Orson Scott Card advocates criminalizing homosexuality, overthrowing US govt.

Thursday, April 30, 2009


Orson Scott Card, the Hugo and Nebula-winning author of Ender's Game and many other books, holds a variety of controversial, far-right political views. He has staunchly opposed gay marriage, and last week he joined the board of the anti-gay marriage organization, the National Organization for Marriage. But the JoeMyGod blog has discovered a column Card wrote last year in which he advocated the actual criminalization of homosexuality and the overthrow of the US government if gay marriage is made legal.

"If America becomes a place where our children are taken from us by law," Card wrote, "and forced to attend schools where they are taught that cohabitation is as good as marriage, that motherhood doesn't require a husband or father, and that homosexuality is as valid a choice as heterosexuality for their future lives, then why in the world should married people continue to accept the authority of such a government? What these dictator-judges do not seem to understand is that their authority extends only as far as people choose to obey them. How long before married people answer the dictators thus: Regardless of law, marriage has only one definition, and any government that attempts to change it is my mortal enemy. I will act to destroy that government and bring it down, so it can be replaced with a government that will respect and support marriage, and help me raise my children in a society where they will expect to marry in their turn."

The Americablog has pointed out that Card is a high-profile Mormon who joined the NMO at a time when the organization is denying accusations that it's actually a front for the LDS, and that the LDS have had a history of violent clashes with the US government.


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DEAD RISING 2 trailer

It's online, and it's full of gooey, chooey zombie goodness. A stuffed moosehead as a weapon? Genius!




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NEWSCHUNKS for 04.30.09


Another serving of tasty news nibblets. There are a few big sequels in the works, to some of your favorite movies... Let's pray they don't happen.

SCOTT MULLING ALIEN PREQUEL: IESB quotes Fox co-chair Tom Rothman regarding Ridley Scott's possible return to the Alien franchise he began with the original film in 1979. "There's been some talk. Ridley Scott, Ridley is right now working on Robin Hood, but I think he's toying with the idea and that would be great for us. I mean, it's always been a matter of, really, if you can get the originator to do it that would be the greatest thing, so I've got my fingers crossed, all of them." It would be great to see the director of Blade Runner take on a new genre project, instead of just cranking out another earthbound thriller starring Russell Crowe. But as fantastic as the original Alien was, the franchise has been worn into the ground at this point. Even before those lackluster Alien vs. Predator movies, the iconic alien created by H.R. Giger had stopped being scary thanks to overexposure and so-so sequels. An Alien prequel sounds almost as bad as...

A ROGER RABBIT SEQUEL: Robert Zemeckis tells MTV.com he's become interested in making a sequel to Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, his blockbuster '90s hit. "I'll tell you what is buzzing around in my head now that we have the ability—the digital tools, performance capture—I'm starting to think about Roger Rabbit." There was a lot of talk of a Roger Rabbit sequel in the early '90s, but it never came to anything. Given that Zemeckis is considering a sequel using the same CGI that brought us such underwhelmers as Polar Express and Beowulf, here's hoping that Roger stays a fondly-remembered cartoon star of yesteryear.

A GREMLINS SEQUEL, TOO?: Original Gremlins director Joe Dante tells Bloody Disgusting he's convinced a sequel is in the works, but he won't be involved: "I find it hard to believe that they won't make a Gremlins 3 because they're remaking Adventures in Babysitting. I mean, they're gonna remake everything. They won't be coming to me. (Laughs) I can tell you that for a fact."

DUELING DEVILS: Every few years, we get hit with a bunch of movies with the same plot. There was the old-people-get-young/body swap wave of the '80s, the killer asteroid vogue of the '90s, etc. Sometimes these things happen because somebody is trying to rip somebody else off. But sometimes it's pure, weird coincidence. That's what appears to be happening with the dueling productions based on John Milton's 17th-century poem Paradise Lost. One production has been in the works for years, the other for decades. And it looks like both will be hitting theaters around the same time.

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MUSIC FROM SPACE: Danko Jones - KING OF MAGAZINES


Danko Jones is a Canadian trio that pumps out unabashed, dumb-assed, headbanging, 1981 guitar rock, very much in the David Lee Roth tradition. (Click the picture at left to buy their 2008 album, Never Too Loud.) This video for their song King of Magazines is just about the dirtiest thing you will ever seen, without it actually being dirty. Really, nothing even slightly x-rated happens here... But artist Dave Cooper has a way of making everything gloriously, hilariously obscene. He's a popular alternative comics artist who has created several graphic novels worth tracking down, you've seen his design work on Futurama (he had a big hand in the look of the Planet Express office) and he's a widely exhibited gallery artist. Here he brings his "mostly pillowy girls" to life in animated cartoon form, and sends them crashing and bouncing around town like a bunch of sexy little tornadoes. Is there any way we can we get this thing made into a Saturday morning cartoon?





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Nabokov's lost novel to be published


Shortly before Lolita author Vladimir Nabokov died in 1977, he asked his family to destroy his last, unfinished novel. Following his death his family quarreled about whether to honor his dying wish. Finally they locked the book away in a Swiss bank vault for three decades. Until now.

In a decision that's been very controversial among critics and scholars, Nabokov's son, Dmitri Nabokov, has decided to publish the book. (Click the photo at left to pre-order a copy from Amazon.)

Nabokov wrote his novels on index cards, frequently changing the order of the cards as he worked. According to his diaries he had his last book finished in his mind, but then he died before he could complete his work. He had various titles for the book, including The Original of Laura, The Opposite of Laura and Dying is Fun. The published version will be called The Original of Laura (Dying is Fun) and will consist of over 100 facsimile, removable index cards.

The Times of London summarized the book thusly:

Philip Wild, an enormously corpulent scholar, is married to a slender, flighty and wildly promiscuous woman called Flora. Flora initially appealed to Wild because of another woman that he’d been in love with, Aurora Lee. Death and what lies beyond it, a theme which fascinated Nabokov from a very young age, are central. The book opens at a party and there follow four continuous scenes, after which the novel becomes more fragmented. It is not clear how old Wild is, but he is preoccupied with his own death and sets about obliterating himself from the toes upwards through meditation. A sort of deliberate self-inflicted self-erasure.

Dmitri Nabokov is attracting a lot of criticism for his decision, but any decision he made would be controversial. We know that Vladimir Nabokov didn't want this book published. But Kafka wanted his own work destroyed, and the world would be a poorer place if that had happened.
The book hits stores this November.

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SHATNERQUAKE pits Shatner vs. Shatners


Faced with the press release for Jeff Burk's Shatnerquake, words fail me. I am struck dumb with awe that such a book actually exists. This is simultaneously one of the most stupid and most awesome ideas I've heard in years.

It’s Shatner VS Shatners!


It’s the first ShatnerCon with William Shatner as the guest of honor! But after a failed terrorist attack by Campbellians, a crazy terrorist cult that worships Bruce Campbell, all of the characters ever played by William Shatner are suddenly sucked into our world. Their mission: hunt down and destroy the real William Shatner.


Featuring: Captain Kirk, TJ Hooker, Denny Crane, Rescue 911 Shatner, Singer Shatner, Shakespearean Shatner, Twilight Zone Shatner, Cartoon Kirk, Esperanto Shatner, Priceline Shatner, SNL Shatner, and – of course – William Shatner!


So, basically this sketch... But an entire book of it. That book cover is not an entry in a Worth1000 contest, or a gag on Cracked.com. It belongs to an actual book. (Click the cover to buy the book on Amazon.) I can't wait to hear what the Shat himself thinks of it all.



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Winston Rowntree's SUBNORMALITY

Wednesday, April 29, 2009


Winston Rowntree's webcomic Subnormality is sometimes hilarious, sometimes creepy and sometimes rather sad, but it's almost always insightful and sometimes it's just plain brilliant. Rowntree's comics feature time travel, alternate dimensions, horrible monsters, urban despair, lots and lots of words, and some truly mouth-wateringly lovely young ladies. Most of his strips stand on their own, but if you read enough of them you do see some recurring characters, like his hapless job-seeker with the ever-changing hair color, and his improbably adorable Sphinx.


And as good as he is, he just keeps getting better. He recently returned after a hiatus that lasted most of April, so now's a good time to get on board.




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Game designer designs game to quit his job


A very clever game designer designed a Mario platformer to announce he was quitting his job as a game designer. I am sick to my back teeth of Mario in particular and platformers in general, but I'll make an exception for this kind of awesomeness.


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Von Trier's ANTICHRIST trailer


I don't know if any filmmaker has frustrated me as much as Lars Von Trier. His 1991 film Zentropa (AKA Europa) absolutely knocked me off my pins. It was an absorbing thriller that was as formally daring as an Orson Welles picture. It used obvious rear projection and other techniques to constantly remind you that what you were watching wasn't real, yet somehow every scene pulled you deeper into its twisty, disturbing story. (Click the picture at left to buy the film on Amazon.)


Unfortunately Von Trier is a very angry and arguably self-defeating artist, and he has spent the last two decades doing everything he can to bury his own talent and alienate his audiences. This tendency reached its zenith with his famous Dogme 95 manifesto - a list of filmmaking commandments that forbids special effects, flashy camera moves and almost everything else that made Zentropa so amazing. His movies became ugly to watch and increasingly ugly in spirit.



But I am very intrigued by his upcoming horror movie, Antichrist. Von Trier has ditched his Dogme straitjacket, and watching the Antichrist trailer I feel just a little of that old Zentropa tingle. (It even begins with a creepy hypnotist voiceover, just like Zentropa!)






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Did the Hanso Foundation found Starfleet?


Sci-Fi Wire has a fun collection of inside jokes that JJ Abrams slipped into the upcoming Star Trek movie, including references to other Abrams projects like Cloverfield, Alias, and even Felicity. (No mention of Lost specifically, but you know Abrams slapped a Dharma Initiative logo on something.)


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MUSIC FROM SPACE: The Left Right - DARTH VADER/WEIRDO

I have no idea how or why George Lucas' lawyers haven't yanked this video right off the Internet already. It's a disturbing but hilarious thing that starts as a semi-explicit love song about Darth Vader and just gets more peculiar from there. A few years ago, Jimmy Urine and Steve, Righ? (That's not a typo. He actually calls himself "Steve, Righ?") from the cult band Mindless Self Indulgence formed the Left Rights as a side project. They only put out one, self-titled album... Which was more than enough.

Note that this video is absolutely not safe for work... Or anywhere else, really.





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TREK porno trailer online

At this rate I'm in danger of covering Hustler's Star Trek porno parody more than I've covered the real movie, but I'm still fascinated by just how much work has gone into making this thing look like an episode of the original series. The clip below looks exactly like a top-of-the-line fan production, one of those things put together by people who have spent six months in their garages, making their own replicas of Captain Kirk's bridge chair. You know, like these guys do. It's got the costumes, the right kind of music, the special effects... It even has its own Ricardo Montlaban! It all seems kind of cute... Until you remember that this is a porn movie, and in eight seconds the William Shatner lookalike is going to be taking off his pants.





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New TERMINATOR SALVATION trailers online

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

A bit blurry, dark and repetitious, but you get to see plenty of killer robot action in a trio of new Terminator Salvation trailers that are now on Youtube.




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DROP DEAD FRED remake to star Russell Brand


No, this is not a very late April Fool's Day gag. According to The Hollywood Reporter, British comedian Russell Brand will star in a remake of the 199o Phoebe Cates/Rik Mayall bomb about a woman who rediscovers her childhood imaginary friend.


While I'm getting really burned out on remakes, I can actually see some potential in this idea. The original film had an interesting premise and some really appealing actors in the leads, but squandered it all with lackluster direction and a truly atrocious script. Great movies don't need remakes, but a Drop Dead Fred has potential. And while Brand can be irritating, I've seen him in action on UK TV and he can exhaustingly funny, he hits you with a joke every three seconds or so and has a frenetic energy that reminds me of the early Robin Williams. Plus, he already looks like an imaginary character. The Reporter says they're aiming for a Tim Burton feel with the remake, and that sounds about right. It's an idea with the potential for a lot of cute/grotesque stuff in the Burton vein.


But, what's this? The script is co-written by Dennis McNicholas, one of the writers of Universal's upcoming Land of the Lost remake? Whoa. Not a good sign.



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Offline

Technical problems at Monsters and Rockets HQ, and we won't be online again until Tuesday afternoon at the soonest. In the meantime, entertain yourself by staring at that photo of the little guy dancing with his cat.

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Little person dancing with cat

Monday, April 27, 2009


Lately the headlines have been ridiculously grim, full of disease and economic woe and natural disasters. So, as the sun sets over another tough day, let's enjoy this 1956 photo of Henry Behrens, then the world's smallest man at just 30 inches tall, dancing with his cat. (Image kiped from the Arbroath blog, although I warn you before you click over there that a lot of the images are much less delightful than this one... There are photos of giant tumors, injured animals and other sad and gross things. And there in the middle of it all, the proverbial diamond in the rough: Behrens and his cat. Life's like that, sometimes.)


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RED DWARF's new episode online


After a decade off the air, the BBC sci-fi sitcom Red Dwarf has returned as a series of specials on the UK's upstart channel Dave TV. Right now I've only had time to watch these first 10 minutes online, but I'm posting it for you now because I've learned the hard way that UK TV tends to get yanked off Youtube in a hurry. (The BBC has OCD when it comes to preventing me from being able to see most of the shows I want to see.)

Red Dwarf was a wildly uneven show. It started as a kind of Odd Couple in space, a sharp, character-based comedy about the last human in the universe (the slobby Dave Lister) and his hologram roommate (the fussy Arnold Rimmer,) together on the immense startship, Red Dwarf. The series gradually became more broad and silly, and by the last few seasons there were some episodes that were just agonizingly bad. But even then the show could still surprise you with some interesting sci-fi ideas, and the characters remained lovable despite it all.

By almost all accounts the new specials are rough going, but from these first 10 minutes it doesn't look bad to me. It's startling to see the cast suddenly looking older. Most of them have actually held up pretty well, with Chris Barrie being the one who has aged most visibly - a bit unfortunate, given that Rimmer is supposed to be an ageless hologram. But these guys have literally been playing these characters for decades, and that old chemistry is still there. (Click the image above to buy the complete BBC series on DVD.)



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VIDEODROME remake - Worse news than the swine flu pandemic?


You simply do not remake the work of David Cronenberg. And if you're going to remake Cronenberg, you absolutely do not remake freaking' Videodrome, one of the most surreal and unsettling films ever made. (Click the picture at left to purchase the Criterion DVD on Amazon.) Why not just remake Un Chien Andalou, while you're at it? And if you're a studio planning a remake of Videodrome, you absolutely, positively do not hand it over to the screenwriter of the upcoming Transformers movie.


And yet all of this is coming to pass. Variety reports that Ehren Kruger will actually write and direct this thing. And just to dash any hopes that Kruger understands why the original movie has become a cult classic and will respect his source material, the Variety story describes his plans for the project thusly: "The new picture will modernize the concept, infuse it with the possibilities of nano-technology and blow it up into a large-scale sci-fi action thriller."


Seriously? Videodrome, remade as a large-scale sci-fi action thriller? The prospect is at least as disturbing as any of Max Renn's hallucinations from the original film. And that's saying a lot.




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MONSTER HOUSE animatic made from cheap plastic toys


I really liked Monster House, but didn't exactly love it. The idea was cute and the script and voice performances were good, but the motion-capture animation just didn't quite work. The characters had interesting designs, but their movements were kind of stiff and weightless and their eyes often had an eerie, lifeless quality. (Click the image at left to buy the film on blu-ray.)

I would've been just as happy if they had shot the entire movie the same way they shot their storyboard animatics, using cheap plastic toys to act out the action scenes. The clip below illustrates this process. It's taken from the Youtube page of Rob Schrab, one of the guys behind the film. He's also helped bring us The Sarah Silverman Program, Scud the Disposable Assassin and other weird delights... But somehow, I doubt he's ever had more fun with any of his projects than he did making this clip.



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MUSIC FROM SPACE: The Dresden Dolls - COIN-OPERATED BOY


Amanda Palmer is a very strange, very talented, very busy lady. She's currently promoting her solo album, Who Killed Amanda Palmer?, and recently completed work on a book of the same name (featuring artfully posed photos of herself dying, over and over again) with text by Coraline's Neil Gaiman. She's also at work on an honest-to-gosh high school musical, set to debut in May at Lexington High School in Lexington, Massachusetts. (Don't worry, she's not about to go all Vanessa Hudgens on us. She's going back to her old school to appear with current students in a musical about the fantasy life of Anne Frank, in a show that promises to be at least as dark and weird as everything else she's done.)


And somewhere in all that, Palmer still finds time to front the Dresden Dolls, the "Brechtian punk caberet" band that made her name a (haunted) household word. The band first got noticed in a big way with 2004's single Coin-Operated Boy, off their self-titled album. (Click the photo above or this text link to purchase the CD on Amazon.) The story of a girl so embittered by the search for love that she seeks solace in the arms of an endlessly accomodating gentleman made of plastic and elastic, it's a funny, sad and absolutely beautiful song.


Oh, and just for the sake of equal time... The crude, fratboyish yet also surprisingly sweet parody, Beer-Activated Girl.




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BLEEDING ART: PAPERSHAPERS show in Culver City


If the Piperoids in the previous post have whetted your appetite for cool paper gizmos, there's an amazing art show at Scion Installation in Culver City that features artists who make 3d sculptures out of cut and folded paper. I haven't been to the show yet, but this set of Flickr photos makes it look like a can't-miss for anybody in the area. (Seen here: one of Ana Serrano's crazy-detailed paper village sculptures.)


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Piperoids: Paper pipe robots, just in time for Mother's Day


Mother's Day will be here soon, and you're stuck trying to think of what the heck to get for your mom. Well, why not get her a robot companion, lovingly built with your very own hands? Piperoids are seriously cute Japanese toy robots you assemble by fitting together colorful paper tubes. Many designs are available, and when complete they only stand between 5 and 8 inches tall, so they don't take up much room. Click the picture at left to begin browsing the papercraft automatons at Amazon.com. (Try saying that 3 times fast!)



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How to: Save the Earth from a planet-killing asteroid

Sunday, April 26, 2009


Human civilization faces a variety of threats that could kill millions of people in a hurry or even wipe us all out altogether. There are the new kids on the block like the swine flu pandemic and Himiko the space blob... And there are the old reliables, like a massive asteroid.


There's not much we can do about some of these things, but fortunately we do have some options if we discover that a big space-rock is headed our way. Last month, Wired Science offered a run-down of current ideas about how we should respond to asteroid threats, listing the pros and cons of each. (Turns out that the nuclear blast option from Armageddon was actually kind of a stupid idea. Oh, Bruce Willis, how could you lie to us?)



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MUSIC FROM SPACE: Bea Arthur in the STAR WARS HOLIDAY SPECIAL -

The Star Wars Holiday Special has become justly infamous - it's a bizarre, incoherent, ridiculous mess - but it's a fun kind of bizarre, incoherent, ridiculous mess. In this clip we visit a rather Weimar-esque catina on Tatooine, with Bea Arthur as a Marlene Deitrich-like dame struggling to run her bar under Imperial rule. The song she sings is a mix of John Williams' Star Wars cantina band calypso music and Weill-ian cabaret music, and it's surprisingly effective thanks to Arthur's total convinction as she performs with rubbery squid-people and giant rat puppets. Consider this clip an unironic tribute to Arthur, who died yesterday at age 86.





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Global pandemic: (THE) STAND in the place where you live?

Saturday, April 25, 2009


The swine flu epidemic down in Mexico is getting scary, with healthy people suddenly dying and soccer games played in empty stadiums as the government closes down places where large crowds congregate. What's more, cases of the virus have been turning up in the US. There have been false alarms about global pandemics before (remember SARS?) but this one has the WHO spooked enough to declare that "these events are of high concern." There have been (at last count) 800 cases of the flu in Mexico, with 60 flu-related deaths and 16 of those definitely caused by the swine flu virus. The disease passes readily between humans, and the fact that the majority of deaths were young people make it more likely that this is a pandemic.

The weather has been getting warmer and this would normally be the time of year when we would be passing out of flu season. Unfortunately, this flu has been spreading into warmer areas - Mexico, California and Texas - so it doesn't look like we can count on heat to wipe it out.


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MUSIC FROM SPACE: Low Water - STRANGE NEW ELEMENT


Here we have some catchy nerdrock with an adorably goofy video, casting the members of Low Water as a trio of nerdy scientists on the run from a rather listless dominatrix type and her rollerskating hench-ladies.


If some of the girls in this clip look familiar, you may remember them from Tech TV or the early days of G4 - Morgan Webb, Laura Swisher, Sarah Lane and Cat Schwartz are all on hand, circa 2004, to make you pine for the Attack of the Show and X-Play of olden times. The clip ends with just a bit too much footage of everybody sitting around having fun, but since when is watching people have fun a bad thing? (Click the picture at left to buy the CD on Amazon.)






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GHOSTBUSTERS game opening cinematic online

Wow. Wow, wow, wow. Admittedly the graphics here don't look as dazzling as they did in some clips we've seen - the characters don't have a lot of texture or detail - but as soon as we go into the opening credits with the Ectomobile screeching down the street as that goofy Ray Parker Jr. theme plays, I'm sold.





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NEWSCHUNKS for 04.25.09


Today we're introducing a new feature here at Monsters and Rockets. Along with the longer posts, I'll compile a few stories into bite-size newschunks for you to enjoy. So, pull up a chair for a steaming bowl of news.


RODRIGUEZ REBOOTING PREDATOR AND JETSONS: That headline tells you just about all we know for now - Sin City director Robert Rodriguez is planning big-screen reboots of The Jetsons and the Predator series. His Spy Kids pictures show that Rodriguez could probably make a fun and family-friendly picture out of The Jetsons, and I'm actually looking forward to seeing what he'll do with the Predator franchise. It hasn't been very interesting since 1980-something, so there's room for improvement, there. Rodriguez tells AICN the film will be based on a treatment he wrote many years ago, pre-Desperado.


HEROES SEASON 4 WILL ONLY BE 18 EPISODES: The good news? Heroes has finally been renewed. The bad news? There will be 6 fewer episodes than this season. Well, at least that will give the fans less to bitch about. I've gotten awfully tired of hearing that Heroes is the worst thing ever. (Click the picture above or this text link to purchase Heroes season 3 on DVD.)


DEL TORO CO-WRITING VAMPIRE NOVEL SERIES: Seriously, where is Guillermo del Toro going to find time to co-write three vampire books? He has about 17 pictures in various stages of development, including two big-deal Hobbit movies with Peter Jackson!


STRAW DOGS REMAKE COMING: Rod Lurie will film a remake of Sam Peckinpah's 1971 classic, with X-Men's James Marsden replacing Dustin Hoffman in the lead. How can this be allowed to happen? How can we stop it? Is there a petition we can sign


DREYFUSS CAST IN PIRANHA 3D: Fear.net reports that original Jaws star Richard Dreyfuss will appear in Alex Aja's Piranha 3D. Sadly, this will probably be Dreyfuss' most high-profile role in a while.


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MUSIC FROM SPACE: Klaus Nomi - LIGHTNIN' STRIKES

Friday, April 24, 2009


This feature is called Music From Space, and music doesn't get much spacier than Klaus Nomi. Start the day off right, with an effeminate, balding android singing Lou Christie's 1965 hit. (Click image at left or this text link to buy Klaus Nomi - The Essential.)





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Rorschach's WATCHMEN journal, read by Alan Moore in a very spooky voice

More Watchmen weirdness, this time via the I Heart Chaos blog. Watchmen writer Alan Moore reads Rorschach's psychotic journal entries from the book, in a voice that makes Walter Kovacs sound like the Cockney Satan. Jackie Earl Haley was the best thing about the recent movie version, but I think Moore actually has him beat for sheer, pee-your-pants intensity. I don't know the context of the clip. The sound effects make it sound like a professional job. Perhaps a radio segment, or a voice-over for some sort of documentary about the book?




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Himiko the Space Blob is coming to gobble up Earth


Millennia ago, Himiko oozed through the depths of space, leaving a glowing trail of purple slime that lit up the endless night behind him. When Himiko reached the planet we now know as Earth, it was a red-hot rock, still cooling from its painful birth. Himiko went to work, sprinkling our world with the genetic material that would one day give rise to the first fish, to dinosaurs, to the shambling apes, to us. And then Himiko retreated to the far depths of space, to patiently wait as he had patiently waited a thousand times before. He knew that life would arise on our world. One day, the planet would teem with noisy, angry, desperate life, land and sea and sky would be filled with the stuff, there would be life crackling in every stone of the little planet.


And then, not long after the little creatures of the Earth became aware of Himiko's existence, he would at last return. To feed.


OK, so maybe the unbelievably giant, unbelievably ancient blob that astronomers have discovered isn't really some sinister entity lurking out there in space, watching us with one big, glowing-white, hungry eye. But scientists have no idea what the hell that thing really is, so for now my guess is as good as anybody's.


Be prepared. Keep watching the skies for Himiko's return.


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TERMINATOR's Schwarzenegger will be back... For real!


After endless teasing and evasiveness, Arnold Schwarzenegger has finally confirmed he will have a cameo in the upcoming Terminator: Salvation. Variety reports:

Turns out Schwarzenegger has been secretly working with helmer McG and the effects team to reprise his signature role ... without lifting a finger.

A body-cast mold of Schwarzenegger, created when he first appeared as the muscle-ripped cyborg, provided the basis for a digital-effects version of his famous character. The figure appears in Terminator Salvation as a living, breathing actor.

Schwarzenegger viewed the resulting footage and gave his go-ahead just in time for McG to include the footage before the helmer completes his cut of the movie.

Schwarzenegger says the scene will involve the human resistance fighters invading Skynet HQ and confronting an entire squad of Arnie-model cyborgs. That muffled sound you just heard was my inner 14-year-old hooting in excitement.

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X-FILES' Anderson rumored for DOCTOR WHO


It sounds like the stuff of fan fiction: Dana Scully from The X-Files meets the Doctor from Doctor Who. (As you read this, half a dozen geeks scattered around the globe are each writing a paragraph where the Doctor gives an incredulous Scully a tour of the Tardis bridge, and then a temporal eddy sends the Tardis lurching off course and Scully is knocked off her high heels and into the Doctor's arms.) But if current rumors are to be believed, the Doctor really is about to cross paths with Agent Scully... Or at least the actress who portrays her.

England's Daily Express tabloid is reporting that Anderson will appear in Matt Smith's first outing as the Doctor, after he replaces the departing David Tennant. Anderson will allegedly portray the Rani, a morally suspect, Time Lord super-scientist who was played by Kate O'Mara when the character appeared on Who back in the '80s.

A source told the paper, "The Rani would be a perfect role for her as the character used to be regarded as one of the Doctor’s most deadly opponents. The team behind the show are keen for the next Doctor to have lots of new enemies and Gillian would be a glamorous and impressive addition to the list."

This rumor does make sense, in a few ways. Anderson's star has fallen a bit since her X-Files' glory days, and an appearance on Doctor Who would attract a whole lot of attention for both her and Who just as the show's producers are desperate to keep viewers interested after Tennant leaves. Doctor Who did a lot of stunt-casting during the Russell T. Davies era, and there are indications new show runner Steven Moffat intends to continue with this practice. Anderson already lives in London, so scheduling wouldn't be a huge obstacle. And Davies already half-kiddingly hinted the Rani could be back in the DVD commentary for the episode Last of the Time Lords. Finally, a change in the character's appearance from the O'Mara days wouldn't be an issue, thanks to the same Time Lord regeneration process that will explain the transformation of Tennant into Smith.

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WATCHMEN '80s-style Saturday morning cartoon

Thursday, April 23, 2009

This was all over the place around the time the Watchmen movie came out, but this blog wasn't online then. If you missed seeing it when it was new, this thing will kill you dead with the funny. (Well, assuming you're a Gen-X dork familiar with Alan Moore's graphic novel masterwork and cheesy '80s cartoons like Thundercats. If that's you, get ready to be killed! With funny!)


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BUBBA NOSFERATU, starring Ron Perlman as Elvis


When Bruce Campbell decided not to reprise the role of the elderly Elvis Presley for the upcoming sequel to the cult classic Bubba Ho-Tep, geeks across the globe were crestfallen. While Campbell had seemed an unlikely choice to play the King, he was excellent in the role and his performance gave the film a lot of heart. (Click on the photo at left or this text link to purchase the film on Blu-ray.)


But if Campbell was going to be replaced by anybody, Hellboy star and fan favorite Ron Perlman was the man for the job. Perlman looks even less like Elvis than Campbell did, but you just know Perlman will make the role his own. (Besides, he's had plenty of practice working with prosthetics.)


“I loved the original,” Perlman told Bloody Disgusting. “I was really surprised to hear that Bruce Campbell did not want to reprise the role. So we have his blessing. I know Bruce and I would never want to go in and replace him unless he said, ‘Hey man, I don’t want to do this one again, but good luck with it.’ So I loved the original. I love the fact that this one has Paul Giamatti in it, who I am a huge, huge fan of. And it's a cool script.”


Director Don Coscarelli has said that he put the reference to Bubba Nosferatu: Curse of the She-Vampires in the credits of the first film as a joke, and only considered the idea for real because of fan enthusiam. He's also imagined a franchise with a different actor playing Elvis in each film, which is an idea so absolutely stupid it's genius.



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CONSTANTINE sequel still possible


In an interview with SCI FI Wire, producer Lauren Shuler Donner discussed a few of the seemingly dozens of X-Men movies in various stages of development, saying that a potential Magneto movie depends on the success of the Wolverine picture and that she pictures First Class as a kind of superhero Pretty in Pink.


More interestingly (well, at least to me,) she also says that the long-in-development Constantine sequel isn't dead. (Her comments on the matter, in full: "Looks very good. Thinking about it. Looking for a writer.")


I thought the first film was underrated. It wasn't fantastic, but it had an interesting mythology and monsters, and it's always fun to watch Keanu try to act tortured. People who went in expecting the Vertigo comic were bitterly disappointed, but just as a movie, Constantine was worth seeing. Here's hoping that sequel happens. (Click on the image at left or on this text link to purchase Constantine on Blu-ray.)



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Kevin Kelly's "Inevitable Minds"


Earlier this month, Wired's founding executive editor Kevin Kelly posted a fascinating essay on the nature of intelligence, how it can arise in the most unlikely places, and how things we regard as mindless can actually have a surprisingly sophisticated kind of intelligence.

Plants share with animals an almost mathematical ability to optimize their energy efficiency while gathering the most nutrients for the least effort. Plant and animal "foraging" models are almost identical. Roots search for fertile areas while avoiding adversarial competitors.

The essay is full of revelations. I'm still trying to wrap my own monkey brain around the idea that dinosaurs could have been as smart as modern apes.

It is very probable that before they disappeared large dinosaurs were way ahead of archaic mammals (typically no bigger than gophers) on the race to reach complex intelligence. Because birds today with their small brains can surprise us, dinosaurs with much larger brains may have been as smart as apes. Had dinos not vanished under the assault of the heavens, consciousness might have been birthed on earth in a highly evolved reptile, rather than a mammal. We can easily speculate about an alternative world where Saurians ran the place.

Kelly makes intelligence seem so widespread that it's both awe-inspiring and a little horrifying to think about. Minds are everywhere. (Jeez, I already feel guilty enough about eating meat. Now I won't even be able to eat corn on the cob without feeling like a killer!)

(Pictured above is Dinoman, by Dale Russell, Canadian Museum of Nature.)

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MUSIC FROM SPACE: The Cure - LULLABY


If you've never seen this 1989 video until now, you are in for a seriously creepy treat. Robert Smith plays a dual role, as a sickly, bed-ridden boy (who has somehow summoned the energy to carefully apply his lipstick and eyeliner before collapsing into bed) and the ceiling-dwelling horror who wants to "love" him. Watching this thing, it seems impossible to believe that Tim Burton wasn't involved somehow... But no, it's the work of Tim Pope, it says here, a gentleman who has directed scores of videos for acts ranging from Fatboy Slim to Men Without Hats. Yes, Saftey Dance was his. (Is this video enough to atone for Safety Dance? Yes. Just barely.) With an insidiously catchy tune and truly nightmarish visuals, this is a video that gets under your skin and breeds. (Click the album cover on the left or this text link to purchase the Cure's Disintegration, featuring this song.)



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The LAND OF THE LOST movie spits on my childhood's grave

Wednesday, April 22, 2009


I am a complete, un-ironic, unapologetic fan of the original Land of the Lost. I love it the way I love the original Star Trek - fully aware of the camp, the iffy production values and occasional clunky episode, but savoring the amazing inventiveness, utter sincerity and pulpy excess of it all. With a trippy premise created by original Trek writer David Gerrold, some surprisingly dark scripts from notable sci-fi writers of the day (including Larry Niven, Theodore Sturgeon, Ben Bova, Norman Spinrad and Dorothy "D.C." Fontana) and sweetly hammy performances by Spencer Milligan, Ron Harper, Wesley Eure and Kathy Coleman, Land of the Lost was truly great pop trash, like a Jack Kirby comic come to life.

People who sneer that the effects of Land of the Lost look "fake" are totally missing the point - these are rubber dinosaurs, painstakingly animated on tabletop sets with painted mountain backdrops. With a set-up like that you're not getting reality, you're getting 24 handcrafted works of art per second. The effects makeup by future Star Trek makeup artist Michael Westmore was crude but effective. All the seams, zippers and obvious papier-mâché just serve to remind you that people made this thing, doing the very best they could with what they had. That's one of the great things about Land of the Lost; they didn't have the money or the technology to really do the crazy, cosmic things their writers dreamed up, but somehow, they found a way.

So, you can probably guess what I think about the upcoming Will Ferrell comedy based on the show. The trailers make me hiss and recoil like a Sleestak with a torch waved in his face.

I would think Hollywood would have figured this out by now: when a movie is based on a TV series, it's essential that the film reflects and honors what was best about the show. The Star Trek movies took the original series and expanded it to epic scale and it worked. The Bewitched movie, by contrast, was a confused, unwatchable mess made by people who somehow failed to understand that the reason audiences would go to a multiplex to see a Bewitched movie would be because they want to see a movie based on Bewitched, not some weird, smirky thing about a real witch starring in a movie based on Bewitched. When filmmakers look down on the property they're adapting, when they think they have to "make it fresh" and "introduce it to a whole new generation" with fart jokes and bad CGI, they usually end up with something that mocks the original, pisses off fans and fails to bring in a new audience. (After all, if kids didn't grow up with a show, why would they go to the movies to see a parody of it?)

Perhaps you're saying, "Hey, Monsters and Rockets, it's silly to bitch and moan about the Land of the Lost movie before it even comes out!" Well, you're very wrong. What are you, stupid or something? The Land of the Lost movie is the kind of turd-pile that you can smell three counties away. The film is a straight up, sneering mockery of the original, that's its entire reason for being. Rick Marshall becomes yet another one of Ferrell's self-satisfied, idiot man-children. Will and Holly aren't his kids; Will is a sleazy con artist who works in a gas station and Holly is Rick's British(?!) assistant. There are penis jokes. We will inevitably be treated to scenes of dino poop. And I don't even want to think of the "fun" they'll have with the Pakuni tribe.

If you grew up loving the original Land of the Lost, be sure to down a couple of Vicodin before you watch the following trailer for the movie, to numb the pain. Actually, you should probably take a few Dramamines too, to help control the inevitable nausea.




If you made it through that clip with your sanity intact, here's a SCI FI Wire interview with the movie's cast to push you over the edge. Anna Friel quite rightly wonders why she was cast as Holly ("I was a little bit concerned (...) First, A, I'm not American. B, I'm not 14. And C, I've not got blond hair. And I thought all the avid sci-fi fans are going to be like, 'What?'") and actually seems proud of herself for coming up with the line "googly-eyed wankers" to describe the Sleestak. Ferrell sounds a little defensive, insisting that the show both parodies and honors the original: "We just sort of opened up the comedy a little more (...) I'm sure there'll be some people who are like, 'Oh, what are they doing?' But you've got to consider that you have, like I said, a whole group of people that will be watching this for the first time without any knowledge that this was based on a prior story. So I think hopefully we kind of did both."

I will be covering the film in the weeks leading up to its release, partly because it is big news in geekland and partly because some masochistic part of me simply can't look away. But I warn you now that you can't expect unbiased reporting where this thing is concerned. The Land of the Lost movie isn't just raping my childhood, it's raping and murdering my childhood, burying my childhood in the backyard and then spitting on my childhood's grave. The more I learn about the film, the more I want to step inside a pylon, twiddle some crystals and journey to some dimension where this movie doesn't exist. I don't even care if that dimension has dinosaurs. Being eaten by a T-rex would be better than having to watch Ferrell make the talk shows rounds to pimp this abomination.

Look, I know how petty it sounds to rant about a bad movie based on a TV show I loved growing up. But for some of us, coming home to watch Land of the Lost reruns was the highlight of some unhappy childhood days. The show offered us an escape, but it also made us think. Like the best children's stories, it challenged us and didn't sugarcoat anything. In the Land of the Lost, parents die. Friends betray you. You have to fight survive, as you struggle to understand the ever-shifting reality around you. Land of the Lost is a low-budget, epic fantasy with both (rubber) feet planted firmly in our world.

(If you've never seen the original, click on the photo above to purchase the complete series on DVD. Take the money you would spend seeing the movie, and put it into something not evil. You'll be glad you did.)

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MUSIC FROM SPACE: Rogue Traders - VOODOO CHILD


Viewers of Russell Davies' Doctor Who reboot series will forever associate this song with the absolutely insane closing scene of the episode The Sound of Drums. High above the UK in a floating fortress, the Doctor has been reduced to a shriveled, aged husk and the Master stands triumphant with a little gizmo in his hand. He presses a button and shouts: "Here... come.. the... drums!" And then this song begins to blast as the sky rips open and billions of weird little robot-things come raining down on the terrified populace below.

It was an absolutely over-the-top moment, a scene you could not be ambivalent about. Either you were thrilled, or you probably decided right then that the new Who simply wasn't for you. But no matter what, there was one thing we could all agree on: this song rocks. Based around a sample of Elvis Costello's Pump It Up, Voodoo Child is the kind of song that sounds loud at any volume. There is something genuinely apocalyptic in it. Close your eyes, turn it up and feel the sky rip open.




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BLEEDING ART: Kittiwat Unarrom's tasty heads



OK, that picture looks pretty damn disgusting. But don't worry... Those are not really human heads! They're not even realistic rubber props from a movie set. These are bread heads. You could eat these heads. That guy on the left, you could take a couple of slices off of his skull and make a sandwich with them. Maybe you could enjoy it with some fava beans and a nice chianti. Hungry?

As a regular watcher of Ace of Cakes (a show every DIY/crafts/cake geek should be Tivo-ing,) I have some idea just how hard it is to create artistic baked goods. Just making a cake that looks like a book or a castle looks absolutely exhausting, so I can't even imagine how hard it must be to make a cake that looks like a real severed arm, right down the mottled skin and fingernails. I admire the heck out of this guy's technique, even if I never, ever want to be in the same room with him or his wonderful/disgusting baked goods. Forget Little Caesar's. This is Crazy Bread.

There are pictures of the artist at work on Inventorspot.com. Before you click over there, I warn you that some of the pictures could be disturbing and NSFW... But if your boss does call you into his office to fire you, at least you can defend yourself by pointing out that you were just looking at pictures of bread!


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TREK a hit with UK critics


This is news to do an old Trekkie's heart good. JJ Abrams' Star Trek reboot has premiered in the UK, and so far the reviews are raves. Here's the critics roundup, lazily cutted and paste-ified from the IMDB.com:

The Star Trek enterprise is back in business. British critics (the latest sequel premiered in London Monday night) and U.S. trade reviewers have greeted it with rapturous applause. In the Times, Debra Craine called the film "stunning" and observed: "Without sacrificing the majesty of Gene Roddenberry's humanitarian ideals or the humor that is Star Trek's salvation, Abrams's film is a rollicking space adventure that makes you fall in love with the original series all over again." In the Telegraph, Mark Monahan noted that it's "a big, long, glossy film. But it's also playful, irreverent and light on its feet, and it knows exactly when to leaven the universe-rescuing with a nice nugget of humor." Writing in the Guardian, Phil Hoad hailed the performances of the stars, concluding: "Combined, they, and this new voyage, have real optimistic force and uplift." In the Mail, Chris Tookey compared the movie to the sudden international stardom of a certain Scottish spinster. "The entertainment business thrives on surprises, as has been proven once again by the sudden elevation to stardom of Susan Boyle on Britain's Got Talent," he wrote. "And there has been no bigger surprise for me this year than this movie." And in the Hollywood Reporter, Ray Bennett predicted: "The box office should beam up enormous returns when the film opens on May 7."

Honestly, I want this film to be a smash hit, even if I end up hating it. Because a smash hit means more Trek... And what the world needs now, is Trek, sweet Trek. (It's the only thing that there's just too little of.)

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About This Blog

"Science fiction plucks from within us our deepest fears and hopes, then shows them to us in rough disguise: the monster and the rocket." - W.H. Auden

Who is he, this one who is called "Greg Stacy"?

Greg Stacy began the MONSTERS AND ROCKETS blog in April of 2009. Prior to that, he was editor of the popular sci-fi/horror news website DARKWOLDS.COM. He has also written for LA WEEKLY, OC WEEKLY, UTNE READER and LOS ANGELES CITYBEAT. He always feels weird writing about himself in the third person.

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