D&D Film Festival
Movie geeks can film their way to cinematic glory with the first-ever Dungeons & Dragons Fan Film Contest. The film contest is seeking 5-minute video segments dealing with D&D, with the winner receiving video editing equipment, a computer and a boatload of D&D stuff.
The deadline is September 1, 2006, which is unfortunate given that I only just heard about it in this month's Dragon, and I haven't heard a peep about it on any of the online forums, blogs and news sites I subscribe to. My friends and I have been kicking around some video projects tied to our group's 10th anniversary, and while I don't know if we'd enter anything, having a little more heads up would have been nice.
Revolution SF: Pirates! Eureka! Lost!
RevolutionSF's latest edition reviews the new SCI-FI Channel series Eureka and the movie Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Dead Man's Chest and opines on the long delays between Lost Season 3's, Part 1 (six weeks in the fall) and Part 2 (three months later, in the spring).
Wired.com: The Cult of Leia's Metal Bikini
Wired looks at the men (and women) obsessed with Prince Leia's golden bikini from Return of the Jedi. Writer Philip Chien interviews the bikini's designer, Aggie Guerard Rodgers, who offers some advice to women thinking of crafting their own. You can find more fan takes on the famous desert swimwear at the fan site Leia's Metal Bikini.
CNN: Neil Gaiman and Joss Whedon Interview
I'm not sure how I missed this the first time around, but CNN has an interview with Neil Gaiman and Joss Whedon that discusses their respective new (at the time) movies MirrorMask and Serenity. They spend considerable time talking about geek culture and its intersections (and occasional absorption by) the mainstream.
Here's an excerpt, where they talk about their fans self-identifying as geeks and nerds:
Neil Gaiman: I think the fan base is literate. You need to be reasonably bright to get the jokes and to really follow what's going on. That, by definition, is going to exclude a lot of people who will then get rather irritated at us for being pretentious and silly and putting in things they didn't quite get. But it's also going to mean that some of the people who do get the stuff will probably be fairly bright.
Books & Culture Corner: Truth, Justice, and…
Jeremy Lott writes about conservative reactions to Superman Returns, who are upset that Superman no longer stands for truth, justice and the American Way. Their logic is that since the editor of the Daily Planet replaced "the American Way" with "all that stuff", the movie itself rejects America despite the fact -- as Lott points out -- that Superman's primary task in the movie is to save America.
This film has problems, including the Man of Steel's sudden ability to throw mountains of kryptonite into orbit, but anti-Americanism is not one of them.
CNN: How William Shatner Changed the World
Star Trek really did help make the world a better place by inspiring a whole host of cool technologies. Read the full story.
Red vs. Blue: Previous Commitments
In which the Blue team learns how to talk to an alien using Andy the Bomb, while Red team continues their re-org back in Coagulation. Read the full story.
SF SIte: Serenity Review
Yep. It's good. Read the full story.
IGN: Adapting Heinlein's Harsh Mistress
This story has several great quotes from screenwriter Tim Minear, including "The other thing is to make sure the powers that be in Hollywood don't force you to turn it into some Marxist screed on socialism, when Heinlein was a Libertarian and it's about free-market capitalism." Awesome. Read the full story.
Uncle Orson: Serenity Review
How's this for high praise -- Orson Scott Card only wants Ender's Game to be made into a movie if it can be as good as Serenity. Whoa. Read the full story.