tough part of D&D (and to some degree another old favorite, Strat-o-matic baseball, hereafter known as Strat to save characters) was that there was such minutiae to track that sometimes you chucked things out the window or didn’t bother to track them because it would make the game take too long.  For example, there is encumbrance.  You shouldn’t be able to carry everything you can buy or find as you walk through the world.  Maybe a sword, a bow, your armor, some gold and some various bits of miscellany and that’s it.  However, writing down the weights of each, adding it up and then tracking it as you add and subtract things is not the fun way to play a game.  Skyrim does all that for you.  You want to carry five chunks of dragon bone? You can, but then when you find an ebony sword, if you decide to carry it, you can’t run.  You slowly plod along.  I tried it a couple of times.  It’s not a fun way to play.

For Strat, I liked to keep the stats of my players.  I liked to track all of the stats you’d see on the back of a baseball card.  But, if you asked me would I rather look at the past game and write up all of the statistics or play another game, I’ll take playing the next game every time.  Catching up on stats can wait until that time when all of your friends have to go home for the night.  My friend Jon introduced me to Diamond Mind Baseball, I found automated stats and all I had to do was play the game.

However, not all is rosy in the world of the Elder Scrolls.  The first negative with Skyrim, and you can probably guess what it is from the previous three paragraphs, is the lack of a social aspect.  It’s a single player game and there is no multi-player option. (Boy, would a multi-player option be great.)  What made D&D and Strat so great was the chance to get together with friends and play a game.  I’m not saying that there isn’t a social aspect to Skyrim; it’s just not in playing the game. If I know someone has played or is playing, I want to hear about their character.  What race did they choose, what paths did they try, where they are in the story, did they get married, did they buy houses, what are their strongest traits, what shouts do they know or whatever comes to mind in what I just did in the game.  Most everyone likes to talk about their characters and how they choose to interact with the world.  The great thing about these conversations though is the thought to return to our youth.  Playing Skyrim has led me to a few different conversations to play some D&D or other role-playing games.  That has me more than a bit excited.  I love games.

The second negative with Skyrim is my problem with pop culture addiction.  Playing Skyrim ebbs and flows, there are times when it becomes a little less interesting as it feels like you are just running errands, but at other times, you can’t wait to see where the story goes next, where your abilities and skill with the game match up perfectly with the difficulties of fighting and every battle is a perfectly tuned challenge.  Those are the times that I can’t stop playing and just like staying up until 3 am to catch up on Mad Men, watching the sixth episode of the day of The Wire or Doctor Who or reading books until 5 am because after every chapter I want to know what happens next, Skyrim fits into that danger zone of compulsion where I don’t leave the house and push off sleep until the early hours of the morning.  I stayed up until 3 am for four straight days and woke up at 8 am every morning as battles with Draugr and dragons filled my dreams and I had to battle the temptation to immediately turn my Xbox on again.  (I failed more than a couple of those internal battles.)  I became a walking zombie with Skyrim replacing the quest for brains.

As you can see, those negatives don’t reflect that poorly on the game, just my ability to manage it and my expectations for it.  I did love playing it, but its greatest magic comes from opening the past portals to my life, the joy from getting together with friends to play a game.  I’m sure I’ll still play Settlers of Catan or Apples to Apples with friends, but the chance to play a little D&D now that it has stirred in the minds of friends and myself makes me smile a little inside.  First level never sounded so wonderful.

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Sci-fi and fantasy’s Best in Show

Filed under: Blasts from the Past, Comics & Books, Fantasy, Movies, Pop Culture, Sci Fi, Superheroes, TV — Leave a comment
February 13, 2012

Tonight dog lovers across the galaxy tune in to their screens for the annual Super Bowl of dogdom, the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show.  Here at borg.com, this is serious TV viewing, and this year our thoughts naturally turned to… dogs in space.  Like Laika, the first dog in space who beat mankind into the outer realms, these dogs have gone… where no man has gone before.  So we bring you our very own contenders for Best in Show–our picks for best dogs from genre fiction in TV, movies, and comics (in no particular order).

1.  Toto – Who better to start our list than the little terrier feisty enough to take a bite out of Miss Gulch and accompany Dorothy on her journey down the yellow brick road in The Wizard of Oz?

2.  Einstein – Doc Brown’s faithful sheepdog companion, like Laika, was the first to make a historic voyage there and back again in a Delorean in Back to the Future.

3.  Fluffy – Two heads are better than one, so three must be exponentially better.  How can you not like this lovable cerberus from Harry Potter & the Sorceror’s Stone?  Just don’t let thieves know their secret, that music will lull them fast to sleep.

4.  Fang – Speaking of Harry Potter, we can’t pass up the loyal and large pal to Hagrid, Fang the boarhound (played by a Neapolitan Mastiff).  Although Hagrid calls him a bloody coward, in The Sorceror’s Stone he took Harry and company through the Forbidden Forest.

5.  Krypto – Strange how themes repeat themselves.  Originally, Krypto, like Laika and Einstein, was Jor-El’s first foray into creating a vehicle to get Kal-El (our Superman) off of the planet Krypton and on his path to Earth.  Although a mishap sends Krypto off-course, fortunately he makes his way back to his best friend.

6.  Porthos – We would later learn Porthos would have a pack of offspring of his own per Scotty in Star Trek 2009.  This fellow accompanied Captain Jonathan Archer on many a mission where no man had gone before in the earliest Star Trek stories on the series Enterprise.

7.  Astro – Maybe the first family dog we were introduced to in the future of our past, Astro loved Elroy, Judy, Jane and George Jetson and showed there are no bad dogs today and hundreds of years from now.

8.  Commander Kruge’s targ - We never learned her name, but this fiercely loyal friend helped make all of us cheer for Kruge when he went up against Admiral James T. Kirk in Star Trek: The Search for Spock.  Unfortunately, she represents the one four-legged companion on our list that doesn’t make it, thanks to that dastardly Kirk and friends.

9.  Fizzgig – Seemingly cute and innocent, Fizzgig is the Muppet companion to Kira in The Dark Crystal.  Like Kruge’s targ, although not technically Canis familiaris, he had all the qualities of a good buddy and did not hesitate to bear his fangs to protect Kira when he sensed danger.

10. Butler – James Kirk redeems himself in his last mission when he is sucked into the Nexus in Star Trek Generations.  His reaction to seeing his dog Butler at his old home shows there was a real guy in that Captain Kirk.

Honorable mention:  All greyhounds, since they look like AT-ATs from The Empire Strikes Back.

Do you have any others you think should make the list?  Let us know, and enjoy the Dog Show tonight! The 135th Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show airs tonight and Tuesday on USA and MSNBC. Only dogs from Earth are eligible.

C.J. Bunce

Editor

borg.com

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Parks combines two legends in The Lone Ranger: The Death of Zorro

Filed under: Blasts from the Past, Comics & Books, Pop Culture, TV — Leave a comment
February 12, 2012

Review by C.J. Bunce

My exposure to the Lone Ranger was via Saturday movie serials featuring Clayton Moore’s portrayal of the masked lawman and his partner Tonto, played by Jay Silverheels.  I watched these with my dad, and he had watched them in the theaters as a kid.  My exposure to Zorro was via Guy Williams’ portrayal in a similar series I watched with my dad.  Williams, of course, later played Will Robinson on Lost in Space.  Moore and Williams looked alike to me, and I’ll admit if you told me George Reeves (who portrayed Superman in the 1950s alongside these other shows) had starred as Zorro or the Lone Ranger I would not have been surprised.  I mention all three together here because they all could be the same forthright hero played by the same lead actor.  So from my view it is a no-brainer that you would hook up the two Old West characters from this period of classic TV.  I also was familiar with the Antonio Banderas films The Mask of Zorro and The Legend of Zorro.

   

The Lone Ranger: The Death Of Zorro Issues #1-5, published last year, was released this week in a trade paperback edition and it’s definitely one you’ll want to check out if you like Westerns, especially the old Lone Ranger and Zorro serials, or if you’re just looking for something different.

This is not a team-up in any shape or form.  It is more like The Godfather, Part 2 in its structure with Don Diego/Zorro as Don Corleone and the John Reid/The Lone Ranger in the Michael Corleone role, of sorts.

A fully realized historical fiction novel is lurking somewhere between the pages of this book, held back only by the required page count for the comic book format.  Expect something much more complex than, say, the current All-Star Western series by DC Comics (which is brilliant in a different way).  Unlike the Jonah Hex story, this is a shoot ‘em up only secondarily.  Like Jai Nitz’s work on Dynamite’s Kato Origins series, Ande Parks delves deeper into the characters we only know on the surface.  In fact I have been getting the vibe reading Dynamite Comics titles in the past year that this rich writing of background and relationships is becoming a hallmark of the publisher’s writer choices.  Along with that, this trade paperback features another stellar retro homage to Zorro and The Lone Ranger by cover artist Alex Ross.

Note that this is not a Zorro book as much as Lone Ranger book, as the Spanish masked hero dies early on, which should be no surprise based on the title.  But his spirit and legacy fuels the actions of the Lone Ranger and the rest of the story.  The audacity of killing off one of the heroes so early was surprising, but in a good way just as Steven Seagal had shared billing in the trailers with Kurt Russell in Executive Decision, yet was eliminated within minutes of the opening credits.  You could see Parks and artist Esteve Polls branching off on some past Zorro stories.  Polls’s artisitic style for this book is very classic Western.

Look for themes of honor, loyalty, racism, brutality, corruption, Civil War aftermath, Spanish influences in America, the legacy of Native Americans–there is a lot that is woven into this story.  Parks even works in a subplot involving bushwhackers much like the James brothers into the story.  Plenty of strong-willed characters can be found here, and villains who are not just the guys in the black hats, but characters with their own rules and motivations, however clouded or deluded with the hindsight of the modern reader.

You need only have a passing interest in the Old West to get looped into this story.  Those who wouldn’t think to give the genre a try are missing out, and I would place this story alongside DC Comics’ El Diablo: The Haunted Horseman as a good entry point for new readers (Parks served as inker on El Diablo, BTW) as Dynamite currently has several title featuring The Lone Ranger available.

Ande Parks will be known here to fans of Green Arrow as inker for several years on the DC Comics title along with artist Phil Hester.  he also has written several works, including Capote In Kansas, Union Station, and The Green Hornet: Blood Ties.

The Lone Ranger: The Death Of Zorro is now available in bookstores and online.

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Star Wars back in theaters today, this time in 3D

Filed under: Blasts from the Past, Fantasy, Pop Culture, Sci Fi — Leave a comment
February 10, 2012

It sounds better than it is.  Star Wars is back in theaters.  “See it again for the first time.”  Before 1999 this would have been incredible huge news, and of course in 1999 it was huge news.  Back then we hadn’t seen any new Star Wars movie hit the big screen since 1985, when the last reels of Return of the Jedi played in dollar theaters across the country.  And we all lined up around the block at theaters to see this new Star Wars, this time a big “prequel,” and what would be the film to define that word forever after.

The first time the words Star Wars appeared at the top of the familiar scroll and John Williams trumpets blared from nowhere, no audience was silent.  Star Wars Episode I:  The Phantom Menace was finally here!  And then the movie began.  And there was talk of tariffs…and…what’s that?  Tariffs?  Trade routes?  And the wincing started.  And it didn’t really end until Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith showed Darth Vader walking like Frankenstein.  I’ve always said the reason why franchises succeed is because of checks and balances and the involvement in every enterprise of several creative minds.  When one guy makes all the decisions, and presumably everyone around him is afraid to question his vision, the result is Episode 1.

That said, 1999 was a long time ago.  By now you have probably watched Episode 1 on cable more times than you would admit, simply because nothing else good was on, and, isn’t a little Star Wars universe better than no Star Wars universe?  And maybe you know some kids who weren’t going to movies in 1999.  If so, then, whether or not you love or less-than-love Episode 1, you’d be nuts not to grab that kid and go see it again.

Wait a second, what’s that you said about wincing?

I know.  You can come up with so many reasons to avoid this movie:  (1) Everyone blames Jar Jar for everything, global warming, the economy…  Personally, if George Lucas was aiming at kids just a bit with this character, then fine.  He’s only annoying when you consider being an adult viewer.  If Jar Jar was the only oddity in Episode 1, everyone would have little bad to say about the film.

Jar Jar, Qui-Gon, and Obi-Wan

(2) But you have to add to Jar Jar things like the stupefying midichlorians, an unwanted scientific explanation for the existence of Jedi that instantly shifted all this great space fantasy to questionable science fiction.  It was an unnecessary concept that made the possibility that anyone could become a Jedi, even young hopeful Earthlings, vanish.  You gotta have the noble blood.  Lame.  (3) And I already mentioned the pure excitement of discussing trade routes.  As a concept later in the prequel trilogy this might have worked, but as the first thing we saw, it started us out wrong.  (4) Then you have Queen Amidala.  What could have been used to explain the strength, leadership, and determination of Princess Leia became one of the most pathetic attempts at strong women leaders put on screen.  In Episode 1, she is foreshadowed to be paired with this much younger and smaller boy.  It all seemed so wrong.  In all three prequels she never gets to do anything, with all her greatness happening apparently off-screen.  (5) And to top off the bad, the one character we cared about, that we wanted to see, was never Anakin.  It was Obi-Wan Kenobi.  The guy who first whispered about the clone wars to us.  His past was key to everything.  And in Episode 1 instead of someone awe-inspiring we got a young, pompous, arrogant jerk with a goofy haircut.  We didn’t want to idolize Jedi Knights as protectors who were better than the rest of us.  We wanted Jedi who would stand shoulder to shoulder with the little guy.  Samurai, not WWII military police.  (6)  Phantom Menace as a title, announced well before the release, was indicative of the weird we’d get.  Luckily all the other titles were far better.  (7) Haven’t we already given enough of our earnings to the House of Lucas?  (8) One final thing (because we could go on forever):  CGI Yoda can’t touch Muppet Yoda from The Empire Strikes Back.  ’nuff said.

Amidala in Padme disguise

So there is a lot to wince at.  But then again maybe we should all just lighten up and go with it.  Criticizing Episode 1 is too easy.  Don’t be Simon Pegg in the TV series Spaced.  Unlearn what you have learned.  Why should I go to see it, you ask?

First, Darth Maul.  More specifically, Ray Park’s performance as Darth Maul.  If they didn’t get anything else right with Episode 1, they finally gave us a lightsaber battle worthy of the Jedi and an acrobatic athlete up to the task of taking on knights in space.  And Maul’s red center-handled lightsaber could not have been a better designed weapon.  Although we questioned the red face and horns, at the time we didn’t know that he was but the first in a line of several prospective alien lieutenants of varying races that were being tested to be the Emperor’s one right-hand man.

Qui-Gon, Kenobi and Zod (oh my!)

Although he was only half as cool as he should have been, with his stilted dialogue and inexplicable removal of a little boy from his mother (leaving her to be a slave!), Liam Neeson’s Qui-Gonn Jinn had a very cool look, and for what Lucas was attempting to do, he gave us a leader we all would happily follow.  And where he was lacking, we got to meet an even cooler Jedi, Mace Windu, played by Samuel L. Jackson.  His calm coolness worked, even if he didn’t get to do much yet.

Mace Windu hanging out

And one contributor to the Star Wars universe who never failed was John Williams.  His new score for Episode 1 was on par with Return of the Jedi.  Sure it was darker and less magical, but it reflected the story Williams was handed.  The seemingly never-ending pod race would have been far more painful without his new theme.  The “duel of the fates” of the climax would have been far less foreboding without his incredible soundtrack.

Composer John Williams

Next, the costumes were just awesome.  Check out all of Natalie Portman’s 3,761 dresses.  And the set design and sound can’t be beat.

Finally, the nostalgia and pure fun may be all the reason you need to see this one.  Anthony Daniels as C-3Po.  Kenny Baker as R2-D2.  Tusken Raiders on Tatooine almost changing the future of the galaxy with a single rifle shot at a little boy in a pod race.  Cameos by Warwick Davis and former Star Wars, Star Trek and Lord of the Rings fan club president Dan Madsen!  Emperor Zod as a good guy!

Kenny Baker, R2-D2 and Dan Madsen

And who doesn’t like 3D?  Just pop some Excedrin before you go.  It might help prevent the headache behind your eyes.

Besides, putting aside the way cool and creepy Daniel Radcliffe movie The Woman in Red, or the 3D version of Disney’s best animated work, Beauty and the Beast, what else are you going to see in theaters this weekend that is any better than the Star Wars universe in 3D?  Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close?  The Vow?  The Grey?  There are three great reasons right there to buy tickets for Episode 1 in 3D before they’re sold out.  And it might whet your appetite while you wait for a better film to return, Attack of the Clones, and then later the real fun begins–the original Star Wars in 3D and then The Empire Strikes Back in 3D.

C.J. Bunce

Editor

borg.com

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Point-Counterpoint: Alan Moore, icon or iconoclast?

Filed under: Blasts from the Past, Comics & Books, Movies, Pop Culture, Superheroes — Leave a comment
February 8, 2012

By C.J. Bunce and Jason McClain

As we discussed yesterday, DC Comics has announced a new limited series to be released this year, Before Watchmen, focusing on the backstory, prequels, of each of the main characters of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ classic comic book series, Watchmen.  Moore has been pretty vocal any time someone takes one of his works and converts it into another medium.  This happened with Watchmen when it was made into a movie, with From Hell when it was made into a movie, with The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen when it was made into a movie, with V for Vendetta when it was made into a movie (there’s a pattern here).  Moore’s a proprietary guy, yet the way publishing rights work, he has no legal control over the characters from books he created years ago.  To many, Moore is a comic book god.  An icon.  To others, he himself tears away at characters writers before him created, the definition of iconoclast.

This week he was quoted in the New York Times as saying of Before Watchmen, “I don’t want money.  What I want is for this not to happen” calling the effort “completely shameless” and adding “I tend to take this latest development as a kind of eager confirmation that they are still apparently dependent on ideas that I had 25 years ago.”

borg.com Hollywood writer Jason McClain and I have a lot in common, and a number of books and movies where we find ourselves on the opposite sides when it comes to analyzing works, especially ones receiving abundant critical acclaim.  Jason introduced me to the graphic novel Watchmen several years ago.  I read it and was not blown away by it.  I didn’t care about the characters, in part knowing the cast was all based on Charlton Comics characters that DC Comics decided in the end they did not want updated by Moore in his series.  In particular I didn’t care for either Dr. Manhattan, Moore’s take on Captain Atom, or Adrian Veidt, Moore’s take on Peter Cannon, Thunderbolt.  That said, I liked Rorschach–he was Moore’s take on the Question, a character I’ve always been a fan of.  I also liked Nite Owl, who although based on Blue Beetle seemed to me like a Batman knockoff–a good thing as some of my favorite characters fall in this category.  And I liked Silk Spectre, who was based on Nightshade but heavily influenced by Black Canary.  I liked these characters enough that I revisited the novel in advance of the movie premiering in March 2009 after Jason and I gazed at the cool Nite Owl ship at Comic-Con in 2008.  I really liked Watchmen, the movie. Jason didn’t.

So we decided to investigate each other’s views further.

CB:  Jason, why do you, and countless others, think Watchmen, the original comic book series, is such a major work?

JM:  I read your email during a basketball game at a sports bar.  It got me thinking so much that I realized I wasn’t watching the game anymore but thinking of a response.  Two things come to my mind.  The first is the design.  My friend Kevin Eib pointed out to me that the layout of the appropriately named chapter five, “Fearful Symmetry” as Rorschach investigates the death of The Comedian before he gets captured, has symmetry in the colors and the panel sizes.  If you start at the middle as Ozymandias hits his attempted assassin with a stanchion, you see the parallel in that panel, Ozymandias filling the left side and upright and in the right side, the villain, blood flowing out of his face as he falls to the floor head first and the “V” of “Veidt” centered in the background.  You saw a reason for the art and the design besides a “bam” and “pow” delivery system.

Second are the characters.  Before I read this, comics were pretty much the same, villain appears, hero stops him and everything is black and white.  This was different.  Were Rorschach and The Comedian heroes?  They certainly didn’t behave that way and they knew it too.  The Comedian got the joke.  He just defended the people with money.  That kind of grey reminds me of the Hard-Traveling Heroes stories of Green Lantern and Green Arrow that you introduced to me.  The landlord evicts a tenant who crawls back into his house to stay warm for the night.  In the eyes of the law, the ex-tenant is the bad guy and Green Lantern will stop him.  Green Arrow saw it differently, as the person with the capital had no compassion.  Who’s right?  Who’s the bad guy there?  I think Watchmen contemplates similar questions.  On the other hand, the movie, while it looked the same as the book, just didn’t convey that sense of moral ambiguity to me.  So, back at you, why did you like the movie?  Speaking of major works with bad movie adaptations, can you explain why you liked the movie version of From Hell (because I certainly didn’t)?  (I know we both liked the movie V for Vendetta and probably didn’t like the movie The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.  I think I can definitely say there is a high Natalie Portman correlation between quality Moore adaptations and the non-quality ones.)

CB:  I do like your Green Arrow analogy.  In the comic book version of Watchmen, I just didn’t see the passion that the actors in the movie were able to bring to the characters.  I found the artwork bland in the comic book and it didn’t engage me.  I did recognize how either Moore or Gibbons liked the use of parallel panels, and I’ve seen that in other Moore works, but that seemed more like a visual gimmick to me.  In the movie, even what I considered the best part of the comic book, Rorschach, seemed to be a lot more than the character in the comic.  I guess I needed to see that facial special effect actually work.  His life is a disaster and you really feel for this guy.  And his relationship and past with Nite Owl was great.  Even Dr. Manhattan, who I didn’t care for in the comic, made me at least understand where he was coming from in the movie, and the struggle to have meaningful relationships with Nite Owl and Silk Spectre made me care far more about these characters than in the book.

In the movie, The Comedian was vile.  I didn’t have that reaction so much from the book.  My wife and I were discussing the movie for weeks afterward.  Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that I prefer movies over comic books.  Definitely not the case.  I have read other comics over the years that dazzled me.  As much as I don’t care for most of what Frank Miller has created, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns was a standout for me–it was incredibly interesting, novel and clever.  The same goes for what I think is Moore’s best work: V for Vendetta.  I don’t think Watchmen the comic book was presented as well or had as compelling a story.   Hey–was Natalie Portman in any movie based on a Moore work other than V for Vendetta?

JM:  No, my own little joke at the expense of the other Moore movie adaptations.

CB:  Nice.  As for From Hell… I am not a “big” fan of either the book or movie, although the movie is better in my mind because the mood is well done and Johnny Depp performed well in this period piece.  Frankly I am tired of Jack the Ripper stories and think it is the most over-done subject choice for retelling in any medium.  I think the best achievement in Jack the Ripper story is Malcolm MacDowell’s Time After Time, a retelling of H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine, with David Warner as the Ripper.  That is a compelling story, and a great spin on a classic Wells tale.  And The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was fun as movies go, but I agree it could have done so much more.  But some of that blame has to go to Moore for trying to do too much, I think.  But I don’t feel that work is trying to be as serious as his other works, so I am less critical of it.  Because of the jumbling together of all these figures, I always took it as more tongue in cheek.

JM:  I’m beginning to think it is a case of our feelings for the source material.  I really like Alan Moore’s writings and therefore don’t care much for the adaptations.  You’re probably not completely opposite, but because your feelings aren’t as strong for his written word, liking the movies become easier.  (Though I have to admit that I didn’t read From Hell before I saw it – that might have made the movie even worse for me.)

CB:  I love that you used the phrase “his written word” to describe his work (he really has that “comic book god” mystique, doesn’t he?).  But Moore seemed hypocritical to me in his comments in the New York Times last week.  In V for Vendetta, he re-worked England’s Guy Fawkes story.  In The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, he re-imagined the characters of Mary Shelley, Jules Verne, Ian Fleming, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Bram Stoker, Oscar Wilde, Mark Twain and countless others.  In From Hell, he retold the real-life case of Jack the Ripper.  In Lost Girls (which makes my “all-time worst money spent on a book” list) he probably caused Lewis Carroll, L. Frank Baum, and J.M. Barrie to turn over in their graves for not just sexually exploiting classic beloved characters Alice, Dorothy and Wendy, but for writing a boring tale.  He did the same to Barbara Gordon in Batman: The Killing Joke (although this is a great book).  And Watchmen itself is a re-working of several Charlton Comics characters’ stories.  Moore is in the business of writing retellings (he himself has called it “stealing” characters), so who is he to criticize writers decades later for re-working characters he himself adapted?  Am I off-base here?

JM:  I think you make a valid point.  I hadn’t thought of it like that until you mentioned it.  At the same time though, Alan Moore definitely made quite a few of these characters better after he played with them. He created new worlds, new stories and fresh dialogue.  (I try to go back to read some of the dialogue of the comics of my youth and can barely get through a few pages before I wonder what I was thinking.)  Anyone who creates something feels a sense of ownership.  It’s like Krusty the Clown says in “Krusty Gets Kancelled”, “If this is anyone but Steve Allen, you’re stealing my bit.”  How many retellings of Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, MacBeth or Othello have there been over the ages?  Or for more recent public domain works, A Christmas Carol or Emma?

I think Moore comes across as a crotchety old man who tells the kids to get off his lawn, but I think we all do that.  If I may extend the lawn analogy, what makes these characters popular is what he did to them, kind of like the weeding, fertilizing, watering and care that go into an old man’s fine lawn.  Before he took in the characters, they were mostly unrecognizable under the slew of ever-increasing publishing weeds overshadowing them.  (I may be overstating the lack of popularity of some these characters.)  If they were still in their old forms, they’d have less of a market and right now he’s probably fighting an uphill battle to get more money (or control if you want to call it by its more genteel name) for his contributions though he didn’t create the grass.  As I wrote this, I found myself thinking of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster.  They created Superman, but because they did it under contract for the longest time they and their estates didn’t get any of the royalties associated with it.  I’m sure Moore’s doing fine in comparison, but you still have to fight for what’s yours, even if you sound like Scrooge.

CB:  Thanks, Jason.  Next time maybe we’ll have to chat about Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile.

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New DC Comics series to feature characters from Watchmen

Filed under: Superheroes, Pop Culture, Sci Fi, Blasts from the Past, Comics & Books — Leave a comment
February 7, 2012

I’m probably not going to be the first to say it, but I think it is great that DC Comics is going to pursue prequels.

Did I really write that?

When was the last time you saw a good prequel to anything?  Godfather 2 was sort of a prequel and a sequel all in one.  Hrm.  I’m not thinking of much else.  OK, Star Trek 2009 was fun and good for an odd-numbered Trek film.  And Enterprise is a decent TV series if you give it a chance.  The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly was the prequel to A Fistful of Dollars, so there’s a good one.

   

The Star Wars prequels—you either like ‘em or hate ‘em.  But would you rather never have seen them, or were they more fun as an experience than the other films out of that decade?  (Hold your answer for a later discussion).

So last week DC Comics announced prequels to Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ highly regarded (and revered, by some) Watchmen comic book series.  The new series will consistent of seven titles, all under the banner Before Watchmen.  Mainstream press has reported that comic book readers are all “up in arms” over this—“the debate rages” they say.  I call baloney.  I know more comic book fans that will be interested in checking out Before Watchmen than not.  Lots of highly regarded works have been revisited time and time again.  Why not Watchmen?

The mainstream press says Before Watchmen is all about money.  I call baloney again.  Sure, everything is about money to an extent.  Business is business and comic books are a business.  But what comic writer or artist wouldn’t want to get their hands on the Watchmen characters?  Why do some people think Watchmen is sacrosanct?  Our greatest superheroes are constantly re-imagined.  Does anyone really value Dr. Manhattan and Nite Owl over Superman and Batman?

   

Personally, I’m not a big fan of the Watchmen comic book, but I see the possibility for some cool things from the prequels.  If anyone is angry I’d think it would be other DC writers and artists that don’t get to work on this project, as there is a lot of doubling up at least as writing duties are concerned.

By way of background, DC Comics announced the following details of who will be creating what books:

RORSCHACH (4 issues) – Writer: Brian Azzarello. Artist: Lee Bermejo
MINUTEMEN (6 issues) – Writer/Artist: Darwyn Cooke
COMEDIAN (6 issues) – Writer: Brian Azzarello. Artist: J.G. Jones
DR. MANHATTAN (4 issues) – Writer: J. Michael Straczynski. Artist: Adam Hughes
NITE OWL (4 issues) – Writer: J. Michael Straczynski. Artists: Andy and Joe Kubert
OZYMANDIAS (6 issues) – Writer: Len Wein. Artist: Jae Lee
SILK SPECTRE (4 issues) – Writer: Darwyn Cooke. Artist: Amanda Conner

CRIMSON CORSAIR will be an added story in the various series.  Writer: Len Wein. Artist: John Higgins

I will be checking out two of the books in particular.  First, Rorschach, because I think he is the best character from Watchmen.  I thought Lee Bermejo did a great job painting the standalone work Batman: Noel last year.  I had been looking forward to his next project and Rorschach should be an interesting subject for him to take on.

Second, Adam Hughes is doing not just covers, but an ongoing series. (!)  One of my favorite things about the New 52 is Hughes’s covers for Batgirl.  His style is very 1940s, so he is a perfect choice for this retro-era comic book series, and since Silk Spectre must factor in greatly to Dr. Manhattan and his backstory, this might make the whole project worth doing.  My question is why Hughes isn’t drawing the Silk Spectre title? I wasn’t a fan of Amanda Conner’s work on Green Arrow/ Black Canary and Silk Spectre was in part based on Black Canary, so I can think of a lot of other artists I’d like to see on that title.  But I won’t pre-judge this one—her work on this new series may be great so we’ll just have to check it out when it is published.

   

All of Azzarello, Straczynski, Cooke, Lee and the Kuberts have their fan bases, so I am sure they will be pleased with these picks.  But honestly, to join–for a second–the other camp, you do have to ask, if you really want to see what these characters are up to, why not check out the characters Alan Moore based these characters on, in their current, New 52 or other recent books?  If you want to check out Dr. Manhattan, check out the awesome current Captain Atom series.  If you want to read about Nite Owl, check out Blue Beetle (especially Ted Kord back-issues).  If you want to see Silk Spectre, check out Nightshade in recent Suicide Squad back-issues, or Black Canary in the current Birds of Prey.  Want to see the Comedian?  Just look at Peacemaker in the pre-Flashpoint Blue Beetle series.  Want to see Rorschach?  There are tons of great series featuring the Question, and the recent Question, Renee Montoya, is as great a character as any.

   

Controversial news?  Sure.  A comic industry earthquake?  Umm…. no.  But they are prequels, so the odds are stacked against them from the get-go.  Ultimately, they will succeed or fail because they have good stories (or don’t).

Tomorrow, Jason McClain and I will dig a little into Alan Moore and Watchmen.

C.J. Bunce

Editor

borg.com

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G.I. Joe, Avengers, Ferris Bueller and Star Wars top Super Bowl ads

Filed under: Movies, Pop Culture, Sci Fi, Superheroes, TV — Leave a comment
February 6, 2012

If you’re like me and you didn’t spend the day watching the Super Bowl but you still want to know what good ads you missed, never fear as we at borg.com spent the day either: (1) watching the 8th annual Animal Planet Puppy Bowl, (2) working around the house, (3) surfing the Web, and/or (4) spending the day outside, BUT we kept the DVR recording so we could zip through the game for some good genre ads.  And in no particular order here are some ads you won’t want to miss:

1.  I’ve seen billboards for weeks now advertising the return of Star Wars Episode One: The Phantom Menace in a 3D edition, but had no idea this was just the first of the six films to be released in 3D versions and coming back to the big screen.   Personally I will probably go to Attack of the Clones and the original trilogy to “see them again for the first time” as the ads used to say (what does that mean, anyway?).  No one really wants to see pod races in 3D, do they?  Mark Hamill mentioned the possibility of a release of the original trilogy in 3D last summer.  Here’s today’s new promo:

2.  If you’re a fan of comic book movies, whether or not you’re particularly a fan of Marvel Comics characters you will no doubt get your money’s worth when we finally get to see a whole gang of superheroes in one film this May when Avengers: Assemble finally hits theaters.  Great things about this ad: more Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury, the Hulk as part of the team, and more Iron Man than we’ve seen in past trailers.  Check it out:

3.  It is unlikely to get me to go out and buy a Honda CRV but if you’re like me and always wondered what happened to Ferris Bueller after he had his famous day off back in the 1980s, the closest thing we’ll likely see to a sequel is right here:

4.  We previewed the new G.I. Joe: Retaliation movie earlier here and here at borg.com (it made our most eagerly awaited films of 2012 list along with Avengers: Assemble).  This is a quicker ad but it confirms what we’d heard and hoped for, that Bruce Willis would be playing the original G.I. Joe, Captain Joe Colton:

5.  Volkswagen had fun with Star Wars references again this year.  If you’ve ever lived with or seen a greyhound in person you’ll totally understand the reference to these guys looking like AT-ATs from The Empire Strikes Back (The Bark Side):

6.  Volkswagen also went to great lengths in their other Star Wars-related Super Bowl commercial (those Animal Planet Puppy Bowl fans will love the first part, too!).  Isn’t it time for a TV series taking place in that old “hive of scum and villainy”?

Honorable mention for Clint Eastwood fans:

7.  If you just miss Clint Eastwood playing Dirty Harry, Clint Eastwood talking tough may just be enough for you, as he talks over this pro-Detroit ad that aired at half-time at today’s game.  Is it just me or does his line “The world’s going to hear the roar of our engines” sound like Sean Connery talking about his nuclear submarine’s silent propulsion system in The Hunt for Red October?:

BTW, for Animal Planet fans, there were several good animal ads this year so go to this link at hulu.com to check them out.

C.J. Bunce

Editor

borg.com

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Both “Melancholia” and Melancholia

Filed under: Pop Culture, Behind the Scenes, Movies — Leave a comment
February 4, 2012

By Jason McClain (@JTorreyMcClain)

Dealing with depression from both sides presents an interesting quandary.  As a friend to people that may be suffering from it, you want to be there, you want to support them, but when people are depressed they just aren’t that interesting.  A quote in the opening paragraph of Roger Ebert’s All the Lonely People says it best, “You know what a bore is, Travis. Someone who deprives you of solitude without providing you with companionship.”

On the other side, when you are depressed, getting out of bed seems like a chore, let alone leaving the house.  If that’s the way you feel, no wonder when you go out and about and try to socialize and lift your spirits, the only thing you’re thinking about is your couch, since going to sleep in your bed at 5 pm feels wrong no matter what your mental state of mind.  You know you’re a bore, but you don’t care or don’t understand how people don’t see it and you just have to occupy yourself until 10 pm somehow, so you can sleep for ten hours.  You never know, tomorrow might be better.

It doesn’t feel like there is a difference between depression and melancholia, and doing a quick bit of research, considering depression is used in the definition of melancholia, I’d say no difference.  There’s even a combination of the two into melancholic depression.  So would they look the same?  Could you tell the difference between melancholia and depression?  Lars Von Trier’s Melancholia gave me a quick “no” as the answer to that question.

Charles Corbet's depiction of Melancholia (1910)

I’ve never been married, but having been to weddings, probably not too much like the one in Melancholia, but definitely in the ballpark, I understand the urge to go take a long bath.  I understand going for a walk on a golf course.  There’s something nice about going to be alone when no one is around rather than being alone with hundreds of people surrounding you.  It’s why the bed or bath is such a welcome sight.  It’s why you continually look at your watch wondering what the perfect time to excuse yourself without hurting anyone’s feelings is.  If you can hold out for one more song, one more hit from the 80s, one more choreographed dance song, you can leave and walk to your room, drive home or just run, literally and figuratively.

I’m trying to think of another film that captures that feeling so well.  Looking at the profile of major league pitcher Taylor Buchholz and his bout with depression, you see a couple of the same symptoms in the performance of Kirsten Dunst (and the writing behind her acting): extreme irritability and the inability to laugh.  If we saw the back story that led to her wedding, I’m sure we’d also get a glimpse of her faking happiness to such a degree that her future groom truly believed she loved him and wanted to marry him.  Only at the reception did he finally see something different, as she couldn’t fake it any more.  Most everyone encouraged her to do so for various reasons, not least of which, because of all the money being spent by her future brother-in-law (played very well by Kiefer Sutherland.)

As you battle with faking it, with your irritability, your self-criticism and an occasional malaise, forgetting the bed and just sleeping every day and night on the couch seems like the perfect solution because you can go to sleep and wake up with the TV to keep you company.  That could be the result of loneliness, which is a separate thing, as this analysis of the Community episode Advanced Dungeons & Dragons points out, but can feel and look the same.  In fact, author Casey Jones puts it very succinctly, “Depression is anger pointed at yourself.  Loneliness… man, that’s just despair.”  The question becomes, what if your depression causes your loneliness or you’re depressed and angry with yourself because you can’t make or keep friends?  They can feed off of each other and I would say there is probably some high correlation between the two things.

As you can see from the collection of links (and the upcoming ones) I want to see how others deal with these same issues. I want to watch Melancholia even though I know it is going to be heavy.  I want to read Darkness Visible to see about William Styron’s struggle to overcome depression.  I want to read about how Rob Delaney learned to cope with it and come to grips to taking medication to help him.  I want to read about Stanley Jefferson, former major league player and New York City policeman who was on duty in Manhattan during 9/11.  I want to see or read about the ways they learned to cope or how they struggle to find a way to cope, from watching endless amounts of TV, to baths, to drinking or to just finding something to fill up every moment of your time so that you don’t have to think about anything.

Edvard Munch (1891)

Maybe you’re the same way, you like to see these things too as it helps to know that you have company. Maybe there are other people that consider watching every episode of Law and Order: Criminal Intent on USA Network replays over a jam-packed month to be a worthwhile pursuit.  Maybe it’s because you see hope in some of the stories and you can feel hope for the stories of others because you pushed through that stage of depression yourself.

On the other hand you may not want to know how some people suffer.  You don’t even want to see hints of it because those views might generate powerful emotions within you that you can’t hide.  You don’t want to think about it in others because it will remind you of what you see in yourself, the fear, the anxiety, the worry.  You might break down and cry in front of someone and generate more anger at yourself for showing weakness like Buchholz.  Then again, you can try like he did to be around people, regular people, happy people so that you can forget all of those things that are wrong with you and you can pretend to be happy and maybe, just maybe, that dream of happiness will come true.  It’s possible.  As much as we think we know about the human mind and body, we still learn more and more every day and maybe a study will show that happiness rubs off.  You can sense it and feel it and happiness of others becomes whole in you. You at last become whole again.

Albrecht Durer's Melancholia (1514)

Still, the opposite of that is not to be around those happy people, cheerfully going about their daily lives because then you see the emptiness in your own.  By being around them it reminds you about how unhappy you are and so then you close yourself off, you seclude yourself because the pain of seeing people is too much.  Sometimes it feels better to feel sad; to know there is something wrong with you and to know it needs to be addressed.  Wallowing in it makes it more visible in your own mirror and may motivate you to do something about it.  You shut yourself off to find this point in yourself and then the loneliness enters your life.  Then a different vein of self-loathing exists for your depression to tap into and a different cycle starts anew.

I slipped into using the second person in this essay pretty easily because I realized that doing so made writing about it easier.  I never know what a different day will bring.  Maybe it’s a day I want to be around people. Maybe it’s a day where I don’t.  Maybe it’s a day where the idea of even taking off my clothes to shower seems like a chore.  Maybe it’s a day where buying new underwear sounds so much easier than sorting clothes, carrying them to the washer, carrying them to the dryer and then putting them away.  Maybe it’s a day when I write 2000 words on a subject and reward myself with video games.  Maybe it’s a day where I just play video games and criticize myself for not writing anything.  Maybe it’s a day I play video games and feel happy because I just have fun. Maybe it’s ten days in a row and the only thing I wrote was emails.  Maybe even emails get tough to write.  Maybe I’ll just watch 12 hours of Psych, Doctor Who or the whole run of Spaced and laugh a little bit, for once.  When I say “you” I mean me, though I do know a few examples of friends that do or have dealt with depression and or loneliness.  I’ve dealt with it a few ways myself.  It’s trying to find the way to deal with it the best.  So, like Kirsten Dunst’s character, maybe I’ll work in baths.  I’ve tried long showers.  They help some.  Every day leads me closer to a solution as I work through ways to overcome my own depression and my solutions are definitely better than a meteor coming to strike the Earth, I’m sure.  Definitely sure on that one.  For with the dawn of a new day, there’s always hope that it will be better.

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A science fiction soundtrack release and DVD premiere 110 years in the making

Filed under: Blasts from the Past, Movies, Pop Culture, Sci Fi — Leave a comment
February 1, 2012

By C.J. Bunce

It’s not every day, or even any year, that you get to witness the video premiere of a film from 1902 in its original color version.   Or that you get to listen to the world premiere sound recording of a complete score to that film.  Especially if that movie never had a musical score and the musical score is actually composed and released 110 years after the film’s premiere.  And if that film is considered to be the first science fiction film of all time, then you’re really in for something unique.  Confused?  Read on.

The classic science fiction film is, of course, the French classic Le Voyage dans la lune, or A Trip the the Moon, created by science fiction special effects and animation pioneer George Méliès, who current film audiences may know as one of the heroes of Martin Scorcese’s Academy Award-nominated film Hugo.  The famous scene in A Trip to the Moon where the rocketship blasts into the Man in the Moon’s eye is a classic bit of film nostalgia.  The 14-minute film was based on two classic works: Jules Verne’s From the Earth to the Moon, and H.G. Wells’s The First Men in the Moon.  You can’t have a better science fiction pedigree than A Trip to the Moon.

The Victorian era meets the future in this seen from the 1902 color film A Trip to the Moon

Film enthusiasts for literally a century were aware that A Trip to the Moon was originally released in theaters not in the typical black and white that monopolized film into the 1960s, but in color.  But how could that be?  The story was a secret traeasure of sorts, that stayed hidden until 1993, when a film collector revealed the sole remaining color copy of the 1902 film in Barcelona.  But the 13,375 frames of decomposed material was practically worthless, until film preservationist Serge Bromberg found a way to catch the very few minutes when the film was able to be photographed when deposited with a special chemical vapor.  Every day for two years his staff worked bit by bit through each frame, and in 2010 digital technology had come so far as to allow the preservationists to re-build the film at Technicolor’s laboratories in Los Angeles, following a $500,000 grant from French film foundations.  The result was revealed to dazzled audiences at last year’s Cannes Film Festival.

Film pioneer Georges Méliès mixed stunning color animation and special effects in this view of the future of travel in A Trip to the Moon

But before the film was revealed, a matter of sound arose.  The original film was created before the concept of the talkie, or even the playing of music to accompany the film.  No score had ever been created for A Trip to the Moon.  The same foundations that had financed the restoration selected the French band Air to compose a 16-minute soundtrack for the film.   Because the home-grown film was considered by the French to be revered even more than the rest of the world, musicians Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoit Dunckel were themselves elevated to a celebrity status like never before.  After completion of the soundtrack, Air began composing a full musical score expanding on the themes they created for the film.  Their sound is both futuristic and modern, and has been compared to their influences: Pink Floyd, spaghetti Western composer Ennio Morricone, and the bands Vangelis and Tangerine Dream.

A sea of tranquility featured in the 1902 film

National Public Radio will be revealing the full album stream this coming Friday, February 3, 2012, at www.npr.org/music .  A limited edition CD/DVD set will be released at Amazon.com on February 7, 2011, including the re-mastered original color version of the film.

Film distributor Flicker Alley will be releasing the premiere Blu-Ray release of the color version of A Trip to the Moon on March 27, 2012 in a deluxe edition, including the 78-minute documentary, The Extraordinary Voyage by Serge Bromberg and Eric Lange of Lobster Films in Paris, about the life of Georges Méliès and his film A Trip to the Moon.

We featured A Trip to the Moon here at borg.com a few weeks ago as one of our most iconic images of the history of sci-fi in film.  If you haven’t voted for your favorite sci-fi image yet, check it out and vote for your favorite here.

On a final note, George Méliès was another creative master in the realm of masters like Wolfgang Mozart who suffered financially.  Students of copyright law and theory should check out his story, as he may be the first victim of film piracy, as his film was secretly duplicated by film technicians and sold without any profits given to Méliès, eventually resulting in his own bankruptcy.  Long in the public domain, the new color transfer with soundtrack by Air will give modern preservationists of film history and the modern composers some profits that the creator himself never saw.  This is well deserved, as in doing so, modern audiences get a new, immediate film experience and a look at something not seen since the original moviegoers watched the film for the first time.

You can pre-order the Air CD release, including the color version of the DVD via Amazon.com today here.

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