Republibot

REALSPACE: America Turns It's Back On Space

Republibot 3.0 — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0000

I actually posted this a while back here ( http://www.republibot.com/content/well-thats-it-space-age-over ), but I think it bears repeating, let we forget.

There have been a number of huge space-related decisions starting with the Obama campaign, which have caused me a lot of concern, moments of anger, and some genuine disgust. Regular readers of our little blog here will know that I’m not a reactionary kind of guy. I don’t hate the other party simply because they’re the other party, I don’t generally attack them. I do occasionally tease ‘em and I’m pretty open in my confusion about their thought processes, which frequently seem self-contradictory to me. I’m not that guy. I believe in America, I believe in the Two-Party system, I believe that the system is generally self-regulating, and if either side goes too far, the people will vote the extremists out of office.

That said, I don’t know what - aside from anger - to make of this: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100128/ap_on_sc/us_sci_nasa_future;_ylt=AlOSXKKwr6eC9qLiuX8_qBsPLBIF;_ylu=X3oDMTJqMDJrNGU1BGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMTAwMTI4L3VzX3NjaV9uYXNhX2Z1dHVyZQRjcG9zAzEEcG9zAzEEc2VjA3luX3RvcF9zdG9yeQRzbGsDbmFzYXRvZ2V0bW9y

Following the Columbia Disaster in 2003, the government rethought our basically-inert space program. All we’d been doing for thirty years - a generation! - was spankin’ it in Low Earth Orbit. The Space Station is basically useless, and amounts to basically spankin’ it on a scale never before dreamed of. There’s no real research that’s going on that hasn’t been done a zillion times over in the previous generation. The Columbia’s mission was to do research on how weightlessness could be utilized for the manufacture of certain kinds of perfumes. Perfume research? Really? That was worth the lives of seven people and a four billion dollar spacecraft?

I’m pretty hard on NASA - and for good reason - but they are the only game in town, and it’s always been in the government’s interests (but not the people’s interest) to use the agency to limit access to space, not to expand it.

There were signs this was changing back during the Bush-the-Younger administration. We decided to retire our fleet of aviation coffins, we admitted we weren’t doing jack, we admitted we’d lost our way, and we decided to resume our lead in space. We began the development of new, less ambitious, but more practical spacecraft - the “Orion” - and a new generation of Heavy Lift Launch Vehicles (The Ares V). We began development on a new, reusable lunar lander spacecraft, and our sights were set on Mars. This was all a step in the right direction.

This “Project Constellation” wasn’t as ambitious as I would have liked, and it was thirty-five years too late, but a step in the right direction is a step in the right direction.

Well, this is all dead now, kids. The article I cited above openly states “the Constellation program is dead.” It goes on to state explicitly “What kills the moon mission is the decision to extend the space station to 2020, …That means the Bush goal of "moon by 2020 is dead. We can't afford using the station for five more years and going to the moon.”

So, once again, actual real research gets sidelined in favor of Orbital Spankery. Billions of dollars in R&D just thrown away - again - without any payoff. And of course all this will end up getting blamed on our previous president because our Current President can’t seem to take responsibility for their own actions. The War in Iraq? Bush’s fault. The existence of Terrorism in general? Bush’s fault. Prostate cancer? Bush’s fault. Girl Scout Cookies only available once a year? Bush’s fault. Inclement weather? Bush’s fault. Can’t get a date? Bush’s fault, or so we hear from the other side again and again and again and again.

To our Democratic friends - and I know we have a bunch who visit this site because we’re not kneejerk reactionaries - don’t you ever get sick of this? I don’t hate the president, I never hated the president, I don’t believe I’ve ever said a bad word about him, but don’t you wish the guy would stop blaming others, and *Start* actually *DOING* things?

I mean, we’ve spent hundreds of billions of dollars to buy piece-of-crap cars, but we can’t spend a fraction of that to go back to the moon? We can’t maintain a piece-of-crap space station, *and* a vigorous manned space exploration program at the same time? What are we, France? Did we loose a war and no one told me? Has it come to the point that we’re just willing to admit our grandparents were superhuman giants, and we’re just puny dumbasses content to drink microbrewery beer and download internet porn?

No. I’m sorry, but that’s not what I signed on for. If I wanted to live in an irrelevant ‘me too’ country, I’d have moved to Canada. We are Americans, dammit! The frontier is important to us. If we turn out backs on it, we’re turning our backs on ourselves.

It remains to be seen if Orion will ever get off the ground. My assumption is that it won’t, that it’ll be quietly cancelled a year or three down the line. Obama has favored postponing the already-painfully-slow development program. Even if Orion development continues, once the Shuttle is retired, we will be without spaceflight capability for a Decade! A decade! A decade during which Russia and China will be our obvious superiors; a decade during which we will be fighting neck and neck with France - the French, for God’s sake! - for third place!

Again, this is unacceptable.

Likewise, the opening of space to private concerns - which got really it’s only ever boost during the Bush administration - is teetering on the edge of government obstruction.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB40001424052748704541004575012112718455380.html

This isn’t surprising. I predicted this would happen pretty much the day after SpaceShipOne won the X-prize. Again, NASA - hobbled by the decisions I’ve already discussed - is fearful of any competition, which would erode their power, and also point out how badly they suck. It may be a tiny fishbowl they’re kings of, and draining all the while, but by damn they’re not going to allow anyone to threaten their power.

And yet…and yet there’s some hope here. I totally did not see this one coming: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/29/science/space/29nasa.html The idea that private companies might be free to do manned flights as contractors for NASA is promising. This is something that has been bandied about for quite some time, but never really given any official interest. This could, theoretically, solve at least half of our problem: How can we get NASA employees in orbit for their masturbatory fun-fests? If NASA can’t, or won’t do it themselves, well, perhaps Corporate America can help out.

We’re still screwed with regards to real exploration, of course. NASA won’t do that, and they clearly won’t let anyone else do it either. Still, with corporate launches comes the possibility of industrial development in space - something NASA has always staunchly opposed - and if we find an orbital cash crop, that increases the likelihood of companies attempting to find newer and better locations and resources on their own, regardless of what the government thinks.

So there’s promise there. Again, it’s a generation too late and not as ambitious as I would have hoped, but a step forward is a step forward…assuming it’s allowed to happen, of course. Like the Orion and Virgin Galactic, I seriously doubt it’ll ever see the light of day.

And of course neither NASA nor the government have expressed any interest in Space Colonization since the summer of 1975. The real purpose of space exploration is to eventually find - or more likely build - new places for us to live. Population pressure, environmental degradation, and diminishing resources dictate that we *must* find new horizons if we’re to survive as a species. We are entirely too defenseless and fragile here on earth, all our eggs are quite literally in one basked. All it takes is a big hunk of rock to fall from space, or a quaint little nuclear war, or the sun changing it’s energy output - which it does from time to time - and we’re done as a species. We need to find new places and new ways to live, and I’d prefer that we Americans are the ones to do it. I hate the thought of our people being forced to scrabble for Chinese or Russian leftovers.

So basically at this point I’ve had it. I’m disgusted. I don’t understand the Democrat’s hatred for space, for science in general, really. I hate NASA at this point, for becoming essentially the aerospace equivalent of the Vietnam war - pissing away an entire generation of brilliant people and abilities for no great purpose. I’m furious at the President’s weird drive to continue flogging a dead horse - and make no bones about it, the real reason Constellation was killed was because the Bush administration started it - I’m just….gah. Words fail me. NASA has been plagued with a lack of vision for most of its life, and of course our government has never been particularly good at planning ahead, but even still, I’d have never expected this level of blinkered philistine pig-ignorance in my lifetime. I give up. Maybe we, as a nation, really are too stupid to survive. Maybe we deserve to be demoted to irrelevant France level-projects from now on. Maybe we’ve just lost the will to lead the world. We’re told that the recent elections were all about disgust over Republican warmongery and incompetence, but what if it wasn’t? What if it was just a vote to roll over and go to sleep? What if, as a nation, we’ve simply become tired and old, and we prefer a good nap and a walk around the mall to actually going out and doing something productive. What if Obama’s great leap forward is simply a vote to take a nap, and then catch some Lawrence Welk repeats on PBS?

I’m increasingly, disturbingly of the impression that it is. Again, this is not what I’ve signed on for. But maybe we can fix this. Maybe we can fight back against this national ennui.

I’m not the kind of person to call for political action. I never tell people what to do or how to think - that’s more of a Democratic thing - but I would strongly urge everyone reading this to call their senators and representatives, and to express their utter disgust and contempt for the cancellation of the Constellation program, and the extension of our involvement in the International Space Station. I don’t care if your elected officials are Democrats, Republicans, or Third-Party Whackjobs; I don’t care if you, the reader, are a Democrat, a Republican, or a Tea Partier: we need to make our voice heard on this. We need to let them know that this is unacceptable, and if they don’t do something to fix it there will be hell to pay on the next round of elections.

We need to let them know that space isn’t just a pork barrel project to piddle away government funds pointlessly. They need to understand - and I don’t think they ever have - that space *Matters.*

We need to DEMAND our place on the frontier.

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THIS USED TO BE THE FUTURE: Project Constellation

Republibot 3.0 — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0000

So how long does it take for a vision of tomorrow to evaporate like last night's dreams? Not long at all. Sometimes something as trivial as a president who's been unable to keep a single one of his campaign promises, and decides to randomly kill a progam so it looks like he's not a completey toothless, inefectual leader.

The bottm line, my friends, is that last month Project Constellation went from being The Future to being something no different than all those Popular Mechanics covers from the 1940s.

http://www.nasa.gov/externalflash/CxEMM_SITE/index.html

and

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_constellation

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MOVIE REVIEW: “Moon” (2009)

Republibot 3.0 — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0000

When I saw my first trailer for “Moon” early last year, I knew immediately it was something I really needed to see. More than that - there’s a zillion movies a year that I do really need to see for this site, after all - this was something I really *wanted* to see. Alas, it was a comparatively low-budget art house flick that never went into wide release. The nearest theater it was playing at in my neck of the woods was three hours away. That’s three hours one way, a six hour round trip. There are limits to even my fanatical geekery, and while I am willing to fly across state lines to catch a really good concert, six hours in the car to see a 90 minute movie seemed…well…a bit much.

But you know what? I should have gone: the movie is that good.

It is, unfortunately, a very hard movie to review without ruining it for the audience. The entire film is built around a series of plot twists, one of them huge, the others still fairly jarring, and to reveal *any* of them does a great disservice to the film and the audience. Ordinarily I give some version of a play by play, but it would just be wrong to do that here, because this is a film best seen completely cold, with no clue what to expect.

What I can tell you is the basic setup: in the not-too-distant future - next Sunday, AD - there’s a guy played by Sam Rockwell, not too different from you and me (Unless you’re a chick, I suppose). Seventy percent of the world’s energy comes form Helium-3, mined on the lunar farside. It’s scooped up and refined by huge robotic ‘harvesters’, and Rockwell’s job is to recover the He3 and ship it back to earth with a rail gun. He also services and repairs the equipment. He’s got no companionship apart from occasional video-mails from earth, and an AI named “Gurtie.“ It’s a lonely, bleak job, and he’s been at it for about three years.

When we first meet him, he’s already in a fairly bad way. He’s long since stopped taking care of his appearance, he’s forgetting things, talking to himself, drifting off in mid-thought, apparently hallucinating a bit, and having long conversations with plants in the hydroponics lab. He’s not screwed too tight, and he’s well aware of it.

This is the setup for the film, and basically sums up its entertaining-yet-unremarkable first third. Then, at the conclusion of the first act, there’s a major twist which completely shakes his world and changes who he is forever. Not to brag or anything, but I saw it coming. I’ve read a lot of books, I’ve seen a lot of movies, and, though it’s not particularly germane, I’ve also listened to a lot of CDs. Eventually you pick up on things. People I know who aren’t as ubergeeky as myself - folks who aren’t head writers at SF websites, basically - have mostly told me that they were utterly gobsmacked by it. A few - say about 15 percent - likewise saw it coming.

It’s a pretty clever twist, and pretty huge, but it doesn’t exactly come out of nowhere. It’s set up furtively, and if you’re reasonably sharp, you can probably figure what it is before it drops on you. What really makes it remarkable, however, isn’t so much the twist, but the really interesting explorations they do with the changed premise *after* the plot twist. Then, right at the hour mark, we get another series of somewhat-less earth-shattering twists. When I say “Less,” I don’t mean they’re bad. Pretty much an entire lesser movie could be built around any one of these ‘lesser’ twists, but in comparison for the first one, we’re somewhat prepared for them, so they have a little less impact on us - as they’re designed to - but they’re pretty devastating for the protagonist.

Most movies have a fairly cut-and-dry three-act formula: Setup, Conflict, Resolution. This movie technically follows that format as well, but on a more accurate level, we have setup, new setup (Which is also a conflict of sorts) and Conflict/resolution (Which could also be argued to be a third setup, though I don’t think accurately.) I’m probably not expressing this well enough, but in non-writerly terms, basically act one is ripples from a stone thrown in a pond, act two is ripples from a different stone interacting with the first set, and the third act is all about the intersection of those ripples as they try to figure out how the hell to get out of the sorry situation they’ve found themselves in.

Storywise, the most brilliant ideas are the simplest. They’re nice and clean and simple and easy to digest, and then you realize as you chew on it that there’s a whole layer of complexity hidden within, and another behind that and another and another. This is that kind of movie: the basic premise, and even the big twist are fairly simple, and yet the more you look at it the more you see, the more complex it gets. Then, somewhere around the 45 minute mark, you can’t help but realize this is a DAMN smart movie. It’s quiet and character-driven, spooky and frequently unexpectedly funny, and sad and triumphant all at the same time. If Ingmar Bergman made SF films, and if he were capable of telling a story in less than epic length, this is the kind of film he would have made. It is lyrical and beautiful and made entirely for grownups. I can't imagine anyone who genuinely likes speculative fiction could possibly come out of this one without thinking that they'd just seen something pretty special.

Definitely, absolutely, unquestionably, if you like SF you *need* to see this film. The story is solidly in Philip K. Dick territory, with a healthy dose of John Varley thrown in, and that’s a good thing. Intellectually, it’s the heir apparent to Blade Runner. It’s not a pulse-pounder or a thrill-ride, but it is unquestionably the best genre film of the century thus far.

OBSERVATIONS

Irrespective of the plot, there are a lot of elements that really jump out at me. Duncan Jones - David Bowie’s son - wrote and directed the film, using a very spare style in both cases. This is a ‘decompressed’ tale, and Jones is content - or perhaps daring enough - to let long silences punctuate the film. Things progress slowly, but never boringly so, the so-called ‘dead air’ giving the audience time to let things set in even as we see the characters try to make sense of it. The periodic silences allow their confusion to mirror ours.

There are also some really interesting uses of sound in here. The soundtrack is likewise spare and restrained, essentially adding to the so-sterile-it’s-hostile feel of the sets. There are several great scenes where someone is trying to talk to another person who’s refusing to listen to them by various means - wailing away on a punching bag, or dancing like a jackass to Katrina and the Waves, or whatever. These are frustrating and funny, and there’s an interesting degree of parallelism in them.

Though there’s noting to really jump out at you, I’m going to say that this movie has the best, most experimental usage of sound I’ve come across in film in many a year.

The sets are beautiful, simultaneously original and feeling a bit reminiscent of Moobase Alpha and 2001 and perhaps the Ulysses Nostromo if they’d had a cleaning budget on that ship. They’re open and cheery and yet kind of oddly claustrophobic.

The special effects are restrained - no gee-gosh-wow zooms over the lunar surface, or explosions, or anything like that. We see enough, and what we see is good, but it’s used to emphasize both the beautiful/deadly nature of the lunar surface, and to emphasize the main character’s isolation and loneliness. Remember that scene in Apocalypse Now where Martin Sheen says that everything they did to make the Air Cavalry seem more like they were at home just reinforced how completely out of place they were? The effects in this movie do something similar, not in the same way, but, well, similar. When was the last time you saw a movie that made the moon seem mysterious and magical again? It’s worth the price of admission just for that.

The entire cast is really good, but Sam Rockwell gives a hell of a performance as a man who’s mentally and physically at the end of his rope, but who somehow keeps going even after he’s pushed too far. I can’t say more without giving away spoilers, but suffice to say it’s a grueling, difficult part to play, yet he manages it with apparent ease and nuance. I’d also like to single out “Gurtie” the robot (Voiced by Kevin Spacey) as possibly the best, most intriguing ‘bot since HAL 9000.

What are you waiting for? Go rent it. Now!

Duncan Jones has announced that he intends to do more films set in the “Mooniverse” (I just made that up. Ha!), though probably not any actual sequels. I can’t tell you how excited I am to see what he’s doing next.

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Episode Review: LOST:"Dr. Linus" (Season 6, Episode 7)

Republibot 2.0 — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 04:05:47 +0000

Play by Play

2004 Timeline-

Ben is trying to teach history to high schoolers- he obviously cares about his job and his students. Dr. Linus is put upon by the principal, who is a burned out administrator with delusions of adequacy. In the teacher's lounge, Arzt (!!!) and Locke encourage Doc Ben to become principal. He goes home and talks to his dad. His dad mentions that he brought Ben to the Dharma initiative and the island to improve Ben's lot, but they left early. Alex Rousseau is a member of his history club at school. He is tutoring her for the A.P. exams She's shooting for Yale, but is having difficulty. She refers to the principal as 'pervert'. Ben asks why she'd say that; Alex had heard the principal and the school nurse 'going at it'. Ben takes this information to blackmail the principal out of his job, but the principal holds Alex Rousseau's future in his hands. Ben Folds. (HA!), but Alex gets her letter of recommendation from the principal, and Ben has a little more 'juice'.

2007 Timeline-

Ben, Ilana and company are running through the jungle, trying to escape Smokey. During a rest stop, Miles reads Jacob's ashes and determines that Linus killed him. Ilana reveals to Sun that she is supposed to protect the candidates. Sun really would like to know what they are candidates for… and we still wonder whether Sun or Jin is the candidate. Jack and Hurley are wandering around when Richard pops out of the bushes and starts guiding them toward the temple, or so he says. He steadfastly avoids talking about himself, saying that his seeming agelessness is a gift from Jacob. Turns out he's also steadfastly avoiding taking Hurley and Jack to the temple. He has been there, and everyone is dead. He also seems to be a bit disillusioned with Jacob (and probably a bit irritated that for a dead man, Jacob doesn't seem inclined to shut up) Ilana takes a break from being a bodyguard and forces Ben to dig his own grave. Ben tries to bribe Miles into changing his story; Miles blows him off, pointing out that Nikki and Paulo had a fortune in diamonds buried with them. Richard walks them to the Black Rock, where he opens up the dynamite. He's having a crisis of faith that's making him suicidal. He asks for Jack's help in killing himself. Jack complies, but decides to have a conversation after lighting the dynamite's fuse. (Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to tell your life story, Richard, before you self destruct….) Jack explains to Richard that he understands that Jacob has a purpose that extends beyond his death, and that Jacob won't let them blow up. Sonofagun! They don't blow up! Smokey McLocke gives Ben a chance at freedom. Ben runs for the jungle, finding a gun where Smokey left it. When he gets the drop on Ilana, rather than shoot… he explains that he killed Jacob because Jacob betrayed him when Alex was killed. He had faith in Jacob, and everything he valued was taken away. Surprisingly, Ilana decides that he can stay among the living, and with her party. Jack, Hurley and Richard also join Camp Jacob, reuniting with the others on the side of (I was going to say 'light' , but I'm not sure that's true.) A periscope surveys this happy scene… and in the submarine, Charles Widmore and crew.

Observations:

Earlier this week, at one of our staff meetings, I posited a theory which is bearing some fruit: I believe that Michael (Ben Linus) Emerson , Naveen (Sayid) Andrews and Terry (Smokey) O'Quinn are the mysterious force behind Josh (Sawyer) Holloway's and Matthew (Jack) Fox's much improved acting ability. R1 studiously ignored it, opting instead for hula dancing on the conference table. R3 had a bit more interest, but was easily distracted by my laser pointer. Sigh. Anyway, I think I have more ammunition for that theory tonight. Michael Emerson's work on Ben Linus this evening was beyond anything I've seen him do before, He portrayed Dr. Linus in such a way that he was obviously Ben, but very much a Ben that had never had to go through the dreadful things that we witnessed in the 'main' timeline. And over in the main timeline, we saw Ben confess, repent and be redeemed in an utterly convincing and moving way. Ben was 'on the island' in the alternate timeline too… but was it the same island? I wonder... In another, but lesser, tour de force from Nestor (Batmanuel, Richard) Carbonell, we learn that he was 'touched' by Jacob, giving him effective immortality. He cannot kill himself, even though he wants to die. He, like Ben, feels betrayed by Jacob. Richard believed that Jacob had a plan, and J's death seemed to belie that. When Jack, in a sudden burst of faith, shows Richard that Jacob's machinations are still working by playing chicken with a stick of dynamite. Interesting that Jack is now a man of faith and McLocke is pragmatic now. Jacob seems to endow some of his 'pawns' (for lack of a better word) with powers. I think Miles, Hurley and Richard were all gifted in order to make Jacob's reach extend beyond his own death. One thing that might get lost (ha!) in all of this: Ben believed in Jacob, and everything he did, he did because of his faith. When he said to Michael WAAAY back when:"We're the good guys", he meant it. It seems to me that when we leave this series, we'll be left with some of the big questions- Is it right to do evil for good's sake? Can we synthesize faith and reason, or will they always be at odds? Who invented liquid soap, and why? Overall, a quality episode… though it didn't seem to move the arc forward as much as I thought it would, but the Michael Emerson one-man-show made it worthwhile. What did you think? Sound off!

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(The First) EPISODE REVIEW: Lost: “Dr. Linus” (Season 6, Episode 7)

Republibot 3.0 — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 03:48:53 +0000

In many ways, Ben Linus is the heart and soul of Lost, both in the obvious way - he’s either central or tangential to nearly every storyline - but also in the less obvious behind-the-scenes sense. He was never intended to be a major character. Neither the writers, nor the producers had him, or anyone like him in mind when they started the show. When the actor was cast, it was just for a three-part guest spot. They liked him so much that they brought him back, even though it involved derailing some of their other plans. (Remember the black lady they were building up, then abruptly killed off? Yeah. She was supposed to be the leader)

The producers tell us that Lost had a beginning, a middle, and an end in mind before they started filming. I believe them. I really do, but things change, people come, people go, arcs turn out not to pan out the way you wanted. Subplots get re-assigned to new characters when the old ones just didn’t wash. Remember psychic Walt? When he left the show unexpectedly, his duties were given to Mr. Eko. When *he* left the show, his duties were divided up between Hurley and (eventually) Miles. Less obviously, the network asked the producers to stretch out the story, milk it for a few more years, what with it being a hit and all. Thus a five-year concept got stretched to a seven year one. Season Two diverged from the plan, and the padding was pretty obvious. Ratings faltered. The network asked them to rein it back in. It took the first third of Season 3 to do damage control, and get the show on track again. But by that point it was a different track.

The ending they’re moving towards is, I fully believe, the same one they had in mind six years back, but the roads to get there have wandered quite afar from whatever they had in mind. It’s just the way things go, and if you sit back and add up all the major plot elements that have been dropped (Alvar Hanso) or just don’t quite tie up like they should (anything connected to Dharma), you can see that. The end is still the same end, but there’s been a lot of ‘making it up as we go along’ to get to that point.

And really I think that’s part of why Ben is so good. Obviously, a lot of that is Mr. Emerson’s pretty brilliant, oily, rat-like genius manipulator performance - he really is one of the best villains of all time, and had not Emmerson so impressed the producers, Ben would never really have existed on this show - but in a larger sense he fully embodies this “Make it up as we go along” behind the scenes game of catch-up. Both Ben Linus and the show itself are like a half-decade-long version of “The Usual Suspects.” The story goes in one direction, dead ends because of facts or logic or just boredom, so the story jags in another direction, with a convenient lie to explain it, and then it jags again, and again, and again, and again, with really no truth to any of it, aside from this: Ben likes to lie, and he’s really, really good at it, and he thinks on his feet. Much like the writers.

Although nothing new is revealed about Ben tonight, I feel like we came to know him more than we ever have before. We’ve seen him beaten, recovered, bruised, battered, vicious, resigned, leading, following, we’ve seen him imperious and a victim, but we have never - until tonight - seen what he is on the inside. We’ve seen what he does, but we’ve never see what he is when you strip all that away - when his fundamental ‘Ben the Untrustworthy, Manipulative Bastard”ness is stripped away from him to find what’s left when he’s finally battered down by life.

The line - “Because no one else will have me” - was heartbreaking for a lot of reasons, mostly Emerson’s on-the-edge-of-tears-but-not-cloying-because-of-the-fear performance, and whatever else happens to the character, I think that was the moment everything for him had been building up to. Honestly, the Pretty Hispanic Lady could have put a bullet in his head immediately after he said that, and I would have been cool with it. I would have felt that a fitting end.

And, as usual, the show jagged, and as usual I didn’t see it coming. “I’ll have you,” was very nearly as powerful, and every bit as unexpected. I still don’t know what to make of it, but it didn’t feel false like such scenes often do. This wasn’t Mal breaking character by letting Jane live, this was, I dunno, it just worked.

The theme of being beaten down was the main one tonight. Richard, after, what, 150-or-more years on the island, has had it. As with Ben, everything he’s lived for is a lie. As with Ben, he wants out, but doesn’t quite know how to go about it. As with Ben, he’s in shock. Their storylines are opposites: Ben wants off the island, but is too shattered to make sense of it, and someone’s going to kill him. Richard wants to be dead, rather than leave the island, but is too shattered to make it work. In the sideways timeline - in which we see a lot of also-rans, and get a name-check from another one - the theme persists. Ben is a teacher beat down by life, a self-confessed loser, saddled with an elderly, sickly father, a job that not only fails to make use of his talents, but takes advantage of him in soul-crushing ways, and he’s got no life of his own. But he still cares.

He plays his normal power games, manipulating, controlling information, vying for advantage, but in this iteration, he’s not very good at it. He ends up instantly stalemated by his opponent, and he’s given a choice: get the thing he really wants and destroy the thing he really loves, or keep the love and give up the want. In this kinder, gentler timeline, he makes the right choice. This seems to be something he was never able to do on the Island.

Again, I single out Emerson. He’s a small man, odd looking, not at all imposing, almost comic at times, his appearance plays at crossed purposes to his aims, belying how dangerous he really is. We’ve grown used to this. We no longer see Ben as a little fish attempting to be the tyrant of the sea, we simply see him as Ben. Tonight stripped away a lot of that, and kind of renewed/ended the character. He’s been increasingly impotent since Evil Locke got to the island. The old games don’t work anymore. Everyone’s wise to him. Suddenly his power matches his appearance: Nothing impressive. Meanwhile, look at him as a school teacher - the unfortunate haircut, the pot-belly (Padding, by the way, he’s much thinner on The Island), the tired walk, the eyes that never quite look at you, as if he’s lost in thought, or simply bored - he looks like someone who owns a comic book shop. Meanwhile, on the island, his diminutive stature and newly-ineffectual status is emphasized by some equally subtle physical acting. Look at his chase through the woods - he runs like a girl! We’ve seen Ben take fists to the face without screaming, we’ve seen him survive for weeks in the bush, and in the real world, he’s got a lot of reserves of determination, but here, he’s just done. He’s lost it. He’s given in to the core of whatever it is that causes him to be such a bastard in the first place - fear, I guess - and it causes him to lose all self-control.

Ben’s been the poster boy for the show for four years now, but I don’t feel like we really saw him until tonight.

The second most interesting thing in tonight’s episode was Jack’s sudden transformation from the most impotent, passive, and useless leader in the entire history of Science Fiction into a man who’s so convinced of his destiny that he not only risks his life on a stupid bit of showboating, but he’s willing to do it again, and plays it off as a joke. I’m reminded of Vir Cotto when he realized he was destined to be Emperor, and nothing could harm him so long as he wasn’t Emperor *yet.* Whatever the results of last week’s hissie-fit was, whatever Jack screwed together in his brain while sitting on the rocks staring at the sea, it seems to have worked, and he’s finally actually stepping up. Interestingly, he seemed almost crazy when he did it.

I’m beginning to think the “Sideways in Time” stuff won’t tie in to the main plot. I wonder if it’s just showing us ‘what if.’ Tonight had several scenes - one with Frank - that strongly implied that. I don’t completely believe it, but I don’t think I’d be surprised if it were the case. It is interesting, however, that even in this timeline, everyone is still in each other’s orbit. Ben and Locke, Ben and Alex. Rousseau gets a name check. I really would have liked to see Mira Furlan show up, but oh well. We also find out that The Island existed in this continuity, too, though presumably it was destroyed in “The Incident” in 1977.

Not that I can blame him, but Miles was uncharacteristically cold-hearted tonight. Not only did he basically screw Ben over, but he made a point of telling him how betrayed Jacob had felt as he died. I think it’s really that which pushes Ben over the edge.

The Nikki and Paolo arc from the start of Season 3 turned up again tonight unexpectedly, and with a great payoff. Good for Miles! I can’t say how happy I am that Miles and Frank are still around. Granted, they’re mostly ancillary characters, but soooooooooooooo many people have died, sooooooooooooo many groups have bee introduced just to be picked off one by one - the Dharma folk last year, the Tailies, the Others, the Temple Folk - that I’m just overjoyed that some of the Freighter People still live. Even though they’re not all that important, even though they’ve got “Cannon Fodder” written on their heads, I really do hope they survive the coming Ragnarok.

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Episode Review: CHUCK: Chuck vs. the Beard (season 3, ep 8)

Burt Cottage — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 14:41:17 +0000

Zachary Levi—the title star and stirring straw of “Chuck”—made his directorial debut with this episode. How did he do? Read more to find out (but beware of spoilers).

It started off with Morgan deciding to fire Chuck as his best friend because of all the secrets he believes Chuck is holding back from him. Meanwhile, Chuck is being kept off of spy missions because of his inability to flash. Meanwhile meanwhile, the team has received intelligence that leads them to believe Ellie and Awesome (who are on a vacation [sort of—they appear to only be across town]) are being targeted by the ring. So, they take off to protect the Awesomes, leaving Chuck by himself.

At the Buy More, Big Mike gets word that corporate is shutting the store down for the day and may be going to sell it—and many of the current employees will be let go. As the suits come in to interview everyone and find out who is worthy of staying, the loyal Buy More employees are overcome with a hilarious mixture of group loyalty and self-serving bum-kissing.

Only, these corporate raiders aren’t good ol’ capitalists, they are actually bad ol’ Ring members who believe a super CIA agent named Charles Carmichael is working undercover at the Burbank Buy More. After their interviews, they are convinced that the agent in question is either Chuck Bartowski … or Morgan Grimes.

About the time that, Casey, Shaw and Sarah are discovering that they have been set-up. The info leak was just a scam to get them out of Burbank. Jeff and Lester, meanwhile (lots of stuff happens simultaneously on these shows), have tapped into the communications of the men they think are corporate raiders and get the idea that everyone at the Buy More is going to be fired except Chuck and Morgan. So they barricade the doors and—for no readily explainable reason—have a concert from Jeffster while vowing to fight for their jobs. What they don’t realize is that the Ring men have found the Castle (the CIA’s underground lair beneath the Buy More) and are planning to blow it and the Buy More sky high.

Morgan has managed to follow the Ring guys into theCcastle and somehow (this wasn’t explained) get back out. He tries to convince Chuck to join him in a mission to fight real bad guys with some mace that Emmet left behind. They manage to get captured by the bad guys and are held in the Castle workout room while Sarah, Shaw and Casey are unable to do what Morgan did (get the door open).

[Big spoiler alert] Chuck, thinking he’s about to die, spills all the beans to Morgan. As he apologizes for having lied to Morgan, Morgan is ecstatic to find out that his best friend is a spy. Chuck, being thus unburdened and having his best friend back—not to mention finally admitting to still being in love with Sarah—flashes and kicks all but one of the Ring guys into submission. That one (played by a surprisingly subdued Detrich Bader), gets clobbered over the head by Morgan.

Morgan thinks he’s a spy now. Shaw, Sarah and Casey are uncomfortable with his new knowledge. The Buy More employees celebrate the (Shaw induced) idea that their store isn’t going to close. Devin, tired of running from his knowledge of Chuck’s other life, suggests that he and Ellie become part of “Doctors Without Borders” and move to Africa.

Observations: this was a good episode—and very entertaining—but in some ways it felt like a “then” episode. An episode whose main purpose in the canon was just to set up what would come next. I thought Zachary Levi did a fine job as a director (a show like this—with all it’s intercutting—probably owes about as much to the film editor as to the director), but I don’t think he was given much to work with story-wise.

It makes sense that Morgan knows. And I like the idea that Chuck no longer has to lie to his best friend. Morgan doesn’t seem like he would be the type to talk. But, as I think back to “I Dream of Jeannie” [the second week in a row that I’ve referenced that show in one of these reviews!] and “Alf”, I wonder how many people can be in on a secret before said secret gets out. It’s just human nature (see, also Watergate, Troopergate, etc.) that info eventually leaks. In this episode it was intimated that the danger was contained because all of the Ring guys were locked up, but isn’t the Ring going to notice that the guys they sent to Burbanknever came back?

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RETROSPECULATIVE TV: Man From Atlantis: “CW Hyde” (Season 2, Episode 9)

Republibot 3.0 — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0000

Before we begin, I’d like to explain something. “Retrospeculative TV” was intended to be a once-weekly feature, but, seeing as it started in the winter doldrums at the start of the year, there really wasn’t enough new material on TV to cover, so we thought we’d pad things out a bit (read: “Entirely too much”) by doing it on two days a week until the season picked up again. Owing to my rather bad math skills, I didn’t quite realize that 17 episodes translated into four months and one week. Duh. Even now, I had to use a calculator to figure that out. I’m not the shiniest penny in the fountain when it comes to math.

Anyway, I wanted to take this opportunity to reassure you that once our Man From Atlantis coverage ends - three weeks from now - Retrospeculative TV will become a once-a-week feature, as it was intended.

INTRODUCTION

Mormon Bishop and TV Producer Glenn Larson is often referred to in the TV biz as “Glenn Larceny,” since he openly steals ideas to throw into his shows. Take the original Battlestar Galactica: There were only seventeen stories told in it’s one season, one of which was a ripoff of Shane, another was a ripoff of Patton, another was a ripoff of The Towering Inferno, another was a ripoff of The Guns of Navarone, and there were others. Larson wasn’t the first to do this, though he was more brazen about it than most, but I think the granddaddy of ‘em all was Irwin Allen, who never met a public domain story he couldn’t shoehorn into one of his hacky shows, nor a piece of stock footage he wouldn’t grab.

Neither of these guys were in any way connected with “Man From Atlantis,” but you wouldn’t know it to watch the series. They ripped of Romeo and Juliet, for Pete’s sake! And this week we’ve got “The Strange Occurrence of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.”

PLAY BY PLAY

Elizabeth is playing with a plexiglass coffee dispenser that’s supposed to look all scientific, but really just looks like a plexiglass coffee dispenser. “The enzyme in here would cause anyone exposed to it to have extreme personality changes!” she says in a way that you just know the entire episode will turn on. Sure enough, CW instantly comes in - with a coffee cup - and immediately sits it on the table directly beneath the spigot of Elizabeth’s fake-looking science thingy. Something drips into his coffee cup, but no one notices.

CW informs them that the Navy lost a MacGuffin device 3500 meters down, and the Cetacean goes out to recover it.

In his office, CW drinks coffee, and his hands go hairy, and his scalp feels all itchy. Must be espresso. Normally bald, he goes to look at himself in the bathroom mirror and discovers to his surprise that he’s now wearing one of William Shatner’s old wigs. Specifically, the one from the episode when they make Kirk look like a Romulan. Yeah, the eyebrows are a bit bushy, but - and this is freaky - CW suddenly looks like William Shatner.

I don’t mean “He looks a bit like Shatner.” I mean he’s Shatner’s freakin’ twin. He looks exactly like him! If Bill was busy, or just antisocial, you could send Alan Fudge (The actor who plays CW) to Star Trek conventions, and no one would ever know. It’s amazing! After decades of making fun of Shatner for remaining in the baldness closet when he’s not really fooling anyone, I suddenly get what his insane insistence about having a full head of hair at 78 years old is all about. If he didn’t have hair, he’d be the spitting image of Alan Fudge.

Now, I’m not saying Alan Fudge is ugly, or even TV-ugly, he’s a handsome enough guy, obviously - nice laugh, easy smile, no visible scars - but he’s clearly not a leading man. But you slap a wig on him, and suddenly - zango - he could *easily* hold down an episode!

Which is convenient, since this entire episode revolves around him.

Now that he’s hirsute and evil, CW steals all the money from the office present fund (One of the Foundation employees is getting married), and goes immediately to a brothel. It looks exactly like something out of a western, with red velvet walls, ornate brass fixtures, and a great big bar with a very wide picture behind it. Did whorehouses *Ever* look like that?

Anyway, CW gets some surprisingly badass lines (“You say this is good? Because I’d hate to have to disagree with you…” and “I already know all I need to about you, and you’re never going to know anything about me, so why drag this out longer than we need to?”). My personal favorite:

CW: It must be a slow night.
Hooker: [Seductively] It could be shaping up to be a long evening…
CW: Yeah, but not for you. Bartender, send champagne over to that girl on the far side of the room.

In this and other ways, he scares the hell out of Herb Tarlic, the bartender, then heads over to the hooker in the corner. Turns out she’s the private rental of a “Mister Calendar,” a mob boss. Calendar walks in on CW schmoozing his bought-and-paid-for floozy, and threatens to kill him, but CW isn’t intimidated at all, and manages to intimidate the guy into nervous laughter. As he’s leaving, the floozy sneaks him the key to her room.

One commercial and a jumpcut later, we find CW - again bald - in bed in the floozy’s swanky Miss Kitty-styled digs, having evidently had a long night of screaming dinosaur sex, given how impressed the floozy is. She has sex for a living, so presumably she knows how to distinguish between the bushleague amateurs and the more advanced people willing to pay for sex. She wants to go again, but as CW is his bumbling nervous self again, he quickly leaves. In his rush, he left behind his money and a piece of paper with his name and employer on it (Which, as I understand it, is the standard practice for prostitutes in California. Without it they can’t bill your insurance provider for services rendered. This is one of yet another ways Obama’s healthcare plan will devastate our nation’s economy.)

Back at the office, he sneaks money back into the present fund, and feels sorry for himself before realizing that, you know, there’s really not a lot of actors who can pull off that whole ’bald’ thing - Michael Ansara, Ed Harris, Yul Brenner - and he really did a lot of fun with that prostitute last night, so, hey, the hell with running a major government-funded scientific research facility with occasional secret national security missions! He wants hair! He wants sex with Michelle Carey! http://www.sixtiescinema.com/blog/uploaded_images/michelecarey04a-786028... Well who the heck wouldn’t? So he swigs down some of his coffee (Cleverly hidden in a mouthwash bottle) and before you can say “primitive special effects,” he’s hirsute again.

Meanwhile, the Man From Atlantis - this is a show about the Man From Atlantis, remember? - is off recovering the MacGuffin for the government. He brings it back.

By this time, Mr. Calendar has figured out that CW is a high muckety-muck at a secret government whangdoodle, and he wants in on that action. CW comes a’courtin for the floozy, and then notices his knuckles aren’t hairy anymore, but thank God he’s still got Shatner’s wig! The formula is wearing off. He covers for this by saying he wants to sell the MacGuffin to the mob, and they accept this and let him leave, rather than killing him.

The next day, back at the Foundation, CW immediately fesses up to Mark about his sex addiction, and the whole “Mister Hyde” thing, but he insists neither of them tell Elizabeth about it because, y’know, she’s a chick and she’ll get all preachy ‘70s over the objectification of women - well, hell, isn’t that the point of hookers? Objectification?

The hoods show up, and threaten to kill and/or maim all of them, unless they (By which they mean CW) give them (By which they mean Calendar) the dingus (By which I mean the Black Box recovered from a secret Navy robot that I’ve more-or-less ignored in this synopsis. CW refuses, so they threaten to drown Mark hulks out on ‘em (Well, he doesn’t turn big and green, but he does throw a lot of people around while not wearing a shirt, so pretty much it’s the same basic idea), and then hits Calendar in the face with the Jekyll-and-Hyde formula, which suddenly turns him from a bloodthirsty cosa nostra into a Caspar Milquetoast guy. He immediately calls off his goons, and discusses re-joining the seminary as they leave.

The End.

OBSERVATIONS

Yeah. Wow. I realize I’ve said a lot of times already that they’re just not taking their show seriously, but it bears repeating. Some people have decried the series as something that started out with a lot of potential that just turned into a stupid kid’s show. I’m not sure that’s true. Name a kid’s show that includes hookers, mob bosses threatening to cut off women’s fingers, and references to group sex? I mean, I know it was the ‘70s, but come on! I’ve watched fifteen episodes now, and I have no idea who this show was aimed at, nor do I believe for an instant that the producers did either.

The basic concept was pretty clearly something like “Let’s get a bunch of behind-the-scenes Star Trek guys, and do an underwater version of Star Trek.” I’m assuming they *didn’t* want to do the fourth season of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, which is what some people said they ended up with. I think that’s not fair. Granted, Voyage’s quality descended rapidly, but it was never as consistently terrible as this show is. “Man From Atlantis” is more like what Voyage would have ended up like had it stayed on the air a few years longer. This is like sixth season Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, had such a thing been allowed to exist. Mercifully, it wasn‘t.

But whatever the original concept was, the plot erosion set in almost instantly. There are basically only three kinds of SF shows: Earth-based, Space-based, and Sea-based. Anthologies could theoretically be a fourth kind, but in practice they tend to be almost entirely earth-based. Of these, Sea-based are the most limited because whereas in a space-based show you have the whole of creation to play in, on sub-shows, you pretty much have only so much ocean, and frankly, the ocean is pretty boring. More importantly: most people don’t know jack about space. You can say there’s a planet where happy laughing unicorns play in the chocolate-sauce swamps at the foot of a gummy-based mountain that looks just like Gene Roddenberry’s ass, and people will believe such a thing could exist because - and I can’t state this clearly enough - they don’t know crap about it. On the other hand, if you say there’s an *ISLAND* of unicorns and chocolate and giant gummy-Roddenberry hinders, they’re going to know damn well that such a thing doesn’t exist, not even in Japan, which is, by most accounts, pretty freaky.

SF stories have to seem plausible, after all, and since people in general don’t know crap about space, the plausibility is limited only by the writer’s imaginations. Conversely, most people do know a thing or three about the ocean, so they can’t just make it up as they go along. They have to either constrain themselves to espionage, or realistic oceanographic things. This show has absolutely no interest in either of those, but they haven’t even remotely come up with a substitute.

This episode is the first - and only - to more-or-less dispense with the sea stuff entirely. Sure, there’s a B-plot about recovering the dingus, but that’s just padding, it only takes up about eight minutes of screen time, and could have happened entirely offscreen without it affecting the episode at all. It’s also the only episode to have an A-plot revolve around someone other than Mark, and the second one to feature CW heavily. It’s interesting that Elizabeth never got her own episode. She started out so strong in the first movie, she was still pretty good in the next two, but she’s virtually forgotten as a character in the series.

There’s a new character playing a very prominent part in this episode: “Sarah,” CW’s secretary. She is cute as hell, perky without seeming dumb, and provides a rather sunny presence throughout. She’s played by Pamela Solow, whom longtime masochistic readers of this column might recall as having played “Jane” way back in “Man From Atlantis IV: The Island Of Shirtless Beefy Guys.” She was playing a different character then, and I didn’t like her at all. In this, however, she’s the best thing going. She’s also got the one genuinely funny line in an episode that tries too hard to be funny:

The hoods are dragging Mark off to drown him. Sarah knows this will have no effect, in fact it’ll make him stronger, but she feigns concern, wailing “Oh, Mark!” like she thinks he’s going to die, but with a big goofy smile on her face while she says it. Sight gag, I guess.

Miss Solow was, of course, the producer’s daughter, but based on this appearance I really would have liked to have seen more of her. Alas, this was the end of her short career. She looked kind of like a young Pat Tallman, but I can’t find any pictures of her online, so instead I’ll just give you some more pictures of Michelle Carey http://www.fanpix.net/picture-gallery/303/461303-michele-carey-picture.htm and http://www.fanpix.net/picture-gallery/309/461309-michele-carey-picture.htm and http://www.fanpix.net/picture-gallery/311/461311-michele-carey-picture.htm and http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_OQmEa5OKyOI/R843duMm4rI/AAAAAAAACac/oaXW_lvlOG... In keeping with the aquatic “Man From Atlantis” theme, I’ve limited myself to bathing suit shots.

Of course the Jekyll-and-Hyde plot is a hoary old cliché, but, eh, it kept me from having to watch more Pat Morita episodes, more incompetent sea journeys, and more rewrites of Shakespeare’s plays. It’s departures from form like this one that emphasize just how bad the form is they’re departing from.

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Live Tweeting the 82nd Academy Awards (Archive)

Republibot 1.0 — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 06:12:50 +0000

Welcome to the archive of the Republibot Live Tweet of the 82nd Academy Awards show. For those new to twitter (www.twitter.com/republibot), the main thing to remember is that it is a real time service that lets you share information in 140 characters or less. So all of the following happened live during the show and was posted to the Republibot twitter account as I typed it.

I have edited out the Twitter discussion between me and friend of Republibot Church (@ChurchHTucker) to avoid too much confusion on your part, but feel free to go on Twitter and reconstruct it if you would like.

1 - Gonna try to live tweet the Academy Awards tonight, it is broadcast live right? Not like the Olympics?
2 - It should be fun, I don't know what has been nominated for anything other than Hurt Locker and Avatar.
3 - Watching the #redcarpet show and old guys with earrings kinda creep me out (talking about you Morgan Freeman).
4 - Maaaaatt Daaamon!!! (with regards to Team America) #redcarpet
5 - Helen Mirren looks great. Christopher Plummer looks a bit tipsy. #redcarpet
6 - Stand up straight, Miley!! Quit hunching over like that. You look like Gollum. #redcarpet
7 - And we are off....
8 - Is the audio bad? the mix sounds off for some reason.
9 - I think I bit off more than I can chew on this Live Tweeting the #Oscars thing - I am already exhausted and it has barely started.
10 - First Award - Best Supporting Actors - so far I haven't seen any of these movies
11 - Oh wait, I have seen Lovely Bones - good performance.
12 - Christoph should win for Inglorious Basterds - his part of the movie was by far the best thing in it.
13 - And Cristof did win, I bet it was by a landslide - and now he moves up in opportunity by appearing in a Kevin Smith movie - Green Hornet.
14 - Was that an introduction for Blind Side as best picture (1 of the apprx 100 this year) or Sandra Bullock for Best Actress?
15 - Cameron Diaz and Steve Carrell? Holy cow she is like two feet taller than him. If she were blue she would be a Navi she's so tall.
16 - I hope Coraline or Secret of Kells wins
17 - Up! wins... I hated Up!
18 - So kids, the moral of the story of Up! is that if someone makes your life more difficult drop them from a Zeppelin 10,000 feet in the air.
19 - Miley!! Stand up straight!! Hunching over like that doesn't make your breasts look any bigger.
20 - Best Song - goes to the Crazy Heart song. T-Bone Burnett should win every time.
21 - Wow, T-Bone looks like Gandalf standing next to Ryan Bingham's Frodo.
22 - I cannot believe that District Nine is nominated for best picture - Here is my original review: http://bit.ly/beZ9YS
23 - I love Tina Fey.
24 - I love Robert Downey Jr.
25 - I want A Serious Man to win Best Original Screenplay.
26 - Hurt Locker wins, I guess I will have to give into all the nagging from my friends to see it.
27 - Very sweet, a dedication to John Hughes. #oscars
28 - Up! for best picture. I didn't like it. The first 30 minutes were great, but then it fell into storytelling cliche. #oscars
29 - Best Animated Short - Logorama. It looks like the exact kinda thing voters love.
30 - Best Documentary Short - Music by Prudence.
31 - The kinda problem with Short films in the #Oscars is that they generally have to be about something important.
32 - Holy cow, that lady just interrupted the Doc Short winner
33 - Best Short Film - The New Tenants. I know nothing about these nominees or winners.
34 - Ben Stiller just makes me laugh.
35 - They need to break up Best Make-up into 2 or 3 sub-categories - big make-up and subtle make-up.
36 - Star Trek gets best make-up thing.
37 - A Serious Man is up for Best Picture, saw it last week during some business travel, so good.
38 - Best Adapted Screenplay - Precious, based on the Novel of something something something by someone, sorry I got distracted on that.
39 - Really was hoping Up In The Air would win Best Adapted Screenplay, even though it went pretty far astray from the novel it was based on.
40 - Best Supporting Actress should go to the Up In the Air girl, she was naked in it.
41 - Not the teen looking one, the hot one that was the romantic interest for Clooney.
42 - Best Picture nominee The Education. I guess if you are into underage girls and think Roman Polanski had the right idea...
43 - How is Avatar up for Art Direction? You might as well put Looney Tunes up for Art direction. Or Up! It's ANIMATED!!!
44 - Best costume design is always a tough one for me cause I generally never see or hear of any of these movies.
45 - The Costume Design winner lady is kind of unlikeable - exactly the type of person you expect wanting to talk about deeply dumb things.
46 - Missed the Horror Tribute while @ChurchHTucker chastises me. :)
47 - Best Sound Editing is one of the awards that is hard for Lay People to be really discerning on, since the subtleties are so technical.
48 - Ditto Sound Mixing.
49 - Hurt Locker wins both Sound Technical awards.
50 - Best Picture Nominee Inglourious Basterds - Great and fun movie, had issues with half of it, but the central story was so well done.
51 - Ok, so I have more issues with Avatar getting best Cinematography than for it getting Best Art Direction.
52 - Demi Moore looks like a Nav'i in white face.
53 - Very sweet eulogy for those in the industry that have passed away in the last year.
54 - I have conflicted emotions about James Taylor, so I like him more than I would normally, also love this song In My Life.
55 - I.... uh, don't know what is going on right now. Is this best score with Hip Hop Dancers?
56 - There were some beautiful scores this year, definitely.
57 - I can live with Up! winning best original score.
58 - Totally agree with Avatar winning for Best Visual Effects. No question on this one. Totally deserves it. By a good 1000 miles.
59 - Up In The Air Best Picture Nominee - my sentimental favorite, spoke to me more than any other movie I saw in the past year.
60 - I miss my life when all I did was see everything - I felt less out of the loop on these shows back then. Best Doc Nominees right now.
61 - Wow, Fisher Stevens did the Cove? Havent seen him much since Hackers. The Cove wins Best Doc.
62 - Holy Cow - Hurt Locker is doing exceptionally well, taking all of the prestige awards.
63 - Hurt Locker wins Best Editing.
64 - Man, Quentin looks like hell. Would hate to have to go up in front of everyone after losing everything so far except Best Supporting Actor.
65 - I want to be smarter about Best Foreign Picture, but I can't so I have nothing to say.
66 - Avatar - Best Picture Nominee, and here is my original review and let's not speak of it again: http://bit.ly/7yUm2L
67 - Jeff Bridges was robbed on Fisher King, he should have been nominated for Best Actor and should have won.
68 - I like the way they are doing the Best Actor announcements - having former co-starts introduce them
69 - I have typecast Morgan Freeman in my mind forever as Easy Reader from the original Electric Company.
70 - Very happy that Jeff Bridges won Best Actor, even though the movie had tons of country music in it.
71 - I saw none of the movies that the Best Actress nominees were in, but congrats to Sandra Bullock... I guess...
72 - Nice, Kathryn Bigelow wins Best Director - she has always made much more challenging films thematically than James Cameron, she deserves it.
73 - Wow. Hurt Locker beats down Avatar.
74 - Hurt Locker picks up Best Picture.
75 - Ok, done - that wasnt nearly as painful as the Golden Globes - will try to pull all these tomorrow and post on republibot.com. G'nite all.

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Shrill Atheism On Parade

Republibot 3.0 — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0000

Ireland does not have an official religion. Partially this is a reaction to the days when they were part of the United Kingdom, and had the Church of England foisted off on them, and partially it’s because 97% of the country is Irish Catholic anyway, so what’s the point? I’m not one of those people to automatically assume an Official Religion is automatically oppressive and evil and exclusive - again, I cite the Church of England, which has traditionally been very tolerant of other faiths in their midst (Excepting Catholicism, of course) - but I am extremely uncomfortable with the thought just the same.

In my view, it’s probably not inherently evil to have a State Religion, but it is *definitely* unseemly, and best avoided. So: Good for the Irish.

In 1922, after their revolution, the newly-independent Irish drew up their first constitution, and this apparently contained no direct statements about “Blasphemy,” but the consensus is that it could be punished under common law. In 1937, the Irish drew up a new constitution, and this one did specifically have Blasphemy Provisions:

“The publication or utterance of blasphemous, seditious or indecent matter is an offence which shall be punishable in accordance with law". (Article 40.6.1.i.)

And

"The State acknowledges that the homage of public worship is due to Almighty God. It shall hold His Name in reverence, and shall respect and honour religion." (Article 40.1)

This seems to me a pretty goofy law, but, hey: not my country, not my culture. It’s worth noting that the Common Law and Constitutional blasphemy concepts existed side by side until 1999 when the Irish courts had struck down the old Common Law rulings on Blasphemy stating “it is impossible to say of what the offence of blasphemy consists.”

This is fairly obviously a “Blue Law” kind of thing, well-intended but poorly thought out, on the books mostly because it’s not really worth people’s time and effort to remove it. In fact, I can only find two or three cases in 62 years in which anyone attempted to prosecute someone for Blasphemy (Though I’m not an Irish Lawyer, so it’s entirely possible I may be missing something). As far as I can tell, no one was actually convicted in any of these cases. Even so, it was extended to cover *all* theistic religions in Ireland as of 1972.

In 2009, a new Anti-Blasphemy law was (rather surprisingly) passed, which stated that the government could prosecute any

"grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters held sacred by any religion", which is intended only to create "outrage among a substantial number of the adherents of that religion." This law contained a deliberate provision allowing blasphemy in "genuine literary, artistic, political, scientific, or academic value" works.

Interestingly, "Religion" excludes profit-driven organizations or those using "oppressive psychological manipulation".

This was essentially done as a ‘stopgap’ measure to comply with the 1937 constitution, until such time as the Republic holds a referendum to remove the Blasphemy clauses from it. In other words, the law was intended to comply with the constitution in the most inoffensive way possible.

Which brings me to my point:

Shrill Atheism.

I’ve got nothing against Atheism. I really don’t. I was an atheist myself. Twice. If we’re to look at it rationally and logically, Atheism has all other venerable religions beaten on points, there’s no getting around that. And yet, there’s more to life than logic and reason, isn’t there? Ignoring the question of whether or not there *is* a God (or gods), there is something in us that makes us seek out that which we can’t prove, that which we base our life around, that which profoundly affects our outlooks, our morality, our ethics, and our lives, isn’t there? There are other examples. Looked at rationally, Love doesn’t exist, for instance, it’s just a chemical trick our brain plays to get us to have kids. Yet that doesn’t sum it up, does it? Anyone who’s ever actually been in love understands that whatever the *machinery* that creates the feeling is, the *substance* of the feeling is quite different. Arguing otherwise is to miss the point. Likewise honor. Honor is clearly nonexistent and irrational, and yet people will die for it. Why? Because it means something to them, to the very core of their being, and that makes you hang in there and keep fighting or defending or whatever, when the sensible thing would be to cut and run.

We are not a rational species. We simply are not. We’re clever, we’re intelligent, but we’re at best semi-rational. Arguing that we’re entirely logical is just as stupid as arguing that we’re entirely senseless animals: It’s clearly not true. To any objective analysis, we are quite clearly a mixture of mind and meat, body and soul, brain and instinct, rationality and emotion, logic and intuition, yin and yang. It’s simply our way, and to argue for one over the other is to deny us our inherent human nature and try and turn us into something less than we are.

I’m tolerant. I was an atheist myself at a couple different points in my life, as I’ve said. Both times I came back to faith because I realized that while logical arguments in favor of religion don’t hold water, the external view is quite different than the internal one, and I was getting something from my faith that was worth having, and which atheists either can’t get, don’t want, or refuse to try. That’s cool. Not everyone needs the same things out of life. I’m not trying to force anyone to hold my views.

What I’ve never quite understood is the shrill evangelical quality of many, many atheists, however. They say that ‘religion is a crutch,’ and then attempt to take it away from you. Well, ok, let’s assume they’re right: crutches aren’t a fashion statement, people use them because they need them. What kind of person is going to take crutches away from cripples? They say that ‘religion is only fit for babies’ - well, what kind of rat bastard is going to run around trying to take babies blankets or bottles away?

If I go out and preach the Gospel, why is that wrong when these shrill Atheists can preach their own beliefs?

Understand that I’m *not* dissing atheism as a belief. I’ve got no problem with it, though it wasn’t a good fit for me. What I *am* complaining about so a category of atheists who are extremely intolerant, rude, angry, and vicious, and who love nothing more than to piss on people who believe differently than they do.

We find a lot of this kind of thing at the “Irish Atheists” website, who are making a high-profile, low-effectiveness protest of the Irish Blasphemy Laws. Their concept was to get themselves sued for flagrantly defying the new 2009 law, take it to the high court, and get it overturned. Of course to date no one has filed suit against them because - as I pointed out above - the law was a stopgap measure that was never really intended to be used in the first place. The mere existence of this law infuriates them, however, and they’re in full-on shrill mode, saying horrible things, some of which seem to have descended into Jew-bashing and exactly the same kind of hate speech (As we’d call it in the US) that the law was obviously worded to prevent.

Initially I was going to reprint a few of the comments here, but I’ve decided against it. Many of ‘em are pretty rude - obviously - and some of our readers are in a delicate place spiritually, so I’m not going to post things that might upset their equilibrium. If anyone wants to read them, do an internet search for “Atheist Ireland” and you can’t miss it.

Again, I want to be clear here: I think official state religions are kinda’ stupid, I think blasphemy laws are stupid, and I do *not* think atheists are stupid. I know very many atheists who are really solidly good people, mean well, and don’t hate us, they simply don’t believe.

I do, however, think that an increasing number of atheists are guilty of the very same intolerance they accuse us believers of. They claim we do a bad thing, and then they do the very same bad thing. They’re guilty of the very same zealotry they claim to despise, but of course they defend it as being in the service of the greater good, much the same way a medieval cleric might have justified torturing Jews and Muslims as being in the service of the greater good. Clearly, clearly, clearly, both these kinds of extremism are wrong. It doesn’t matter if they’re a Believer, an Atheist, or a Modern Dance Enthusiast, nor how benevolent the ideal they serve may be, there’s a certain class of person who will invariably use this idea as an excuse to pound hell out of anyone around them.

Clearly, they’re being motivated by hate and not reason.

Ultimately, what is God? If we put aside all matters of faith and culture and feelings, I think that we can all agree - Theists and Atheists alike - that God is an idea. Barring any physical evidence, and regardless of what else He may be, He is at the very least an idea. Atheism is, likewise, an idea. Ideas are simply ideas, just like rocks are simply rocks and tautologies are simply tautologies. What you do with them - how you apply them in your life - defines whether they’re positive or negative. Does the execution of your idea help people, or hurt them? Does it bring joy and happiness to people, or sadness and despair? Does it bring a sense of freedom, or a sense of slavery?

Clearly, not all ideas are right for all people, and there’s certainly never been a shortage of whack jobs who’ll take any idea - no matter how benevolent - and use it as an excuse to kill or harass folks they already don’t like, but you know what? You can’t legislate against an idea. You really can’t. Nor should you try.

The moment you start arguing that people aren’t allowed to have certain ideas is the moment you completely lose all intellectual credibility as a liberator, and you become an oppressor.

So: To our shrill atheist friends, I say, “Knock it off.” Maybe you’re right, maybe you’re wrong, but this kind of behavior is only hurting your cause. You say your way is better than our way? Fine. Prove it. Step up to the plate, live your life in support of your ideals. Be a paragon of virtue and intellect and an inspiration to all around you. Live a long, happy life, free from hate and superstitious fear, and die peacefully in your sleep at the age of 106, with no regrets, and a passel of well-adjusted atheist grandkids. Put aside your anger that *we* are somehow the reason your life sucks, and work on improving yourself. Stop blaming others for your problems, take responsibility, and solve them. Be happy. Love the people around you. Be successful. Be the ‘city on a hill’ that draws people to it. Be worthy of your beliefs.

You want faith to wither and die? Fine. Be better than us - as many of your non-shrill atheists are doing - and eventually you’ll win.

But if you’re not going to do that, then you’re a discredit to your own cause. Kindly shut up and stop wasting everyone’s time.

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SONG OF THE WEEK: "Spaceship" by Treel (2008)

Republibot 3.0 — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0000

A reasonably clean (By which I mean only mildly filthy) rap song by Treel, who might be a solo artist, or perhaps a group like Wu-Tang. Dunno. You'd be surprised by how little hip hop info there is on Wiki. Check it out under the jump.

The lyrics make it pretty clear that the Spaceship in question is a sort of clunky euphemism for a woman's baby-makin' parts. Meh. Nothing we haven't seen or heard in a kerjillion rap songs/videos before this, but it's not too horribly offensive so I thought "Why not?"

or go here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AG5C_Vg0fKI

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