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.
Searching for Geek Vlogs
Historically I've ignored video blogs as I almost always have more time to listen to shows than watch them. That changed when Lucas was born, and I now find myself up at 3 a.m. with nothing but bad infomercials and reruns of SportsCenter to keep me company. Yes, yes, I know there's Tivo, but we don't have it and won't be getting it anytime soon.
So instead of staring absently at the walls as Lucas chugs down another bottle, I thought I'd look around the vlog scene and see what's around. Except I have no idea where to start; unlike podcasts there don't seem to be a ton of sites aimed at getting people to the vlogs.
Muddling through X-Men 3's Final Stand
When Bryan Singer left the X-Men franchise to direct Superman Returns, I couldn't help but feel a little dread. The first X-movie got off to an uneven start (mutagenic wave? killing off Senator Kelly?) but was ultimately satisfying. X-Men 2 succeeded on all fronts, evoking the comic books, introducing new characters, and telling a satisfying story.
And now we have X-Men: The Final Stand, a movie which struggles mightily with an ever-larger cast and myriad plots meant to satisfy diehard fans and newbies alike. Unfortunately, the plots and the characters caught up in them never managing to gel cohesively, ending with a movie that's the cinematic equivalent of one of veteran X-scribe Chris Claremont's rambling, multi-year, never-quite-explained plots.
What will the summer's best SpecFic movie be?
DVD Rack, May 2006: Triangulated Clones with a Flightplan
I took a break from watching Nowhere Man on DVD this month and last to get caught up on some movies, including The Triangle, The Island, The Aviator and Flightplan.
Libertarian Science Fiction
The impetus behind this page was a speech I gave at a meeting of the Pocono Libertarians a few years back on "Libertarian Themes in Science Fiction." As a life-long science fiction fan, and later a libertarian, the unity of the two subjects always seemed obvious to me. But at that meeting I discovered that many of my fellow libertarian-minded citizens either hadn't heard of the books and movies I was mentioning, or hadn't thought of them in a libertarian light.
Over the years, Nuketown has evolved into an increasingly libertarian webzine, but it never had a full-blown section dedicated specifically to the intersection of libertarianism and sci-fi. Now, with this page, it does.
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.