Thanksgiving is not Turkey’s favorite holiday.

     On the one hand, he is honored and feted throughout the country: school-children recreate his image with colorful construction paper cut-outs; he enjoys a prominent place in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade; and he is given a traditional pardon from the President of the United States.

     On the other hand, Turkey is the main feature on the Thanksgiving dinner table.

     In Navajo tradition, Turkey actually enjoys divine status as the representative of agriculture. In the Navajo creation story, as the Navajo people are fleeing from the encroaching flood waters of the fourth world to find refuge and safety in the fifth world, Turkey is the only one to notice the precious seeds that have been stored in pottery jars after the harvest season will be lost to the flood waters. Gathering a few seeds from each jar, Turkey manages to hide the seeds among his feathers. As he hurries to catch up with the others racing to beat the flood waters, he gets some help from Wind pushing from behind, as Turkey dare not fly and risk losing the seeds.  When everyone finally makes it to the safety of the fifth world, all are humbled by the fact that Turkey was the only one who thought to bring the most precious commodity of all—the people’s very means of survival and insurance against famine–seeds.

    Turkeys can run 20 mph and fly up to 55 mph. When Steven Spielberg was making Jurassic Park, he used film of turkeys running as a model for the velociraptors. Observe wild turkeys and you will see an echo of the dinosaurs.

    Miss Clara was my elderly turkey pal on our ranch; whenever I walked outside she came running to see me. Miss Clara’s head was all gray and her feathers a bit bedraggled. But, she was the matriarch of all the turkeys, and every single one of them- boys and girls alike- would step aside and allow her first dibs on their supper of cracked corn. 

     Turkeys are very social and take care of each other. For many months, I watched a group of nine turkeys travel about the ranch. They would wait patiently while one of their party, a small crippled female, followed to catch up. If she got too far behind, one of the turkeys would backtrack to accompany her, and often, several would walk slowly to keep her company. Over time, this turkey could no longer walk, and just sat by the feeder, where her friends sat quietly with her; they even stopped traveling about the ranch. We were able to catch the crippled turkey and take her to the wildlife vet two hours away, a ride in which she sat huddled and frightened in her carrier. When we arrived, we were told she limped because she had been shot in the leg. Despite excellent care, she did not survive to come back home.

     When I think about this sweet turkey, I wonder, would the person who shot her have any interest in knowing the sacred role of turkey in Navajo culture? Did that person have any concept of the courage and fortitude this turkey exhibited as she limped behind her other turkey friends? Could the person understand the compassion her turkey companions displayed in always waiting for her to catch up? And, what would the person have to say to the veterinarian and her assistants regarding the hours spent attempting to heal the turkey’s gunshot wound?

     To this day, Turkey’s feathers are marked with the colors of the seeds he carried in the Navajo beginning of time. When the forefathers of the United States were deciding on a national symbol, Benjamin Franklin lobbied on behalf of Turkey. Instead, we all know Eagle was chosen. But maybe, if more people knew the story of Turkey and the role he played in insuring the survival of agriculture, how honorably turkeys respect their elderly, and how loyal and compassionate turkeys are to each other, they might have chosen Turkey as our national bird, as well as think differently of their Thanksgiving menu.

     During this season of thanks-giving, thank Turkey for his generous role in insuring the survival of the seeds that bring the bounty of harvest gracing your holiday table. Visit Farm Sanctuary’s website www.adoptaturkey.org., where, thanks to your generosity, a turkey will spend her holiday not on a platter atop a table, but with a group of her turkey friends.

Copyright 2009 © Voice of the Animal

All Rights Reserved.

www.voiceoftheanimal.com

Si comes through once again with the offcut goods!

(Yeah, Gnargore credits filmers unlike some!)

I’m assuming it’s hard to find someone that doesn’t know about Jurrasic Park.  I assume this because I have better things to do than walk around asking stupid questions.  Whether you’re a fan of the series or the movies, or both (like me) there has to be one character, as always, that you like the most.  I’d like to know everyone’s favorite character, and why.

My favorite character is Eddie Carr, hands down.  Not only was the trailer-cliff scene one of my personal favorites in all of the movies I’ve ever seen, the part Eddie Carr played was critical in the storyline of the movie.  Without him Malcolm, Harding and VanOwen would have most likely perished.  It’s too bad that he died, but he saved the lives of his compatriots and that’s something you’ve got to respect.

Penguins at the Melbourne Aquarium

The next several days consist of watching all 3 of the Jurassic park movies, followed by all 3 of the Lord of the Rings movies – the extended version.  Needless to say, not our most productive.  I do get out into the city a few times and check out the Melbourne aquarium.  A bit on the pricey side ($33.00 entry), but I do at least get a discount with my backpacker card.  Here I got to see penguins, my first time seeing live penguins, quite a site! Very nice exhibit with snow and a ice pond for them to swin – and boy can they swim! When they’re not swimming they spend their days piling up rocks to lay on – looks like the one with the most rocks is in charge.

Melbourne Aquarium Shark Tank

Spend another few hours walking around, and stop in to see the shark feeding show where divers get in the tanks with sharks (and stingrays, turtles, and hundreds of fish) to feed them.  Mostly they just get sucked on my the giant manta rays.  Beautiful room, 2.2 million litres of water in this one giant display. Overall a great tourist attraction, but I think I am partial to the Vancouver aquarium back home.

RATING 4/10

Being a nerd hip hop fan, I always thought some of Jurrasic Park’s score would sound dope diggity funky fresh nasty over some nice beats.

But before I could—wait—Its been like 15 years since the J-Park hit the screets! Why did it take somebody this long? I mean with the internet and the kids? I don’t know. But credit finally goes to Swizz Beatz for filling this hole in the universe. Swizz’s apparently worked with everyone in hip hop and is dating Alicia Keys, but this is the first I’ve heard of him. Maybe I don’t like hip hop?  Is that the one with the turntables?

You can listen to the track in all its mediocre glory below.

jurassic theme (instrumental) –

JUN 22nd edit: Apparently this isn’t happening anymore… it was abandoned after the death of Michael Chrighton. (sp?)

Before i begin this post officially, i would like to say that i just spent 5 minutes looking at the word Jurassic, and thinking that looks weird, i’ve never seen this word before. Although as a dinosaur enthusiast, i knew i had many times. Then after beginning to write i glances back up at the same word, and thought it looked totally normal. Word Weirdness.  Official blog post starts now.

PEACE IN:

Hi, yesterday i picked up the Jurrasic Park Adventure Pack (all three movies) for 7 bucks at F.Y.E. I had never seen the thrid one, but i like William H. Macy, i love Tea Leoni, and Sam Neill was back in it again. I watched it, it very obviously not a spielberg flick, and its kinda short, but i like watching dinosaurs, so I’m ok with that.

Bad Effects dinosaur movies that i still love include, A Sound of Thunder, and 100 million B.C., not to be confused with 10,000 B.C. 

Anyway, for those of you who don’t know, Jurassic Park 4 is supposed to come out this year, also with Sam Neill. you can probably find some fansites out there with more info, but i htought i would just bring it to the table. Because no matter how bad they keep getting, i will always go watch dinosaurs eat people.

PEACE OUT.

Apparently the OldBoy remake we’ve all been fearing gets Will Smith as a lead. Studios Universal and Dreamworks are working together to make the film a possible big hit, hiring Steven Spielberg (From Taken, ET and Jurrasic Park Fame) to do the directing. Choi Min-sik = Will Smith? I didn’t think so.

I honestly can’t imagine OldBoy being remade. Over the years I’ve only noticed one of the remakes to be a good one (and I’ve seen quite a few.) Thank god Battle Royale’s been put off for a while and thank got Martin Scorcese did a great job with remaking Infernal Affairs to The Departed. Even though he could have told the whole wide world his movie was indeed a remake of the first two Chinese Infernal Affair films. But did he? no.

Americans need to come up with their own ideas. They’ve been making money on the back of Asian people, while thinking they’re good and original for doing so. But if it’s put out already, then why the hell would it be original? The Ring, The Grudge, Mirrors, The Uninvited… In one way I wish they’d just stop… but in another way… Well, I can’t wait to see what a mess they’ll make of the upcoming Death Note, OldBoy and some other remakes. At least they’re going back to the original manga for both of the movies. I really hope, with the bottom of my heart, that Death Note gets a cast which can overrule the Japanese one (even though I think there is no one else fit to be L than Kenichi)

PS: can you honestly believe they’re already talking about a The Chaser remake even though the film has only just been released?

Check the Google Map here: http://linkbee.com/GoogleSwineFlu

Make sure to click on the map to follow and check out the details of every case

Amazing Coverage,

Them

by Mike Resnick

Carol has a high threshold for embarrassment. You can’t be married to me for 42 years and not have one. But recently she has announced that she will no longer sit next to me at science fiction movies, that indeed she will sit on the far side of the theater and do her very best to pretend that she doesn’t know me.

She’s right. I’m just not much fun to be around at science fiction movies. I don’t know quite how this came about. I used to love them when I was growing up. I forgave them their lack of special effects and their B-movie casts and budgets. OK, so Them paid no attention to the square-cube law; except for that, it was as well-handled as one could possibly want. And maybe The Thing wasn’t quite what John Campbell had in mind when he wrote “Who Goes There?”, but it was treated like science fiction rather than horror (the same cannot be said for the big-budget remake), and the overall ambience was rational. As for Forbidden Planet, nothing I’ve seen in the last 50 years has stirred my sense of wonder quite as much as Walter Pidgeon’s guided tour of the wonders of the Krell. A decade and a half later Stanley Kubrick made a trio of wildly differing but excellent science fiction movies—Dr. Strangelove, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and A Clockwork Orange—each of which treated the field with respect. 

Then, just about the time I became a full-time science fiction writer, Hollywood started turning out one intellectually insulting science fiction movie after another. I mean, these things were almost dumber than network television shows. And I started muttering—louder and louder with each movie, Carol assures me—things like “No editor paying 3 cents a word for the most debased science fiction magazine in the world would let me get away with that!” Before long audiences would pay more attention to my rantings than to the movies.

I keep hearing that science fiction movies are getting better, that once George Lucas showed what could be done on the big screen we no longer have anything to be ashamed of when comparing ourselves to other genres.

That makes me mutter even louder.

So let me get it off my chest, which is a figure of speech, because actually the stupidity of science fiction movies is much more likely to eat a hole in my stomach lining.

And let me add a pair of stipulations:  

First, I’m only interested in movies that aspired to be arch-bishop, which is to say, movies with major budgets and major talent that really and truly meant to be good movies. I will not consider such epics as Space Sluts in the Slammer (yes, it really exists), as it seems not unreasonable to assume it was never meant to be a contender for the year-end awards.

 Second, when I speak of stupidities, I’m not talking about the nit-picking that goes on in outraged letter columns. If the math or science are wrong only in areas that scientists, mathematicians, or obsessive science fiction fans would find fault with, I’ll ignore it. If George Lucas doesn’t know what a parsec is, or Gene Roddenberry and his successors think you can hear a ship whiz by in space, I’m willing to forgive and forget.

So what’s left?

Well, let’s start with Star Wars. First, has no one except me noticed that it’s not pro-democracy but pro-royalty? I mean, all this fighting to depose the Emperor isn’t done to give the man on the street (or the planet) a vote; it’s to put Princess Leia on the throne and let her rule the galaxy instead of him, which is an improvement only in matter of degree. And it drives me crazy that in 1991 we could put a smart bomb down a chimney, and that in 2002 we could hit a target at 450 miles, but that computerized handguns and other weaponry can’t hit a Skywalker or a Solo at 25 paces.

Return of the Jedi? Doesn’t it bother anyone else that Adolf Hitler—excuse me; Darth Vader—the slaughterer of a couple of hundred million innocent men and women, becomes a Good Guy solely because he’s Luke’s father?

And what could be sillier than that final scene, where Luke looks up and sees Yoda and the shades of Darth Vader and Obiwan Kenobi smiling at him. That was too much even for Carol, whose first comment on leaving the theater was, “Poor Luke! Wherever he goes from now on, he’s a table for four.”

Then along came E.T., which, for a few years at least, was the highest-grossing film of all time, until replaced by an even dumber one.

You think it wasn’t that intellectually insulting? Let’s consider the plot of that billion-dollar grosser, shall we?

1. If E.T. can fly/teleport, why doesn’t he do so at the beginning of the film, when he’s about to be left behind? (Answer: because this is what James Blish used to call an idiot plot, which is to say if everyone doesn’t act like an idiot you’ve got no story.)

2. What mother of teenaged children walks through a kitchen littered with empty beer cans and doesn’t notice them? (Answer: in all the world, probably only this one.) This is the blunder that started me muttering loud enough to disturb other moviegoers for the first time.

3. While we’re on the subject of the mother and the kitchen, what is a woman with an unexceptional day job doing living in an $900,000 house in one of the posher parts of the Los Angeles area? (Even I don’t have an answer to that.)

4. Why does E.T. die? (Answer: so he can come back to life.

5. Why does E.T. un-die? (Still awaiting an answer, even a silly one, for this.)

6. When E.T. finally calls home, the lights in the room don’t even flicker. I’m no scientist, but I’d have figured the power required would have shorted out the whole city.

Cheap shots, Resnick (I hear you say); you’re purposely avoiding the films that were aimed at an adult audience, films like Blade Runner and Signs, for example.

All right. Let’s take Blade Runner (and someone please explain the title, since I never saw a blade or a runner in the whole damned movie). Great future Los Angeles; it really put you there. Nice enough acting jobs, even if Harrison Ford was a little wooden. Wonderful sets, costumes, effects.

But the premise is dumber than dirt. We are told up front that the androids are going to expire in two weeks—so why in the world is Harrison Ford risking his life to hunt them down when he could just go fishing for 14 days and then pick up their lifeless bodies?

But that premise looks positively brilliant compared to the critically-acclaimed Mel Gibson movie Signs, which grossed about half a billion dollars worldwide two short years ago.

Consider: would you travel 50 trillion miles or so for a little snack? That’s what the aliens did. If they’re here for any other reason except to eat people, the film never says so.

OK, let’s leave aside how much they’re paying in terms of time and energy to come all this way just to eat us for lunch. What is the one thing we know will kill them? Water (which also killed the Wicked Witch of the West, a comparison that was not lost on some perceptive viewers). And what are human beings composed of? More than 90% water.

So the aliens come all this way to poison themselves (and then forget to die until someone hits them with a baseball bat, which Hollywood thinks is almost as devastating a weapon against aliens of indeterminate physical abilities as a light-sabre.)

By now I didn’t just mutter in the theater, I yelled at the screenwriters (who, being 3000 miles away, probably didn’t hear me.) But I figured my vocalizing would soon come to an end. After all, we all knew that the sequel to The Matrix would show the world what real science fiction was like; it was the most awaited movie since Lucas’ all-but-unwatchable sequels to the original Star Wars trilogy.

So along comes The Matrix Retarded . . . uh, sorry, make that Reloaded. You’ve got this hero, Neo, with godlike powers. He can fly as fast and far as Superman. He can stop a hail of bullets or even bombs in mid-flight just by holding up his hand. He’s really remarkable, even if he never changes expression.

So does he fly out of harm’s way when a hundred Agent Smiths attack him? Of course not. Does he hold up his hand and freeze them in mid-charge? Of course not. Can Neo be hurt? No. Can Agent Smith be hurt? No. So why do they constantly indulge in all these easily avoidable, redundant, and incredibly stoopid fights?

Later the creator of the Matrix explains that the first Matrix was perfect. It only had three or four flaws, which is why he built five more versions of it. Uh . . . excuse me, but that’s not that way my dictionary defines “perfect.”

You want more foolishness? The whole world runs on computers, which means the whole world is powered by electricity to a far greater extent than America is at this moment. So why is the underground city lit only by burning torches?

I hit J above high C explaining to the screen what the least competent science fiction editor in the world would say to the writer who tried to pawn The Matrix Reloaded off on him.

Now, you’d figure Stephen Spielberg could make a good science fiction movie, wouldn’t you? I mean, he’s the most powerful director in Hollywood’s history. Surely if he wanted to spend a few million dollars correcting flaws in the film before releasing it to the public, no one would dare say him nay.

So he makes Minority Report, and to insure the box office receipts he gets Tom Cruise to star in it and announces that it’s based on a Philip K. Dick story. (Dick is currently Hollywood’s favorite flavor of “sci-fi” writer, this in spite of the fact that nothing adapted from his work bears more than a passing resemblance to it.)

And what do we get for all this clout?

Well, for starters, we get a future less than half a century from now in which the Supreme Court has no objection to throwing people in jail for planning crimes.

We get a scene where Tom Cruise escapes from the authorities by climbing into a car that’s coming off an assembly line and driving off in it. That one really got me muttering at a hundred-decibel level. Has anyone ever seen a car come off an assembly line with a full tank of gas?

We are told that the three seers/mutants/whatever-they-are can only foresee capital crimes. Even bank robberies slip beneath their psychic radar. But in a crucial scene, one of them predicts a necessary rainstorm. (I hit 120 decibels on that one.)

It’s also explained that they have physical limits. If they’re in Washington, D.C., they can’t foresee a crime in, say, Wilmington, Delaware. But the villain of the piece, who knows their abilities and limitations better than anyone, plans to use them to control the entire nation, which the last time I looked at a map extends even beyond Delaware. (140 decibels that time.)

OK, I’m too serious. These are just entertainments. I should go see one made from a comic book—Hollywood’s intellectual Source Material Of Choice these days—and just sit back and enjoy it.

Good advice. So we went to see Hulk. You all know the story; it’s swiped from enough science fictional sources. I didn’t mind the poor animation. I didn’t mind the idiot plot that had Bruce Banner’s father responsible for his affliction. I didn’t mind this; I didn’t mind that. Then we came to Thunderbolt Ross, the 5-star general—and suddenly I was muttering again.

I was willing suspend my disbelief for this idiocy, but alas, I couldn’t suspend my common sense. Here’s this top military commander, the film’s equivalent of Norman Shwartzkopf or Tommy Franks. And here’s the Hulk, who makes Superman look like a wimp. Now, you have to figure that even a moderately bright 6-year-old ought to be able to conclude that if attacking the Hulk and shooting him doesn’t hurt him, but just makes him bigger and stronger and angrier and more destructive, the very last thing you want to do when he’s busy being the Hulk rather than Bruce Banner is shoot or otherwise annoy him, rather than simply wait for him to change back into his relatively helpless human form. That, however, seems to be beyond both our general and our screenwriters.

Even the good science fiction movies assume that their audiences are so dumb that logic means nothing to them, as long as you dazzle them with action and zap guns and aliens and the like.

Take The Road Warrior (a/k/a Mad Max 2), which is truly a fine movie: well-acted, well-conceived, well-directed. And yet . . .

In The Road Warrior’s post-nuclear-war future, the rarest and most valuable commodity in the world is refined oil (i.e., gasoline), because the distances in Australia, where it takes place, are immense, and you can’t get around without a car or a motorcycle. The conflict takes place between the Good Guys, who have built a primitive fortress around a refining plant, and the Bad Guys, a bunch of futuristic bikers, who want to get their hands on that gasoline, which is so rare that it’s probably worth more per drop than water in the desert.

So what do the bad guys who desperately need this petrol do? They power up their cars and bikes and race around the refinery for hours on end, day in and day out. If they would have the brains to conserve a little of that wasted energy, they wouldn’t have to risk their lives trying to replace it. (And, while I’m thinking of it, where do they get the fuel to power their dozens of constantly-running vehicles?)

Then there were Spielberg’s mega-grossing dinosaur movies, Jurassic Park and The Lost World. The former hypothesizes that if you stand perfectly still six inches from a hungry Tyrannosaurus Rex he won’t be able to tell you’re there. I would like to see the screenwriter try that stunt with any hungry carnivore—mammal or reptile—that has ever lived on this planet. The latter film shows you in graphic detail (and with questionable intelligence) that a T. Rex can outrun an elevated train, but cannot catch a bunch of panicky Japanese tourists who are running away, on foot, in a straight line.

Although these two films are the prime offenders, simply because Spielberg has the resources to know better, I am deathly tired of the superhuman (uh . . . make that supercarnosaur) feats with which Hollywood endows T. Rex, who seems to be the only terrifying dinosaur of which it was aware until someone told Spielberg about velociraptors. (Give them another decade or two and they might actually discover allosaurs and Utahraptors.)

 T. Rex weighed about seven tons. By comparison, a large African bull elephant weighs about six tons, and could probably give old T. Rex one hell of a battle. But no one suggests that a six-ton elephant can throw trucks and trains around, break down concrete walls, or do any of the other patently ridiculous things T. Rex can do on screen.

And the list—and the intellectually offended muttering— goes on and on. In Alien they all go off by themselves to search for the creature; haven’t they learned anything from five centuries of dumb horror movies? At the end of Total Recall, Governor Schwarzenegger is outside for maybe six minutes while Mars is being miraculously terraformed. Just how long do you think you could survive on the surface of Mars in 100-below-zero weather with absolutely no oxygen to breathe?

Some “major” films are simply beneath contempt. I persist in thinking that Starship Troopers was misnamed; it should have been Ken and Barbie Go To War. And if that wasn’t a bad enough trick to pull on Robert A. Heinlein after he was dead, they also made The Puppet Masters, which was handled exactly like a 4th remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

Then there’s Armageddon, which seems to make the case that it’s easier to teach hard-drinking functionally illiterate wildcatters how to be astronauts in a constricted time period than to teach highly intelligent physically fit astronauts how to drill for oil. And Ghod help us, it was Disney’s highest-grossing live action film until Pirates of the Caribbean came along.

 And when I was sure it couldn’t get any worse, along came the stupidest big-budget film of all time—The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

Consider:

1. Allan Quatermain can hit a moving target at 900 yards in the year 1899 A.D. With a rifle of that era.

2. Bruce Banner—excuse me: Dr. Jeckyl—changes into the Hulk—oops: make that Mr. Hyde—and suddenly he’s 15 feet tall and even his muscles have muscles. He’s a bad guy—except when, at the end, the plot requires him to be a good guy and rescue all the other good guys at enormous personal cost, which he does for no rational reason that I could discern.

 3. Mina Harker is a vampire. She’s Jonathan Harker’s wife, and Jonathan, as you’ll remember, is the guy who visits Dracula and sells him an English estate. (I always felt Dracula shouldn’t have stopped terrifying realtors with just one, but let it pass.) Well, Mina is a Good Guy, and certainly, given her physical features, a more Extraordinary Gentleman than any of the others. She can fly (Dracula couldn’t), she can cross over water (movie vampires can’t), and she can command a combat team (honest) of half a million bats. She also drinks blood, but only of Bad Guys.

4. The Invisible Man joins the team. Well, no one reads H. G. Wells any more, so they announced that the original Invisible Man was dead and this cockney guy has replaced him. He spends most of his time being invisible in sub-zero weather, occasionally mentioning that it’s chilly without his clothes on, but he never gets dressed or goes inside.

5. Dorian Gray. Well, he’s got this picture, see? Oh, and he can’t be harmed. Cut him, shoot him, and two seconds later he’s whole, unharmed and unmarked. But if he should ever see his picture, he turns immediately and gruesomely and eternally to dust. Funniest action scene in the picture is a fight to the death (honest!) between Dorian Gray, who literally cannot be harmed or killed, and Mina Harker, who is already dead.

6. Captain Nemo is a bearded Indian who is a master of karate.

7. The only Victorian figure missing is Sherlock Holmes, so of course the youngish villain turns out to be Moriarty (who Sherlock killed when he was an aging professor a few years before 1899.)

8. And, oh yeah, there’s an American secret agent named Tom Sawyer, who’s about 22 years old—a really neat trick since he was a teenager before the Civil War.

I think it’s nice that the screenwriter brought back all these Victorian and pre-Victorian characters. It would have been even nicer if he’d ever read a single book in which they appeared.

How do they travel? In a half-mile-long 20-foot-wide version of the Nautilus. (And as this 2500-foot-long ship is going through the canals of Venice, even Carol couldn’t help wondering how it turned the corners.)

There is a convertible car. (After all, this is 1899. They hadn’t invented hardtops yet.) Allan Quatermain and two other Extraordinary Gentlemen have to drive down the broad paved boulevards (broad paved boulevards???) of Venice. There are 200 Bad Guys on the roofs on both sides of the street, all armed with automatic weapons. They fire 18,342 shots at the car—and miss. Allan Quartermain and his ancient rifle don’t miss a target for the entire and seemingly endless duration of the film.

What are the Extraordinary Gentlemen doing? They’re stopping Moriarty from getting rich by selling weapons to rival European nations. And where is he getting these weapons? Easy. He has built a two-mile-square fortified brick city/fortress in the middle of an ice-covered Asian mountain range, and filled it with thousands of machines capable of creating really nasty weapons. I figure the cost of creating the city, shipping in the tons of iron he has to melt to make weapons, and building/importing the thousands of machines required to build the weapons, set him back about $17 trillion. But he’s going to make $200 million or so selling weapons, so he’s in profit. Isn’t he???

Every single aspect of the film is on this level. Nairobi consisted of two—count them: two—tin-roofed shacks in 1899, but in the movie it’s a city. And it’s a city in clear sight of Kilimanjaro—which is passing strange, because every time I’ve been there it’s a 2-hour drive just to see Kilimanjaro in the distance. Quatermain lives in a place which I suppose is meant to be the Norfolk Hotel, but looks exactly like an anti-Bellum Southern mansion, complete with liveried black servants who speak better English than Sean Connery (who plays Quatermain and will be decades living it down).

It’s mentioned a few times that Allan Quatermain can’t die, that a witch doctor has promised him eternal life. In the end he dies, and despite his having repeated this story about the witch doctor ad nauseum, the remaining Extraordinary Gentlefolk take his body—unembalmed, I presume—all the way from the Asian mountains to East Africa and bury him there, place his rifle on the grave, and walk away. Then the witch doctor shows up, does a little buck-and-wing and a little scat-singing, and the rifle starts shaking as if something’s trying to get out of the grave. End of film. My only thought was: “It’s the writer, and they didn’t bury him deep enough.”

OK, I’ve really got to calm down. I’m starting to hyperventilate as I write this.

(Pause. Take a deep breath. Think of flowers swaying in a gentle breeze. Pretend they are not about to be trampled by a 45-ton Tyrannosaur that has just eaten a homo erectus that looks exactly like Raquel Welch, make-up and wonder bra included. Return to keyboard.)

I prefer science fiction to fantasy both as a writer and a reader. I prefer the art of the possible to the impossible, the story that obeys the rules of the universe (as we currently know them, anyway) to the story that purposely breaks them all. And yet . . . and yet, for some reason that eludes me, Hollywood, which seems unable to make a good science fiction movie to save its soul (always assuming it has one, an assumption based on absolutely no empirical evidence), has made a number of wonderful fantasy movies that are not intellectually offensive and do not cheat on their internal logic: Field of Dreams, Harvey, The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit, The Devil and Daniel Webster, Portrait of Jennie, even The Wizard of Oz and the Harry Potter films (well, the first one, anyway).

No, this is not blanket praise for all fantasy films. As I was walking out of The Two Towers I complained to Carol that I’d just wasted three hours watching what amounted to spring training for the real war in the next film. And about three hours into The Return of the King, as I was watching the 20th or 25th generic battle between faceless armies that I didn’t care about, I had this almost-unbearable urge to find an usher and say, “Let my people go!”

But for the most part, I find that fantasy movies don’t raise my bile the way science fiction movies do. How can big-budget science fiction films be so ambitious and so dumb at the same time, so filled with errors that no editor I’ve ever encountered (and that’s a lot of editors, including some incredibly lax ones) would let me get away with?

Uh . . . Carol just stopped by. She said she heard me muttering and cursing and wondered what the problem was. I invited her to read a bit of this article over my shoulder.

*Sigh* Now she says she won’t sit in the same room with me when I’m writing about science fiction movies. 

Elwood P. Dowd and Harvey

 ©Mike Resnick 2009

Originally Appeared in Challenger #12

Mike on a panel at WorldCon Denver 2008

Mike with Champions The Gray Lensman and Silverlock

Great News! The Flores Girl novel is available as a Free e-Book down loadable right from www.floresgirl.com. Just click here! You heard right, free and it is available in a number of popular e-Book formats such Adobe PDF, Mobi and Microsoft Reader. Amazon’s Kindle will be next and, of course, the free podcast is always available at podiobooks.com.

What? Has to be a gimmick, right? Perhaps the last chapter is missing, right? No gimmicks, I’m just trying to build an audience for the Flores Girl sequels. After 55,000 downloads of the podcast I figured it was time to up the ante. So I figure if you like the first novel a lot there is a good chance you may buy the sequels in the future, that’s all. So please download and enjoy guilt free or listen to the free podcast.

Cheers,

Erik John Bertel

Like I said yesterday, while I started a bit early, I wanted to talk about some of the incredibly talented people who’ve left us behind, and now faced with that prospect, I know that there’s no way I can truly do that subject justice. But every year someone famous dies, leaving behind a (possibly) nice body of work, and all we can hope to do is remember them and why we liked them in the first place, right?

“The fall will probably kill you!”

Paul Newman, 1925 – 2008. The George Clooney to Robert Redford’s Brad Pitt. My mother made sure that our household when I was growing up was always very pro-Redford, so other than The Sting and Butch And Sundance, I had to discover Mr. Newman on my own, but even for just those two classics alone, he deserves high notice on this list. And for Road To Perdition. And, of course, for his delightful line of salad dressings.

“Florida, Florida, Florida!”

Tim Russert, 1950 – 2008. Here was the pundit that you didn’t quite realize the worth of until he was gone. This was the everyday kind of guy who knew what he was talking about and wouldn’t let himself be bullshitted. Am I the only person that missed his wild infectious enthusiasm for the sports of politics this last election cycle?

“Who’s the man who would risk his neck for his brother man?”

Isaac Hayes, 1942 – 2008. I don’t think it even needs to be explained why this is such a powerful loss. Just listen:

We’re just gonna try to forget about the whole Scientology thing though, alright?

“I was never one to obsess about the past. Too much to do in the future!”

Sir Edmund Hillary, 1919 – 2008. Mountain climbing and philanthropy. Not too shabby. Hillary, if you don’t know is one of the first men, along with sherpa mountaineer Tenzing Norgay, to reach Mount Everest’s summit in 1953. When Hillary got back, he told his longtime friend, George Lowe, “Well George, we knocked that bastard off.” Awesome.

“One never knew, after all, now did one now did one now did one…”

David Foster Wallace, 1962 – 2008. A real loss. Not only a writer who had impressive output and influence, but who whose better days seemed to be laying ahead for him. Not so much, according to this very informative bit from Rolling Stone.

A remembrance of things past.

Harold Pinter, 1930 – 2008. A heavyweight of storytelling. Do I need to explain why Pinter is fantastic, do I? Do I really (though I still have some questions about The Birthday Party, but I’ll let them slide for the moment)? Maybe I’ll just throw out this clip as proof of the man’s immense worth:

That’s “The Betrayal,” one of my favorite episodes of Seinfeld, based on Pinter’s The Betrayal, but you can also find the entire episode on youtube, only re-reversed, which is actually kind of… unsatisfying.

Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus.

Michael Crichton, 1942 – 2008. The sad thing is that his dead didn’t have any effect on me at all, you know? And it is sad because when I was ten, Crichton’s books made reading and being smart and most importantly wanting to be smart and enjoy that kind of thing in your reading cool. For a long time, this was the author who released a small masterpiece every few years and typically backed it up with a new degree that just screamed authenticity about whatever his latest cautionary tale was about, but the last few books… Tremendous crap. Not just the writing, but the angles he approached them from (he didn’t believe in global warming and thought that SETI was more religious idealization than anything approaching near science) and petty attacks on critics. He finished one last book before he died and it will be released in May of next year. Personally, I’m crossing my fingers in hope of the redemption of a literary master.

“I want to be evil.”

Eartha Kitt, 1927 – 2008. Not only did Miss Kitt want to be evil, but she made me want to fall in love with an evil girl. An affliction I’m happy to have still not quite shaken off.

“…From my cold dead hands.”

Charlton Heston, 1923 – 2008. This one’s tricky, especially since in the last few years of his life, Heston’s come to stand for and be a proud symbol of a lot of the things I despise in this world. And yet, the man was a brilliant actor once upon a time…

…which may seem like a trite statement when coupled with a clip from Wayne’s World 2 (which is a brilliant movie, alright?), but it’s very indicative of how strong of an actor Heston could be, even in cameos. And cameos were what he specialized in back in the 90s. But try not to remember the man as the racist gun nut that he died as, but as the mega star of biblical classics and Touch Of Evil and The Omega Man and The Planet Of The Apes. Oh, and another thing: “Soylent Green is people!”

“Why so serious?”

Heath Ledger, 1979 – 2008. This is the very definition of an actor cut down in his prime. By the end of The Dark Knight, you’re just hungry for the return of this character the way that Ledger’s played him, but you want to run out of the theater and get your hands on everything this actor’s ever done before and devour it. And sadly, while there’s been some wonderful films in his filmography, there’s also been some crap, and he leaves behind too small of a legacy for an actor so tall in talent.

Shit, Piss, Fuck, Cunt, Cocksucker, Motherfucker, and Tits.

Just note that other blogs will merely refer to the seven dirty words you can’t say on television, but Counterforce goes there and tells you them flat out. We’re fucked up, nasty people, we are. But from there we go into the creator of that bit of comedy, George Carlin, 1937 – 2008, and Bernie Mac, 1957 – 2008. I list them together because they’re both hilarious comedians who’ve certainly made their mark but also because I’m not huge fans of them, but for similar reasons on opposite ends of the sprectrum. Growing up, I wasn’t exposed to too much Carlin, but more of the people who were inspired by him, and yet somehow, I feel like I was more exposed to the comedians who inspired Mac. Somewhere in there is a happy medium in which I respect both of these funny men.

Countdown To Mystery.

Steve Gerber, 1947 – 2008. I end this list with the man you’ve probably never heard of, and that’s a shame. Gerber was a giant in the comics industry, creating Howard The Duck, which you can see up above (and yes, you remember the movie, you know you do)(cause it was hot, sweaty genius, it was)(nevermind it, though, go read the original comics, which were brilliant) and the awesome Omega The Unknown, not to mention work on hundreds of other titles. The man was loud and opinionated and he backed it up with awesome skills. Also, you can watch Howard The Duck on hulu, which you should totally go do right this second.

One of the world’s best writers in passed from cancer recently. Michael Crichton was the author of Jurrasic Park, the People Eaters (13th Warrior), and he the created of the hit television show ER. Crichton was constantly penning great material and he was a true role model for many authors.

Although many may not know the man behind these blockbusters, Crichton was a medical doctor turned novelist who wrote some of the world’s biggest screenplays. He will be sorely missed.

I survived for 1 minute 13 seconds.

If you are as bored as I was, go here.

Stan Winston, the guy who made so many movies go from okay to completely kick arse, and the man responsible for creating the Terminator endoskeleton, has died from cancer at 62. His final work was the Iron Man suit.

I’m actually really sad about this

Link

Crystal Ball #3: Wall-E

I have finally seen a full trailer for this summer’s Disney/Pixar Blockbuster, and I am enthralled. At first I was put off by the resemblance of Wall-E to the lovable vintage movie-bot Johnny 5 from 1986’s Short Circuit. However then I realized that the flat head, wide-eyed robot physically resembles many other cinematic attempts to convey human emotion through a non-human (think ET). As far as movies go, Wall-E will certainly be more of an ET than a Number 5, a milestone in movie magic as opposed to a film footnote in 1980s digital revolution (like *batteries not included.)

Wall-E is a story about the unthinkable. Or rather, the unimagineable: Robots in love. Star Wars teased this idea, in the courageously cute and chirpy R2D2 and the pompous and cowardly C3PO. However iconic Artoo and Threepeeo may be, I would hardly describe them as “loveable.” I haven’t done the research but I would guess that plastic models of the droids are more common than stuffed plush toys of them. They are intelligent, brave and useful, but hardly cuddly.

Wall-E, on the other hand, lends himself to plush toys as readily as any character in the Disney arsenal. He is made of metal, and in real life would certainly not be fuzzy or fluffy, however his fuzzy voice, cute mannerisms and curious robotic personality will no-doubt make Wall-E the target of many-a-toddlers’ hugs. Rather than just creating another loveable character to rival Woody or Shrek, Pixar studios is making the kind of movie magic that cinema is all about.

From the inception of the motion picture, filmmakers have dreamt of showing on screen things that exist only in the human imagination. Le Voyage Dans La Lune is a prime example of the infancy of movie magic. Modern filmmakers like Spielberg and Kubrik have become icons in realizing dreams on film. Think about Spielberg’s resume from a child’s point of view. He gave you an alien best friend, brought dinosaurs to life and made you think twice before swimming in the ocean. Spielberg’s collaboration with Kubrik on AI could be an important inspiration for Wall-E. AI tackled the idea of loving something artificial, but it imposed a human love on an artificial being, and barely touched on the artificial boy’s ability to love.

The enormity of Wall-E is in the ability of filmmakers to redefine the boundaries of human imagination. If a child in 1955 was asked to imagine what it would be like for 2 robots to fall in love, he or she would probably get annoyed at a “trick question.” Children now will grow up wondering if their parents’ cars get mad at them for spilling on the seat. They will wonder if their computers will miss them while they’re at school.

As I look into my crystal ball it becomes clear. Wall-E will be a mega hit this summer, and deservedly so. I hope I can get my hands on the plush toy.

Selamat merayakan hari Kartini buat perempuan-perempuan Indonesia.

Sore tadi (21/4), di gerbong KRL Ekspress Sudirman menuju Serpong, semua perempuan di gerbong yang aku naikin tidak ada yang berdiri, semuanya mendapat tempat duduk. Himbauan pihak PJKA (ato PJKRL ya..) agar para perempuan diberikan keistimewaan untuk bisa mendapatkan tempat duduk disambut positif para penumpang. Suatu hak istimewa pada hari Kartini telah diberikan, yang menurutku sih malah berlawanan dengan semangat emansipasi.

Di dalam KRL aku membaca harian sore Sinar Harapan dan pada halaman dalam terdapat sebuah artikel, besarnya seperempat halaman berwarna, yang menghimbau dan mengingatkan kita bahwa “kita wajib” untuk menjaga nyala Api Obor Olimpiade yang akan di arak di Indonesia. Kata-kata “wajib” di ulang-ulang dan masih dibumbui alasan kenapa Api Obor Olimpiade itu wajib dijaga. Tidak ada nama orang yang bertanggung jawab atas himbauan tersebut, entah pihak panitia di Jakarta ato Panitia Olimpiade Beijing 2008, cuma ada lambang kecil Olimpiade Beijing 2008 di kanan atas artikel.

Suatu kejadian penembakan yang berada jauh di daerah pegunungan Himalaya sana ternyata berakibat pada kewajiban penduduk Jakarta untuk menjaga nyala api dan akan menyebabkan kemacetan kendaraan di jalanan Jakarta pada Selasa sore (21/04) ini. Dalam kisah perangkap tikus, diceritakan bahwa suatu kejadian yang tidak berhubungan dengan kita secara langsung mungkin saja tiba-tiba akan menjadi persoalan kita. Dalam contoh ekstrim bisa dijelaskan tentang kepakan sayap kupu-kupu di hutan belantara Brazil yang menghasilkan tornado di Texas beberapa bulan kemudian, ato lebih dikenal dengan Butterfly Effect (Efek Kupu-kupu).

Butterfly Effect (Efek Kupu-kupu) ditemukan oleh Profesor Edward Norton Lorenz. Lorenz adalah seorang meteoroligist yang meneliti masalah prakiraan cuaca. Lorenz mengoperasikan 12 persamaan diferensial non-linear dengan komputer untuk melihat perilaku cuaca. Dalam melihat deret tertentu dari hasil perhitungan pada awalnya dia mencetak hasil perhitungannya di atas sehelai kertas dengan format enam angka di belakang koma. Kemudian untuk menghemat waktu, ia mengambil satu bilangan dari hasil print-out kemudian memasukan kondisi awal (initial condition) ke dalam persamaan dengan hanya menggunakan tiga digit dibelakang koma.  Ia pikir, dengan memasukan tiga digit, hasil yang diperolehnya takkan jauh berbeda, namun ia salah. Dari hasil iterasi, perbedaan digit keempat dan seterusnya menghasilkan percabangan-percabangan yang meberikan hasil yang sangat berbeda dengan perhitungan sebelumnya. Hanya sedikit perubahan pada kondisi awal, dapat mengubah secara drastis kelakuan sistem pada jangka panjang. Jika suatu sistem dimulai dengan kondisi awal dua maka hasil akhir dari sistem yang sama akan jauh berbeda jika dimulai dengan 2,000001 di mana 0,000001 sangat kecil sekali dan wajar untuk diabaikan. Hal ini menunjukan bagaimana kondisi awal sangat berpengaruh pada hasil akhir.  Fenomena ini, akhirnya melahirkan teori chaos.

Teori Chaos adalah teori yang berkenaan dengan sistem yang tidak teratur seperti awan, pohon, garis pantai, ombak dll : random, tidak teratur dan anarkis. Namun bila dilakukan pembagian (fraksi) atas bagian-bagian yang kecil, maka sistem yang besar yang tidak teratur ini didapati sebagai pengulangan dari bagian-bagian yang teratur. Secara statistik: Chaos adalah kelakuan stokastik dari sistem yang deterministik. Sistem yang deterministik (sederhana, satu solusi) bila ditumpuk-tumpuk akan menjadi sistem yang stokastik (rumit, solusi banyak). Sebagaimana teori-teori matematika lainnya, teori chaos juga mencari pola, dalam hal ini mencari pola dari data acak.

Pertama kali aku mendengar teori Chaos adalah ketika membaca novel Michael Chrichton yang berjudul Jurassic Park. Di situ disebutkan bahwa manusia tidak akan dapat mengendalikan segala sesuatunya. Bahwa kestabilan suatu sistem mempunyai potensi untuk menimbulkan kekacauan. Pengarang novel ini nampaknya begitu terobsesi pada teori ini sehingga pada beberapa novelnya kemudian masih juga mengangkat teori ini. Jujur aku juga terobsesi, terlebih lagi bila dihubungkan dengan sikap manusia yang demikian komplek kok bisa tidak terjadi kekacauan yang mengarah ke perang ato bagaimana dengan keadaan alam yang penuh bencana tetapi bumi masih tetap utuh seperti ini. Harusnya dengan kekacauan yang ada dunia sudah kiamat, bukan begitu ?!

Kembali ke laptop.. eh ke Api Obor Olimpiade tadi. Tidak dapat dipungkiri bahwa himbauan dan artikel kewajiban di atas berkaitan dengan telah adanya gangguan sepanjang perjalanan Api Obor Olimpiade Beijing 2008 di Eropa dan Amerika Serikat dari para pemprotes atas sikap penguasa China di Tibet dan rekor hak asasi manusia mereka. China dan Tibet berantem dan kita kena getah wajib menjaga nyala Api Obor Perdamaian, api yang diharapkan dapat “spread the ideas of peace, friendship and harmony” (Jiang Xiaoyu, BOCOG – Beijing Organizing Committee for the 2008 Games). Jadi sudah boleh kah kita tidak peduli pada kejadian di Tibet jika akhirnya kita ternyata kena imbas dalam pelaksanaan pawai Api Obor Olimpiade Beijing 2008 ?

Dengan kata lain, tindakan dan perhatian kita sekecil apa pun akan berakibat kejadian besar di dunia. Nah, para pemirsa pembaca yang berbahagia. Hari ini kita telah diingatkan dengan perjuangan seorang Kartini, hanya dengan menulis surat, suatu tindakan kecil interaksi personal, namun mampu membuat perubahan besar bagi perempuan-perempuan Indonesia. Berikan perhatian kecil pada Tibet, pada Api Olimpiade, pada perempuan di kereta, pada orang di sekitar kita, dan kita akan menciptakan topan. We will make a typhoon ! (musik You Raise Me Up, sebagai soundtrack mengalir pelan.  halah .. )

it has been said that something as small as the flutter of a butterfly’s wing can ultimately cause a typhoon halfway around the world .. [chaos theory]

In memoriam Profesor Edward Norton Lorenz, 23 Mei 1917 – 16 April 2008.