NIMOY SUNDAY!

Sunday, March 28, 2010

In all the excitement of last week's Shatner Monday marking the 79th birthday of the original (and still the best) James Tiberius Kirk, we neglected to mention that it was also the 79th birthday of Shatner's longtime costar and pal, Leonard Nimoy. (That's right, Shatner and Nimoy were born on the same day, the same year.)

Everybody loves the music of William Shatner, but Captain Kirk isn't the only Enterprise crew member who has recorded some classic tunes. Nimoy put out a few albums of his own back in the '60s and '70s. His song The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins is truly unforgettable - and I do mean it is truly unforgettable, you will get it stuck in your head until you want to end your life by stepping into a transporter and beaming yourself into the heart of the sun.

Now put on your pointy rubber ears and gather 'round as Leonard tells us about the bravest little Hobbit of them all. If this sample leaves you wanting more, you can learn everything you'd ever want to know, and quite a bit more, at Maidenwine.com. (Click the image at left to purchase the Spaced Out CD, featuring the music of Shatner and Nimoy!




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Zemeckis' ImageMovers shuttered, but freaking YELLOW SUBMARINE remake refuses to die


I was fiendishly happy to hear the recent news that Robert Zemeckis' ImageMovers mo-cap studio had closed its doors. It's not that I rejoiced in seeing a lot of hard-working animators unemployed or that I had a grudge against Zemeckis himself, but the closing of the studio meant that Zemeckis' hideously ill-conceived Yellow Submarine mo-cap remake probably wasn't going to happen.

Well, it looks like even the loss of ImageMovers isn't going to stop Zemeckis from producing a CGI horror show based on the beloved 60s classic. Heavy sigh. Heavy sigh indeed.

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MUSIC FROM SPACE: Queen - CALLING ALL GIRLS


In this little-seen music video from 1982, Freddy Mercury and company find themselves in George Lucas' 1971 dystopian sci-fi classic THX 1138, where they defeat the fascist android police with the power of glam rock and Freddy's mustache.

Sorry, no Shatner Sunday this week. I did a Shatner Sunday last weekend, I followed it up with a Shatner Monday and then other commitments prevented me from posting for the rest of the week... So I'm afraid that doing a Shatner Sunday today would just be too much of the Shat. (This blog is supposed to be All Things Geek, not All Things Shatner!)


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SHATNER MONDAY

Monday, March 22, 2010


Today is the 79th birthday of Mr. William Shatner, and voice actor Maurice LaMarche (you may know him for his work on such cartoon classics as Futurama and Pinky and the Brain) has declared that March 22nd is Talk Like William Shatner Day. So, come on, celebrate Canada's favorite son, and bust out your best shat! (Er, that sounded better in my head.) As I write this, it's after 6 PM PST, but... It's not too late to start... talking like... William Shatner. It's not... too late.

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LOST: THE ANIMATED SERIES

Sunday, March 21, 2010


Lost: The Animated Series designs, courtesy of illustrator Michael Blaine Myers Jr. and via Super Punch. The designs are very well done, if sometimes incredibly unflattering. (His Kate looks pretty anemic, and his Sawyer kinda looks like a Sasquatch. Seriously, what kind of crazy steroids is Sawyer taking?)

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Ben Folds serenades random weirdos online


Last night at a concert in North Carolina, Ben Folds signed on to Chat Roulette and proceeding to improv some songs about the random, shirtless oddballs he encountered. The songs are really funny and surprisingly catchy, and you get the feeling that Folds and his audience of two thousand Charlotte-ians really did cheer up some of these angry loners who had probably been lurking in the dark too long. Ben Folds can cure internet trollery! Who knew?

This clip is probably going to be all over the place online for the next day or two. Well, it deserves to be. Ben Folds just made an instant fan of me. (Some language mildly NSFW.)

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SHATNER SUNDAY: INCUBUS


Incubus is a weird and eerie 1965 horror picture, directed by Outer Limits creator Leslie Stevens and starring a young William Shatner, not long before he beamed aboard the Enterprise. It was shot entirely in the international, constructed language of Esperanto, specifically so it would seem equally foreign in every country. While Esperanto speakers have criticized the actors' pronunciation, the film looks great and is a genuinely creepy thriller.

(As of now) the entire movie is available to view on YouTube. Check it out above.

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New FUTURAMA trailer

Saturday, March 20, 2010


The first trailer is now online for the upcoming Futurama revival on Comedy Central. As much as I want to be aquiver with anticipation, those DVDs movies were pretty uneven and I'm just crossing my fingers this won't be like the Family Guy revival. (That is, something really good is canceled too soon, but then fan demand brings it back... And after a string of strained, middling episodes, it soon becomes clear that it wasn't actually canceled too soon after all.)

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The Death Star was built by termites


In Kevin Smith's 1994 indie hit Clerks, the characters Randal and Dante discuss all of the plumbers, aluminum siding installers and other blameless independent contractors who were killed by the destruction of the second Death Star when it was still under construction in Return of the Jedi. Well, apparently George Lucas was listening, because in the clip above he addresses Randal and Dante specifically. (Although he does misidentify them as Jay and Silent Bob.)

The clip begins with the Clerks scene, followed by Lucas' rebuttal.

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DOCTOR WHO... Cats?

Friday, March 19, 2010


Yes. Yes indeed. Doctor Who cats. Deviantartist Tardiscat is the one to blame/thank.

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Documentary about KING-CAT's John Porcellino in the works

Filmmaker Dan Stafford is currently working on a documentary about John Porcellino, the indie comics great who has been self-publishing his autobiographical comic book King-Cat since the late 1980s.

Porcellino is a chronically under-appreciated talent, and it's only in the last few years that his work has been finding a wider audience. While Porcellino doesn't seem to have had the kind of tragic youth that made Crumb such an indie hit, he's had more than his share of misfortunes, battling chronic depression and some serious health issues. Through it all, he has continued putting out King-Cat for issue after issue, year after year. The film is sure to be compelling viewing.


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And you thought Six and Baltar had a twisted relationship

Wednesday, March 17, 2010


From the 1980s Australian TV series Young Talent Time, here is a musical number in which a little girl is abducted by Cylons from the original Battlestar Galactica and taken back to their Base Star, where she apparently spends sleepless nights wandering the bridge in a constant swoon over all the shiny robot men around her. (At least, she seems like a little girl. But I wonder... Could she be the first of the "skin jobs"?)

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New Woodring graphic novel, WEATHERCRAFT, due in April!

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

I am an absolute, raving fanatic for the work of Jim Woodring. His surreal comics always stir-fry my brains, in the best way. I snap up his work as soon as it comes out, so I don't know how I've gone this long without hearing about Weathercraft, his upcoming graphic novel.

The book's story is set in Woodring's surreal, wordless Frank universe, and apparently Frank himself only plays a small role while his longtime pal/enemy Manhog takes center stage. This site offers a preview, including a couple of sample pages and a spoiler-heavy synopsis. The book is due to hit stores in April.

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SHATNER SUNDAY: NIGHTMARE AT 20,000 FEET

Sunday, March 14, 2010


If you caught last night's Saturday Night Live, you were treated to an amusing sketch parodying the classic Twilight Zone episode, Nightmare at 20,000 Feet. Jude Law had the William Shatner role - although, weirdly enough, it sounded more like he was doing an impression of John Lithgow in the movie version from the 1980s.

If you've never seen the original episode, waste no time and check it out above. It's worthy of its status as a classic, featuring a tense script, a weirdly adorable teddy bear monster and some really prime Shatnering. The young Shatner excelled at being either totally in control or totally out of control, and this story really lets him lose his marbles in the best way.

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David Lynch on politics, smoking and cats

Saturday, March 13, 2010

I had always heard that David Lynch was surprisingly conservative politically, given the transgressive nature of some of his movies. Well, it seems the situation is actually more complex (and confusing) than that. In a rambling, funny interview he gave to Nerve.com a while back, Lynch explained that he's basically a Democrat, but he's a reluctant one because he believes that Democrats treat smokers worse than cats.

"I'm a Democrat now. And I've always been a Democrat, really. But I don't like the Democrats a lot, either, because I'm a smoker, and I think a lot of the Democrats have come up with these rules for non-smoking. And I don't think that that's necessarily so bad, but they have to give the smokers a place. You're just like an animal now. Not a clean animal, but a mangy, soiled, urine-soaked animal with remnants, and you're sent outdoors. Animals on my dad's ranch were always kept outdoors, because they weren't like house pets. Now, house pets are treated way better than smokers.

"(Cats are) beautiful, they're brought inside, it's warm, and there're all these little toys for them. I saw on TV that there're even little steps you can get so they can crawl up on the bed in your room. And you can get two steps for the price of one if you order real soon. There are no f***in' steps for any smokers. There is no way to crawl up into bed to have a smoke. You're sent outdoors. And they don't give a sh** what the temperature is. Or if it's raining. It's beyond the beyond. And no one even spoke to me about this. I wake up one morning and it's reality."

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Are we born straight or gay? TORCHWOOD's Capt. Jack investigates

Thursday, March 11, 2010


Torchwood's Captain Jack is a new kind of sci-fi hero, a swashbuckling, omnisexual adventurer who divides his time between foiling alien invasions and bedding anything with two legs (and I'm not so sure that two is his maximum.) But Torchwood star John Barrowman is gay himself, and while Jack Harkness grew up in a culture where bisexuality is the norm, Barrowman struggled with his own sexuality growing up.

In this clip from the BBC science show The Making of Me, Barrowman investigates the nature of his own sexuality and learns some interesting things about human sexuality in general.

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TRON: LEGACY trailer online


The new Tron: Legacy trailer is now online, and it looks very promising indeed. The people behind this movie clearly know just what fans of the original wanna see, and they've loaded this trailer up with such welcome, old school sights as Flynn's Arcade, an original 1980s Tron arcade game and Bruce Boxleitner. We also get glimpses of the computer world, including a recreation of the young Jeff Bridges as the film's villain.

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HI-FI PIZZA OF THE APOCALYPSE 9: The CANDYLAND movie

Monday, March 8, 2010

Inspired by this apocalyptic moment from an old Daniel Clowes Eightball comic, Hi-Fi Pizza of the Apocalypse is a Monsters and Rockets feature where we chronicle the Hollywood rehashes, recyclings and recombinings that serve as ominous portents of the End Times.

After my previous Hi Fi Pizza post about the upcoming movies based on the stone-age video games Joust and Asteroids, Space Invaders and Missile Command, an anonymous commenter alerted me to the previously announced Candy Land movie. That is one serious sign of the apocalypse right there, friends. Here's hoping I still have time to finish this post before THE WORLD ENDS!

Etan Cohen - not to be confused with Ethan Coen - has signed on as Candy Land's screenwriter. Cohen has previously worked on things that were actually good, including 2006's Idiocracy and this year's Sherlock Holmes. Weirdly enough, Candy Land: The Motion Picture sounds exactly something you'd see on a movie marquee in Idiocracy.

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New ALIEN trilogy planned?


In an interview with Shadow Locked, original Alien art director Roger Christian confirmed that Ridley Scott's upcoming Alien prequel will be in 3D, and suggested a trilogy might be in the works.

"Ridley told me some of his ideas when we were here in Toronto," Christian said. "He has a very clear understanding of where this should go. They kind of stopped dead one of the greatest horror franchises there's ever been, and it had legs to go on. So I'm hoping he'll revive another three. The world certainly wants it, and the fans want it - everybody."

Well, not necessarily everybody. I'm still dicey on the prospect of one prequel, let alone a trilogy. The original film is a masterpiece and it is exciting to see Ridley Scott return to the franchise... But the guy hasn't made a sci-fi movie since 1980-something, and all this talk of 3D and trilogies has me worried. Frankly if they'd stopped after the original film in 1979, I would've been fine with that. I don't think the franchise improved on it any.

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Oscar, Oscar, Oscar

Sunday, March 7, 2010

I once heard Howard Stern refer to the annual Oscar telecast as "the Super Bowl for women and gay guys." I haven't been a gay guy or a woman recently, so perhaps that explains why I'm powerless to understand the appeal of the Oscars. (Then again, I can't abide the Super Bowl either.)

I'm a movie geek. I watch films for a living. I plow through silly magazines about movies; I watch silly TV shows about movies; I have a bookcase threatening to implode from the weight of the DVDs packed onto its shelves. I hold strong opinions about movies I've never seen. So why would I rather eat a live skunk than sit through Sunday's big telecast?

I'd like to ask you a question: Why do you want to watch? Do you really believe that if the Academy declares anything "best," that makes it so? If so, I have five words for you: Titanic, best picture of 1997.

I suppose if you were actively employed in the film industry, if you were nominated for an Oscar yourself or one of your friends was, then it would make sense that this show would interest you. But otherwise, unless you have some personal stake in it, why would you willingly subject yourself to a show that plays like a three-hour-long, hugely expensive high school assembly? Few among us would have the patience to sit through the entire Nobel Prize ceremony, a genuine celebration of the best humanity has to offer, so what is the appeal of watching a bunch of millionaires presenting each other with little golden trophies to celebrate their ability to cry on cue? For Christ's sake, people, what's in it for you?

The more I think about it, the more Stern's football comparison makes sense. There's a commercial making the rounds just now where a guy opens up his morning paper, sees the sports page headline, and mutters to himself, "How are we going to win the game on Sunday?" I always get stuck on that word we. On a fundamental level, I can't understand how this little schlub would think of some football team's victory as his own, any more than I can understand why some checkout girl in Des Moines gives a damn if Jennifer Connelly wins an Oscar. Are we all so alienated, so desperate to belong to something that we'll whip ourselves into a frenzy of identification over shows that could not be more boring if they were broadcast backwards and in slow motion?

If the Super Bowl is a celebration of the ghastliest aspects of conventional masculinity, a day when the people of the nation are expected to sit around in dark caves, drinking themselves into a collective stupor and bellowing like apes while they watch big men break each other's bones, the Oscars could indeed be said to represent the worst aspects of conventional femininity run amok, a license for people to gather in little covens and make bitchy remarks about who is who is wearing what and who has gotten fat.

Both of these extremes are simultaneously horrifying and tedious, and I just wish we could achieve some sort of middle ground. Wouldn't the Super Bowl be infinitely more compelling if it were played by glamorous folk in fancy evening wear? What if when a starlet's name was announced at the Oscars, she had to make a daring end run up to the podium, dodging other contenders as they tried to tackle her? Then we could all gather—the women, the gay guys and straights alike—and enjoy a spectacle that would be truly worth our heartiest bellowing and our bitchiest remarks.

But until then, you can count me the hell out.

(Ganked from an OC Weekly column I wrote in 2002. Other than the fact that I'm not working as a film critic anymore, not much has changed.)

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SHATNER SUNDAY: Shatner gets nasty


William Shatner is a complicated guy, and by many accounts (including those of some of his former co-stars) he can be a galaxy-class jerk. The same guy who can be such a charming rascal in interviews is also capable of being petty and cruel, and his misbehavior on and off the set has become the stuff of legend.

This clip captures Shatner in a dark moment, as his conversation with a befuddled director on a voiceover gig begins with surly irritation before morphing into a kind of joshing sadism. Shatner isn't just giving this poor guy the business, he's loving giving the guy the business. It's funny in a terrible, cringe-worthy way.

The clip is taken from an old episode of Howard Stern's radio show, and that's Stern and his sidekick Robin Quivers you hear interrupting the clip now and again.


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BOOSH's Noel Fielding beaten up by "chavs"

In a series of Twitter posts, Mighty Boosh star Noel Fielding has revealed that on Friday he was attacked in the street by three "chavs" (UK slang for a certain teenage toughguy type.)

Fielding Tweeted: "I hope the three chavs who just attacked me in the street for no reason don’t die in a horrific motorway pile up. That would be awful..."

He went on to report that he is "fine, just slightly furious" after the incident.

Fortunately, it appears that Fielding's hairstyle did not sustain any serious damage: "My hair has been xrayed and is spending the weekend relaxing in France with some friends (The Sideburns)."

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STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE making-of featurette

Saturday, March 6, 2010


I've always thought that 1979's Star Trek: The Motion Picture was a very underrated film. While a lot of people apparently find it sort of dull, I enjoy the eerie, Kubrick-like stillness of it, the way we take our time building up to the big moments and then linger on them when we get there.

This clip features a 10-minute featurette about the making of the film. If you're wondering why you're hearing the theme for Star Trek: The Next Generation, it's because the TV series actually recycled the theme from the film. The show also re-used some of the movie's sets and props and borrowed its redesign of the Klingons as guys with turtleshell foreheads, and the Next Generation characters of Riker and Troi were also basically recycled from the film's Willard Decker and Ilia! Love it or hate, but without The Motion Picture, there would've been no Next Generation. So eat it, ST:TMP haters!

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Ben Linus as a prison counselor


In this intense 1992 job training video for prison guards, Lost's Michael Emerson is a squirrelish, preternaturally calm prison counselor who tries to talk an enraged, Charles Manson-ish prisoner down from the edge. Knowing how things usually go for Ben Linus, I keep expecting the prisoner to get out and beat poor Ben to a pulp. (Either that, or Ben would pull out an extendable truncheon and break both of the prisoner's knees in like three seconds flat.)

(Via Sci Fi Wire.)

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EAGLES ARE TURNING PEOPLE INTO HORSES(!)

Friday, March 5, 2010


Playing March 12 at SXSW, Eagles are Turning People Into Horses, a pulse-pounding thriller that dares to expose eagles for the scheming little creeps they really are. If you miss seeing this film, and an eagle subsequently turns you into a horse, you'll have only yourself to blame.

(Via the Onion AV Club.)

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MUSIC FROM SPACE: Cartoons - WITCHDOCTOR


Watching this music video has fried my brains pretty good, so I'll let Wikipedia fill you in on the salient details of what you are about to see: "Cartoons, also known as Cartoons DK are a technobilly/glam pop band from Denmark, best known for their 1998 Eurodance cover of the 1958 novelty song, Witch Doctor by Ross Bagdasarian, as well as for their outlandish plastic costumes and wigs used in live performances as caricatures of 1950s American rock and roll stars. Many of their hits are Europop covers of old rockabilly hits."

Somehow that paragraph doesn't come close to capturing the full fizzy soda and Poprocks horror show that is the Cartoons experience. If you need me, I'll be way at the back of my bedroom closet, hunched over, rocking back and forth and muttering gibberish as I try to process the trauma of what I have just seen. The chesty Elvis bimbos. The sponge hair. The questionable racial imagery... That freaking song...

You're to blame, Mark Evanier of Newsfromme.com!

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HI-FI PIZZA OF THE APOCALYPSE 8: MISSILE COMMAND, SPACE INVADERS movies coming

Thursday, March 4, 2010

Inspired by this apocalyptic moment from an old Daniel Clowes Eightball comic, Hi-Fi Pizza of the Apocalypse is a Monsters and Rockets feature where we chronicle the Hollywood rehashes, recyclings and recombinings that serve as ominous portents of the End Times.

We already knew that multi-million dollar motion pictures were in the works based on the 1980s proto-games Joust and Asteroids. Now comes word that Space Invaders and Missile Command movies are also in the works. I don't care how much of an 8-bit fanatic you are, Space Invaders and Missile Command were just simple, ugly-ass games without any actual plots to base movies on. Seriously, Space Invaders is no more of a "story" than tic-tac-toe is! (If you're listening, Hollywood, I've got this script you should take a look at, about a heroic band of X's who battle against the repressive forces of the O's.)


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Margo Chase: The Woman Who Designed the Logos for Your Favorite 90s Shows

If you were a geek in the '90s, you were surrounded by the work of graphic designer Margo Chase, even if you never knew it. Her logos were almost everywhere, and her legions of imitators were everywhere she wasn't.


America had never seen a logo quite like the one Chase did for Francis Ford Coppola's 1992 version of Dracula. Somehow it managed to look crazed and violent at the same time that it was precise and elegant... In other words, it was an absolutely ideal signature for a vampire.




In the '90s Chase designed logos for musicians like Prince, Madonna and Cher, capturing their personalities with aggressively seductive fonts. Demonstrating her versatility, she also did pert, charming logos for the girly-girl TV of the era, shows like Felicity and Gilmore Girls. But she remains best known for the powerful logos she did for some of the best genre TV of the '90s.



Her logo for Buffy the Vampire Slayer was absolutely perfect for the series, a mix of feminine swirls, sharp and jagged type, and streaks and drops suggesting freshly spilled blood. (And did you notice the inverted cross? Right there in the center of the design, but just subtle enough that you could see it 10,000 times on your TV screen and never notice it.) It's no exaggeration to say that her Buffy logo probably did a lot to convince people that this wasn't just some silly little show for teenagers. Any show that starts with a logo like that deserves a second look.




Her logo for the Buffy spin-off Angel was composed of strong, masculine type that was also strangely broken and incomplete - an apt metaphor for a guy who had been alive for a few hundred years but was only now finding himself.







Chase's logos always found the essence of a show and put it front and center. Her Charmed logo was another beauty, a teasingly girlish font, with sharp thorns. Right away, you knew what you were getting. Magic. Sex appeal. Whimsy. Danger. All that, in seven letters.

But the problem with being a distinctive, popular graphic designer is that your work can become too tied to an era. By the late '90s, almost every vaguely occultish TV show, movie or CD featured some approximation of Chase's swirls, droplets and vaguely Celtic knots. By the new millennium the look had become passe, and even Chase had to move beyond it. Today she designs for huge clients like Target and the E! network, but while her logos are as striking as ever, it's hard not to miss the sinister playfulness of her best '90s work.

Let's be frank: the '90s were kind of an ugly decade. But in the midst of all that big hair and day-glow colors, Chase brought a new kind of gothic sophistication to pop culture. Next year, when the first big wave of '90s nostalgia comes crashing down on us, at least we'll probably see the return of the Margo Chase look. It's about time.

(Click the cover at left to buy the book Chase co-authored, Really Good Logos Explained: Top Design Professionals Critique 500 Logos and Explain What Makes Them Work.)


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TRON trilogy, TV series planned


In news that would've thrilled the bejesus out of me when I was 12, Disney is apparently planning two more Tron movies after the upcoming sequel, and beyond that they have their eyes on a Tron TV series that could debut as soon as late 2011.

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Domain squatting in Wonderland

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

A few months back, I did a little digging online and discovered, much to my surprise, that the url www.timburtonsalice.com wasn't taken. It seemed like a really weird oversight. I mean, Tim Burton had an upcoming movie, based on Alice in Wonderland. This was Tim Burton's Alice we were talking about. But nobody at Disney had thought to buy the url. So I bought it. For $12.

I've never tried "domain squatting" before, and didn't know what to expect. I didn't think Disney was going to cough up millions of dollars, but I figured that if they paid me even $25 for the url, I would've more than doubled my investment. What could it hurt to try, right?

Well, it turns out Disney wanted nothing to do with me. I called their LA headquarters a few times and was put through to PR people who acted like I was trying to sell them a dead gerbil. They were openly disdainful, I could actually hear them sneering over the phone.

It was weird. I owned www.timburtonsalice.com, and I was willing to let them have it for just about anything. Like, a free day at Disneyland? That would've been fine. If they'd sent me The Black Hole on DVD, I would've been fine with that. I wasn't threatening to post porn on the site, or doing anything sleazy like that. But they made me feel like some guy with a cheap suit and a greasy mustache, calling them up at 3 AM from a payphone outside of a 7-11.

So. Apparently Disney has no use for www.timburtonsalice.com. Go figure. I've posted a few Alice-related articles from this site over there, but that's it. It's just sitting there.

Anybody got any suggestions for what the heck I should do with it?

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Amazing original STAR WARS trilogy candid shots

Tuesday, March 2, 2010


Total Film has posted an absolutely awesome gallery of candid shots of the cast and crew clowning around on the set of the original Star Wars trilogy. It's bizarre to see C-3PO smoking a cigarette, Han Solo kicking back with a maskless Greedo and Princess Leia enjoying a tall can of beer at the Rebel X-Wing hanger on Yavin.

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GYM TEACHER: the saddest STRANGERS WITH CANDY reunion possible?


Fans of the late and much lamented Comedy Central series Strangers with Candy were elated a few years back, when the team behind the show (Amy Sedaris, Paul Dinello and Stephen Colbert) reunited for a film version. But since then we've waited in vain for the trio to bring us new, scuzzy adventures for Jerri Blank, America's favorite 40-something high school kid.

With Colbert having become pretty busy with his new gig at The Colbert Report, the odds are probably against a new Strangers project anytime soon. But Sedaris and Dinello are still looking for work, and in 2008 they reunited for Gym Teacher: The Movie, another comedy set in high school, with both of them acting and Dinello directing.

I know that my fellow Strangers nuts are probably in a tizzy right now, wondering why they never heard of this movie. Well, don't get too excited, folks. Gym Teacher is actually a Nickelodeon TV movie for kids, with Sedaris as a wacky school principal and Dinello showing up in an eyepatch for a cameo. It frankly seems like the sort of thing Sedaris and Dinello did because they needed jobs, and it's definitely not one for the Netflix queue. But if you're curious, here's a sample scene with Sedaris in action.



Heavy sigh indeed. I sure miss Principal Onyx Blackman.


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Bill Murray calls GHOSTBUSTERS 3 "my nightmare"


In his Monday night appearance on Late Night with David Letterman, Bill Murray made it very clear indeed that he's not interested in starring in the proposed Ghostbusters 3, and will only appear if he is killed off in the first reel. For once, he really didn't seem to be joking.

Murray discusses the film in the clip above. He spent the interview with one of his legs in traction because of a recent knee surgery, and in the clip he's wearing a sparkly costume allegedly designed by Olympic skater Johnny Weir. It was a funny interview, even though Murray appeared to be in some real pain and sometimes sounded like he had a miserable cold.

In the clip, it sounds like Murray had a blast making the Ghostbusters game. I don't know how he went from walking around New York singing the Ghostbusters song to himself to wanting nothing to do with the franchise, but hopefully he'll come around.

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Was Saddam Hussein inspired by Darth Vader?

Monday, March 1, 2010


Was Saddam Hussein inspired by Darth Vader? Michael Rakowitz's exhibit at the Tate Modern in London presents some fairly persuasive evidence that Saddam was a secret fan of the Lord of the Sith. Just wait until you see the helmets for Saddam's private militia...

(Note that the video above is not intended as an endorsement of the US invasion of Iraq. Just because Saddam may have been inspired by Darth Vader, that sure doesn't mean his regime was the Empire and George W was Luke Skywalker.)

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Surviving Pythons reunite for NOT THE MESSIAH


I've been a Monty Python fanatic for literally just about as long as I can remember. I first saw The Life of Brian on VHS when I was maybe 8 or so (thanks, Dad!) and by the time that Jesus was blessing the cheesemakers, I was hooked for life. Not so very long ago, if you had told me that four of the surviving Pythons (with John Cleese being the lone holdout) were reuniting for a comedic oratorio based on The Life of Brian, I would've fainted from sheer joy.

Well, that was before Spamalot. These days, a new Python project is basically going to be another big, showbizzy Eric Idle stage musical that the other Pythons basically endure because he's an old pal and these things sure do make a lot of money. It brings me no joy to say it, but Not the Messiah (He's a Very Naughty Boy) looks kind of awful, even if it does feature Palin, Jones and Gilliam briefly sharing the stage with Idle.

Sigh. At least it's unlikely that we'll be subjected to a Meaning of Life musical anytime soon. (I wouldn't be surprised if Idle is already working on one, but the film's episodic structure would be hell to adapt for Broadway.)

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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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