Since he's a baby boomer, his formative years were in the wake of Kennedy's New Frontier, when being an astronaut was considered the pinnacle of individual human achievement. So, within that context, a television show about The Final Frontier couldn't help but be his favorite.
Needless to say, since I didn't come around until 4 years after the original "Star Trek" had been cancelled, we pretty much watched whatever my brother wanted to watch.
Which, frankly, was fine, because that show is still, probably, my favorite of all time. I'm sure can practically recite entire episodes by heart.
Therefore, it should come as no surprise that, when I was 9 years old, the whole family, cousins and all, went to the theater to see "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan".
As I've said before on this blog, I cried my eyes out at the end of that movie, when Spock died.
I mean, we went home, and had dinner, and I was still crying, to the point where my father had to take me from the table, sit my down on the living room couch, put an arm around me, and say "I'm sure Mr. Spock is going to be alright."
Which, was, of course, true, all the way up until today.
Now, as I mention in my book, The Savior Inside You
, I absolutely wanted to be Captain Kirk. I mean, who wouldn't, right? He was the hero. He was in charge. Everybody looked up to him. He was smart and cool and brave. He got all the girls.
But everybody knows that Captain Kirk needs his best buddies, Dr. McCoy and Mr. Spock. Now, most people have someone in their lives who can provide the folksy, down-home, irascible wisdom that DeForest Kelly spun each week as the ship's chief surgeon. But no one had ever met anyone quite like Mr. Spock.
Mr. Spock was the true soul of "Star Trek". If the mantra of the show was to seek out new life and new civilizations, we, as the viewers, could literally do that every week just by tuning in and spending time with Spock.
The weird thing about TV characters is that, you see them week after week, you inhabit their fictional lives, you are compelled to care about them, to the point that some of us lose the ability to distinguish between the character and the actors that portray them.
So, beyond "Star Trek" reruns, I also spent a good chunk of my early 70's TV watching with Leonard Nimoy being my guide to the mysteries of the world through the old TV series "In Search Of."
In short, Leonard Nimoy, a man I'd never met, came to feel like a true family friend.
That is the beautifully weird alchemy that happens when you mix writing with performance to create a character that moves you like the living, breathing people in your life.
Oddly enough, on this day, when the world mourns Leonard Nimoy's passing, I find myself filled with more wistful gratitude than sadness. I am so very grateful how Mr. Nimoy's skill as an actor helped open my mind and heart to so much over the years. In a very weird way, I'm grateful for his virtual companionship, as I suspect are so many others.
Nearly six years ago, I wrote a post called "What Happened To The Future?" where I cried and moaned about the lack of imagination in much of what passes for modern sci-fi. Basically, we're all just retreading ground already laid by Ridley Scott and Philip K. Dick instead of introducing and proposing new worlds, new frontiers, new questions, etc.
Now, my complaint was born largely of boredom and artistic longing. But engineer/entrepreneur/would-be NYC mayor Jack Hidary suggests something deeper in this great little video from The XPRIZE Foundation (the people who sponsor competitions for innovations that can provide solutions to some of the world's most pressing problems). Hidary suggests that science fiction serves a social purpose beyond mere entertainment. And, frankly, I agree with him.
There's a line in the pilot for David Goyer's new show "Da Vinci's Demons", where the fictional Leonardo says that anything that can be dreamt of can eventually be built by someone. But you have to have the dream first, and it's the responsibility of artists of all stripes to seed our imaginations so that there actually are dreams to harvest in the autumn of our worlds.
John Carter Teaser Trailer #johncarter This was the best trailer I'd seen in years. Why? Because it made me want to watch a movie I had to turn off after the first ten minutes. They get around the big explosions problem by finding a piece of music that perfectly captures a FEELING that's at the heart of this story (after all, the original book was called "A Princess of Mars"), and then they cut the highlight scenes to match the building pace of the music. It effectively hides the horrible cgi characters that overpopulate and kill the movie. You feel like you get hints of something sweeping and romantic. It feels like David Lean doing a sci-fi film. Which says to me that there is actually an opening in the marketplace for a film just like that: something epic and grand and passionate set on other worlds. But, frankly, it hasn't been made yet. Star Wars: Episode II wanted you to think that it was it. Alejandro Jodorowsky's Dune could have been that (if he'd made it a 4 hour movie w an intermission, where the first half was Dune, the 2nd have was Dune Messiah, and the love story is about Paul and Chani). But no one has done it yet.
As much as I am a Trekkie and a comic book geek, I have to say that the movie I have been the most fired up to see all summer isn't "Into Darkness" or "Man of Steel", but Guillermo Del Toro's giant monsters vs. giant mecha battle royal, "Pacific Rim".
For anyone who's ever loved Voltron - lions or cars, take your pic - or old Godzilla movies, or even that crazy show Tranzor-Z, this movie has got to seem like a dream come true.
For instance: given the size of their brains, are the Kaiju (the giant monsters) actually intelligent? Like, can they strategize in combat?
And, most importantly, who, or what, is on the other side of that interdimensional rift at the bottom of the Pacific ocean that is mass producing these kaiju to exterminate the human race?
Any way, my hope is that this is finally a film that is really worthy of the 3D Imax experience. With a guy like Del Toro at the helm, my faith is very strong.
J.J. Abrams To Direct New ‘Star Wars’ Movie For Disney dlvr.it/2rLGv8
— Deadline Hollywood (@DeadlineCom) January 24, 2013
Now, a few thoughts:
more so that Star Trek, Star Wars is a space opera. In my humble opinion, "grandeur" is the key aesthetic sensibility. Widescreen. Very large depth of field. Very steady camera work so you can actually drink in the spaces. NO lens flares.
The world of Star Wars is actually very old. In many ways, it's a historical epic. Since the world has largely been in disrepair in the original trilogy, I'm guessing the new trilogy should show a renaissance. I think of Europe in the 60's, twenty years removed from the great war. Lots of rebuilding and construction.
Inevitably, someone in this new Jedi order is interested in more power. I'd like to see the origins of a new Sith.
After all of my crying and moaning, it looks like someone finally got the message and started bringing some true sci-fi back to the movie theaters. They weren't all successful, or even always good, but at least we're opening ourselves up to new possibilities again.
2013 looks just as bright
Not to mention Neill Blomkamp's follow-up to "District 9", "Elysium", and Alfonso Cauron's "Gravity", it should be an awesome year in the cineplex.
My earliest memory from inside a movie theater is watching Princess Leia dissing Luke Skywalker for being too short to convincingly impersonate a stormtrooper. I always remember the scene differently from how it was actually shot: some how, my 3 year old brain knitted together the stark black and whites from the hallways of the Death Star with this scene, so I always remember what is actually an all-black room as a high contrast black & white.
Weird, I know. Maybe it was just a bit of information overload for my developing cranium.
Point being, while I'm a much more rabid Trekkie than Star Wars fan, I basically know the dialogue from Episode IV by heart.
I remember when the Star Wars movies were good. Sadly, there's the kernel of a good story in the most recent trilogy, but the difference, as always, is in the storytelling details - the everyday choices made by a director on dialogue, on performance, on camera position, on edits. SOMEONE could have made "The Phantom Menace", "Attack of the Clones", and "Revenge of the Sith" into good movies.
There was a time that the film snob in me completely dismissed the idea of someone else making Star Wars movies because they're really George Lucas' magnum opus, but clearly George Lucas doesn't agree with me, and he's probably right.
So, my thoughts?
Hire JJ Abrams and Damon Lindelof. Unlike me, they really do froth at the mouth about Star Wars. And my namesake has gone on record on more than one occasion about why this whole Mitichlorians garbage completely defeats the entire point about The Force. A great starting place.
Do as many things practically and in camera as you can. The CGI is killing the dramatic tension of the action and it's distracting from the drama.
Yesterday we were blessed with previews and interviews about two very high profile film projects for next year: Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises and Ridley Scott's Prometheus, and I could not help but notice something a bit different from these two films.
There's a moment in The Dark Knight Rises trailer where Selina Kyle whispers into Bruce Wayne's ear:
"Did you think this would last? There's a storm coming, Mr. Wayne, and you and your friends had better batten down hatches, cause when it hits you're all going to wonder how you ever thought you could live so large and leave so little for the rest of us."
Meanwhile, over in the Prometheus world, Ridley Scott talks about how this is a movie about the origins of humanity itself, where one of the main characters, played by Michael Fassbender, is an android observing the human's reaction to the horror.
In other words, it's a true sci-fi movie.
Big ideas for, ostensibly, big summer popcorn movies.
Directors who actually have something to say about our world around us, and are not just interested in driving you into an seizure from 3-D effects.
In other words, I'd like to challenge my other screenwriting fellows out there (and, frankly, anyone else wo wants to jump on board), to write a sci-fi short story between now and, say, the start of Comic-Con 2010 on July 22nd, 2010.
And by "sci-fi" I mean based on some sort of actual science speculation or imagination. And that's a really broad term. I mean, technically speaking "Flowers for Algernon" is sci-fi.
And by "short" I mean less than 7500 words (the limit to be eligible for the Nebula Awards, I might add).
I'd love to get a head count to see who's in, and then we'll figure out what sort of forum or format we want to share these stories with the public (maybe some sort of blog governed under a creative commons license, perhaps).
And feel free to share this with whomever else you like that you think would be up for the challenge. The more the merrier.
So, I know many of my readers out there are fans. Here are some things that come to mind, now that the finale's been marinating in my mind for a week now. Beware of spoilers. Brain dump commencing:
First of all, I thought the finale was beautiful, and recasts the entire run of the show in an entirely new light. Done right, I think the way you end a story tells you what it's actually been about from the beginning. Just like Battlestar Galactica: they told you in the very first episode what the whole series is about when Adama asks "why are we, mankind, worth saving". In the same way, "Lost" told you very early on in the catchphrase "Live together, die alone."
Then again, I'm a bit bothered by the shifting motivations for Jacob & The Man in Black. I mean, is Jacob trying to convince the Man in Black that humanity is worth saving to convince him not to leave the island? Good luck with that.
I love the intermeshing (if that's really a word) of the mystical and the sci-fi. Electromagnetism as a catch all for all the weird time & space distortions on the island.
I really love the resolution of Ben's story. After all the horrible things he's done, he ready does still have some work to do, doesn't he? :-)
So, Miles, Kate, Frank, Sawyer, Claire, & Richard all escape. Somehow, I don't think this "Ajira Six" is going to get the same treatment as their predecessors. Can you imagine Frank trying to explain what happened to the other 40+ passengers on his plan? Can you say "jail time"? And, really, where are these others going to go from here? I suppose Kate becomes Claire's nursemaid, which means Sawyer probably won't stay to far away, which means Miles won't stay to far away either. Richard's path would be the most interesting after this.
Jack's story, while triumphant, is, ultimately, a very sad one. I mean, yes, he sacrificed himself and saved the world & all that, but only because he realized that he had nothing else. Whatever Jacob had set in motion for Jack at the very beginning had stripped his soul completely naked and left it laying in the street. Of course he'd take that job! Hurley still has a family that loves him. Kate has a child. Sawyer's too bitter. I felt really sad about what he'd come to by the end, despite his resolution in the afterlife.
And don't even get me started on John Locke! I suppose his demise ultimately served the purpose of catalyzing Jack, but, man, talk about the suffering of Job!
I LOVE the final confrontation with the Man in Black. May trump Sayid vs. Keamy as the best fight in the series. Just absolutely epic.
But, at the end of the day, the true triumph of the show is that they could accomplish something so vast & complex, but still make it ultimately in service of character, above all else. In many ways, Lost is the opposite of "The Wire", where story trumps all, especially character.
In short, a masterpiece of TV story telling. As far as genre shows go, very little can even touch it.
But, if you're a fan of Lost and you haven't watched the new "Battlestar Galactica", you are really doing yourself a disservice. The plot is not as complex, but the seriousness of the storytelling and the authenticity of character & performance are on the same level as "Lost". It's equally spiritual, and, like Lost, you don't realize just how much until the end.
Actually, now that I think about it, "BSG" is kind of the mutant love child of "Lost" and "24", because it's just as ruthless as Jack Bauer's home town, and just as political, but still is a good solid genre show firmly based in characters.
Always have been. Always will be. And I wear it proudly.
Heck, when I was in middle school, instead of joining Columbia House, I joined the Sci-Fi Book Club, where a new science fiction novel was shipped to my house to read every month.
Last week, the New York Times magazine published an article where the interviewed top authors in various genres and asked them to list their favorite books in their own genres. The one that caught my eye was William Gibson, author of the famed cyberpunk novel "Neuromancer"and his list of science fiction novels.
Now, long time readers of Macroscope know I've had a bit of a bee in my bonnet over the years about how modern day science fiction film seems stuck in "Blade Runner", largely because most sci-fi screenwriters today only reference other films instead of actually reading sci-fi fiction like their predecessors in the 60's & '70's. And, frankly, I criticize them because I am one of them. I've not read nearly as many classics in sci-fi as I would like, and I would really hope to change that.
If nothing else, how can you go beyond what's been done if you don't know where the edge is?
So, with that in mind, I'm curious to know, among you folks out there, what are your favorite science fiction novels out there?
And, by science fiction, I mean fiction that is in some way referencing some actual scientific theory. Fantasy like "Lord of the Rings" or "Chronicles of Narnia" don't count. And neither does "Star Wars", since there's really no underlying science at work in those stories.
And, with that in mind, here are some of my favorites. Not in any particular order, but, of course, the order the come to mind probably indicates a level of preference:
Frank Herbert's "Dune" series (I've read 4 of the 6 of his original series. Working on "Heretics of Dune")
Arthur C. Clark's "Rama" series (the 1st one is a bit dry, but after he teams with Gentry Lee for "Rama II" and the rest of the series, it's a pretty amazing treatise on evolving human society, literally in a bubble)
Isaac Asimov's "Foundation" series
"The Demolished Man", by Alfred Bester - perhaps the best prose depiction of telepathy I've ever seen or could even imagine. Just on a totally other level.
"Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency" and its sequel, "The Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul", one of the most underrated sci-fi comedies, courtesy of Douglas Adams
As I was making my way through the teeming, costumed, merchandise-clutching masses on the exhibit floor at the 40th annual San Diego International Comic Book Convention, better known as Comic-Con, I caught site of something that I'll not soon forget.
A young man in a wheelchair was wearing a t-shirt that said "I'm too sexy for my legs".
Ironically enough, three days earlier, I had the privilege of seeing the very first advanced footage of James Cameron's new film, "Avatar".
In "Avatar", humans are exploring and prospecting on the distant planet Pandora, which has an amazingly beautiful and completely alien habitat that is totally inhospitable to humans. To that end, eschewing traditional environment suits, the humans collect DNA from the indigenous inhabitants and genetically engineer alien/human hybrid bodies into which the human explorers can download their consciousnesses, giving them free reign on the planet. The protagonist, played by Sam Worthington of "Terminator: Salvation", is a paraplegic who becomes the hero of the story once he's freed from the limitations of his wheelchair-bound human form and gains the incredible abilities of his 10 foot tall blue skinned avatar.
Now, not only is "Avatar" a story about a man who is transported to another world as another self, but it's a 3-D film that lets the audience experience the planet Pandora as if it were a living, breathing, glowing, lush environment around them.
Moreover, the reason why it's taken Cameron 14 years to bring this movie to screen is that he's spent that time perfecting what he's called "performance capture", where, instead of just translating the general body movements of an actor to a CG character, they can actually translate the slightest facial nuances of an actor, capturing the emotion inherent in the performance. So, when I see a blue-skinned CG native girl yelling at the stupid humans screwing up her planet, I know just by looking at her face that it was Zoe Saldana on the performance capture stage.
But beyond that, Cameron took it to the next level by building a platform that actually renders the computer-generated landscape and creatures of Pandora for viewing THROUGH THE CAMERA, so that Cameron and his cinematographer can actually SEE Pandora and their actors as Pandora natives in the environment AS THEY'RE SHOOTING.
In short, he's made it possible to actually shoot on location on a planet that doesn't exist.
THIS is the essence of Comic-Con.
I once heard a man say that a reasonable man bends to meet the world, while an unreasonable man insists that the world bend to meet him. Therefore, all progress comes from the unreasonable man.
Those of us who proudly call ourselves geeks are very unreasonable.
Geeks like Jules Verne first dared to dream of poking the Moon in the eye with a rocket, and people laughed at the absurdity.
40 years ago this month, a man planted an American flag on that very same Moon and established a pinnacle of human achievement.
Geeks like Gene Roddenberry insisted on a world where all ethnicities worked together towards a common good and a man could ask a machine a question and expect an answer with complete sanity.
There's a little device on the other side of this room that, after it's finished recharging, I can make diverge every public document about that astronaut just by saying the words "Neil Armstrong" to it.
Geeks like Bob Layton imagined a world where an alcoholic can overcome his addiction and become a superhero.
Next year, Robert Downey Jr. will channel his own struggle with substances into a performance about that very same character in a way that will dazzle, amaze, and, perhaps, in some small measure, give hope to those who struggle in the dark.
We geeks know that just because we may not be the most popular or the most beautiful or the most politically astute or the most financially or athletically gifted, we trump each and every one of those people in faith, passion, belief, and imagination.
And there is nothing in this world, literally nothing that exists, that was not something that someone dreamed of first.
The costumed, fictional, GG-generated and otherwise genre based characters we celebrate at Comic-Con are simply representatives of the qualities we hold most dear, be it Batman's focused determination or Tron's rage against the machine or Green Lantern's fearlessness in the face of the blackest of nights.
And Comic-Con is probably the only place in the world where an entire city can be full of wonder for 5 days straight. Where Green Arrow can share a beer with Luke Skywalker. Where new worlds are revealed moment by moment, be it on a giant movie screen, or through a video game, or just within the pages of an indie comic book.
Part of me worries that all of the non-geeks who come to Comic-Con because they think it can help them make a few more bucks are a bit like the human interlopers on Pandora. But, in the end, if they want to thrive in our world, just like on Pandora, they have to wear our skin, too.
And who knows, maybe they'll take a little bit of that blue skin back with them for the Muggles.
Now, it may surprise you to know, given my recent post defending Michael Bay against his detractors, that I have NOT, in fact, chosen to pay my money to actually see Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.
A few weeks ago, I had the chance to head out to one of my favorite theaters in town, The Arclight, and, in addition to Transformers, they were showing a really smart little TRUE sci-fi film (i.e. a film based around actual science instead of fantasy) called "Moon", starring Sam Rockwell and directed by David Bowie's son, Duncan Jones.
The theater was also showing what looks to be a really juicy Iraq War film called "The Hurt Locker".
So, that was my choice that day: Transformers, Moon, or The Hurt Locker. Since I was really in the mood for something engaging, both emotionally and mentally, based on my current expectations of Bay and the reactions to the film from critics, I was pretty sure that Transformers was not that movie.
I took an informal poll among my online friends and got really intense lobbying for both Moon AND Hurt Locker. I mean, someone sent me a message from a car that a mutual friend heard about my choice and INSISTED that I had to see Hurt Locker.
In the end, because one of my buddies wanted me to wait to see Hurt Locker with him, I opted to see my original choice, Moon.
Which was a smashing film. Loved it. Absolutely no complains.
Why am I telling this story?
To illustrate that there's no reason for me to be angry or to hate Michael Bay. I suspect his movie might disappoint me, so I stayed away. Other people clearly seem to love it with a near cult-like passion (as evidenced by the reaction Roger Ebert got to his scathing review of Transformers). Good for them.
I think the trick is, we have to learn to resist the mind control.
If it's a small movie that could live or die a quick and humiliating death based on poor box office performance, go see it opening weekend if you can. If it's a movie that you're particularly passionate about (i.e. The Dark Knight or Star Trek, for me), of course, go the opening weekend to see it with the best crowd possible.
But if it's a monstrously huge release that you're not especially invested in, the studio will be OK if you wait until the 2nd weekend. Hear the buzz from actual moviegoers. When people say "it's mindless and has lots of explosions & Megan Fox", and if C4 & a hot girl are all you need for your $14, go for it.
I happen to be a fan of C4, so I'll probably still see Transformers at some point. I'm dying to see how they introduce Devastator and I'm pretty much a sucker for anything involving Ancient Egypt.
If, however, you want a quality film, and you see Transformers, and you find yourself disappointed, don't get mad at Bay. You should have known better.
So, I'm about a month away from starting serious casting for my feature film, and it occurred to me, for as many actors who want to be stars, how many of them are conscious of the responsibilities, from a filmmaking perspective, that stardom brings?
I'm reminded of a conversation Tom Cruise and Jada Pinkett Smith had with Tavis Smiley just before the release of "Collateral", where Tom said, at the time, "I've never lost the studio money". It struck me at the time because, honestly, it hadn't occurred to me that he, as the star, felt personally responsible for making sure that the people who invested their money in his performance would see a return on their investment.
As a director, I'm reminding myself that it's not just important to cast someone who can give a performance, but someone who can also be a responsible filmmaker: supporting the performances for the other actors, treating onset crew with proper respect, being engaged in the evolution of their character with the director and the writer, using their fan base to promote the film, and, in many, many cases, helping to bring in the money to make sure there even IS a film to make in the first place.
It sounds like J.J. was very blessed by Chris Pine's onset presence. He was the star of the film, and he knew it, and acted appropriately.
I hope other actors are taking note - if you want to be a star, act like one. And that doesn't mean being a diva. It means being someone that a filmmaker and a producer and a studio and your castmates can put their trust and faith in. Being a star is about having broad shoulders.
"The Earth is at ground zero of a Doomsday Singularity. The impact of Darkseid's fall is causing cracks to spread through all space sectors."
"John Stewart's still down there! Darkseid's dragging all our friends into Hell with him!"
"Then I say we go in after him, Guy. You, me, Kyle, anybody else who wants to.And we kick his ass."
- Green Lanterns The Green Man, Guy Gardner, and, finally, Hal Jordan, pictured here, in DC Comic's Final Crisis #5
Gotta love those cosmic superheroes with no fear. DC editorial may be a colossal train wreck, but this is easily the deepest, neatest, most broadly conceived superhero comic I've read in quite a while. Grant Morrison rocks.
As I've mentioned in the past, one of my favorite episodes of the original Star Trek is entitled "The Enemy Within" - a transporter malfunction creates two versions of Captain Kirk.
One is intelligent, wise, compassionate, yet indecisive.
The other is....
Well, see for yourself:
Forceful? Yes. Decisive? Yes. But also crazed, lustful, paranoid.
And yet, as Spock points out, while separated, neither one is capable of surviving without the other. In the end, as much as the two repulse each other, they're forced to literally embrace each other to both survive and lead.
So, I've been following the coverage of the growing lynch mob qualities of the Palin/McCain rallies over the last few weeks.
And let's be real about this: McCain may be the official party nominee, but Sarah Palin is really the standard bearer for this particular facet of the Republican party these days. Given the choice, I'm sure many of them would prefer to have her at the top of the ticket simply because they trust her more. In their mind, she's one of them, through and through. McCain is, sadly, just someone who's hitched his carriage to them on the vain hope that this pony will carry him all the way to the Oval Office.
Honestly, I feel sort of sorry for both of them.
McCain, because, after the abuse he suffered at the hands of Bush & Co. back in 2000, could not get over his Presidential fixation and has debased himself over and over again by cowtowing to Bush, Falwell, et. al., hoping that these people that he once scorned will finally let him in the club. Frankly, much of his career has been spent seeking acceptance from the "cool kids". Originally, he hoped that by being a rebel Republican, he'd be popular among the Hollywood & press elites. And it worked. But it wasn't enough to get him elected, because as far as most Democrats are concerned, he's still a Republican. One they might want to have a beer with, but a Republican, nonetheless. So he did a switch, seeking favor from within his party. But, by then, it was too late, he'd pissed too many of them off. And the only reason he's the nominee now is because everyone else in the GOP field proved to be unacceptable to at least one sizable faction within the party (Rudy's too liberal and Romney's too Mormon for the cultural conservatives, and Huckabee was too much of a policy lightweight for the neocons and finance conservatives). In short, everyone else's constituencies killed the one guy they were the most offended by, and none of them were paying attention to McCain, leaving him the last man standing.
Sarah Palin's just like McCain in that her ambition consistently overrides whatever better judgment she may have about her career. I get the sense that when she was approached about taking the VP spot, she must have said to herself "well, how hard can it be?" My sympathy for her comes from the fact that she'll probably go down in the annuls of presidential election history in the same breath as Admiral Stockdale or Dan Quayle as a figure of national ridicule. But don't be misled. Even if McCain loses, we've probably not heard the last of Gov. Palin on the national stage.
Of course, there are limits to my sympathy.
And I suspect that McCain didn't fully appreciate the Frankenstein's monster he'd created by turning Palin loose to stoke up her base with the notion that Obama might somehow be a member of some fictitious joint Black/Muslim sleeper cell.
And, for the record, I'd just like to say two things:
1. If I were Obama, I would stand up during that prime time speech he's going to give the week before the election and say "Yes, my full name is, in fact Barack HUSSEIN Obama, and I have about as much in common with with Saddam Hussein as Bill Clinton has with George Clinton. Think, people!"
2. "Muslim" != "Enemy". My family was all raised in Protestant, Methodist traditions in the country churches on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Yet, my uncle converted to Islam some 30 years ago. And I can tell you that he, his wife, and his six children are among the most thoughtful, considerate, compassionate, disciplined, spiritual people I have ever known. His Islamic faith has given him a core of inner peace and personal strength the likes of which I feel I have almost never seen among even Christian clergy. And the VAST majority of Muslims are like that. Blaming all Muslims for the actions of a man like Bin Laden is like blaming all Christians for the actions of Hitler. Or Jim Jones. Or Timothy McVeigh.
But my point is this:
Even if Obama wins in a landslide next month (which, according to FiveThirtyEight.com, has a better than 50% probability of occurring. Hope springs eternal), these people who are currently literally screaming for his head aren't going anywhere.
The fearful, the paranoid, the hateful - these, too, are very much part of America. Always have been.
And yet, in these very same parts of the country, you probably get the highest recruitment ranks from the military. The highest church participation and activism. These people love this country. Many of them have wildly different, and, in some cases, mutually exclusive view of what this country is supposed to be.
And, as long as no one is picking up a pitchfork or a rope, that's actually OK.
It's called democracy.
I know Kos likes to talk about "breaking their spirits" and Karl Rove was renowned for seeking a permanent Republican majority, the fact of the matter is, short of straight up genocide, neither side can ever get rid of the other.
No matter how much it disgusts or repulses us, that other America is still America. And we could not have what we have without it.
That's not to say that it's a good thing. Far from it. The provincial hatreds and prejudices and fears are, in my mind, a part of our national shame.
And the generational times are changing for the better. But I don't think any of us on either side of the divide should delude ourselves into thinking that we can ever be rid of the other completely.
So, with that in mind, we have to look for the common ground, where it can be found.
And, where it cannot, and it comes to a point where we have to lay hands on each other in a non-Christian way to resolve our differences...
Well, just the thought of that makes me sad. But I have to acknowledge that there may just be some people who are beyond reasoning.
At which point, like Jill Scott said, we just have to take off these rings and deal with it.
It's ALL America. The good and the bad.
But, personally, just like J.J. Abrams, I'm encouraged by the fact that Star Trek is making it's return in the same year that a transformative, hopeful figure like Barack Obama potentially becomes the new leader of the free world. It's no accident that Star Trek's Final Frontier was the projected future from JFK's New Frontier. I mean, who can dispute the Kennedy-eque qualities of a character like this:
Yes, it's always been a challenge. But I, for one, am filled with hope.
The hope that this country will have leadership again who will once again make us proud through their actions at home and abroad. The hope that we will find the means and the will to resolve our most pressing problems while capitalizing on our most golden opportunities.
I believe the cultural zeitgeist is changing. I believe the sci-fi worlds of "Blade Runner" and "Mad Max" where an outgrown of our sense that The Future was dying. But now, people have hope again. The future looks bright again.
There will always be serpents. But that doesn't make the fruits of the garden any less sweet.
But it's still pretty tasty - because the minute somebody is paying an A-list writer for a script, you can at least know that somebody, somewhere, is serious enough about actually making the film to put some real skin in the game.
My only concern is that Robotech is a MASSIVE story. I mean, originally, they were three separate and totally unrelated anime cartoons that the producers redubbed and smooshed together to make one big, epic story spanning three generations of heroes fighting successive waves of mecha-enabled alien invaders (namely, the Zentraedi, The Robotech Masters, and, my personal favorites, The Invid). To do it even sort of right, you really ought to do three separate trilogies, one for each generation.
And, perhaps that's the point. If I was a studio head, I would be salivating at the chance to launch a property with a massive built-in audience and 8 potential sequels. Especially since you only need three-film commitments from any one actor (so the costs are fairly fixed, as opposed to other franchises that become increasingly expensive from actors' salaries).
And, unlike most 80's cartoons, Robotech already had fairly sophisticated dramatic elements - real death and cross-racial romance and the cost of war. It doesn't need to be upgraded to adulthood like, say, Transformers. In fact, my other concern is that the studio might try to soften some of the hardcore storytelling at the end of each saga in hopes of "sending people home happy".
Just tell a good story, man. That'll make people happy enough.
Then again, Kasdan did write "Empire Strikes Back". Maybe I shouldn't be concerned.
And I do think Tobey Maguire would make a pretty good Rick Hunter. And Katee Sackhoff is the obvious choice for Dana Sterling. Dare I suggest Grace Park is Lin Minmei?
Actually, the more I think of it, the more I realize Ron Moore is totally jacking Robotech tropes for Battlestar Galactica. Edward James Olmos is a total shout-out to Captain Gloval. The tone and lessons about war are also very similar, as well as the effect humanity has on alien cultures.
In short, I'm still anticipating the nerd-gasm. But, done right, this could be the "Lord of The Rings" for giant robot sci-fi summer action movies. I have renewed hope.
I blogged about this over the summer, but I really feel like this was one of the most overlooked films of the year. This is something you should really see in a theater, but catch it however you can.
, I absolutely wanted to be Captain Kirk. I mean, who wouldn't, right? He was the hero. He was in charge. Everybody looked up to him. He was smart and cool and brave. He got all the girls. 
