Mister Sulu is the Man

I saw a trailer for the new Star Trek movie, and apparently it has a scene with John Cho as Lt. Sulu, fencing.

I am considering seeing it for this reason alone.

The Naked Time - the one where everyone gets a virus that makes them crazy and Sulu runs around shirtless, attacking people with his foil - was my favorite, favorite Star Trek episode of all time, of all the series. Sulu is pretty much the coolest guy on the Enterprise. Forget Captain Jerk - Hikaru Sulu is the smoothest cat in the 23rd damn century.

Part of this is my man-crush on George Takei talking. That man is so awesome. He was just so dashing, you know? Plus his activism for gay rights in the last decade is wonderful. John Cho has some big shoes to fill, but I like him too - he was great in Howard and Kumar go to White Castle.

So yeah.

Edit: "Howard"? Yeah, Howard and Claude go to Arby's... *facepalm*

The Battle for Terra

Here's the trailer for an upcoming animated film, The Battle for Terra.



It's very good to see an American animation studio making a film with a mature, complex storyline. However, it seems like they can't let go of more family-friendly style elements, such as cartoonish character designs. Not that I have a problem with that - I loved The Incredibles - but it clashes with the subject matter. On the other hand, I realize that it's very hard to make realistic 3D character models that don't look downright creepy (see The Polar Express).

I'm afraid that this movie is going to do poorly businesswise, though. The Animation Age Ghetto is still in full effect. Don Bluth's Titan: A. E. failed miserably back in the '90s, and Ralph Bakshi's output is likewise regarded dismally. (This may because Bakshi's work is mostly crap, but I digress.) Sadly, American animation is a long, long way from reaching the widespread acclaim the medium sees in Japan.

Still, as I said, it's good to see someone trying. I wish the filmmakers the best.

Bowl on the Run

This is just cute.

This film was made for the Antarctic 48 Hour film competition at McMurdo Station.

Film requirements were it had to be made in Antarctica within 2 days, had to contain a bowl, an ice cream cone, a sleeping person, the sound of a phone, and the line "We've lost another one".

This won best film.

...because there's not a whole lot else to do in Antarctica.

13 Posts: Anatomy of a Scream

Time for another quickie! James Rolfe (*dreamy sigh*) examines the classic 1942 noir chiller Cat People, with a brief history of RKO Radio's horror library and an in-depth look at what makes one of the movie's scenes work. This is from his 2007 "Monster Madness" Halloween countdown.

13 Posts: That Lovecraft Feeling

Oh, dear - I missed an update. Ahh well, guess I'll just have to double up tonight.

One of my favorite short stories is "The Whisperer in Darkness", by Howard Phillips Lovecraft. Lovecraft was an odd duck - fervently racist, sexist, homophobic, and nationalist, yet possessed of one of the most vivid imaginations in early 20th-century writing. His stories were often chock full with bigotry, but Lovecraft was a master at crafting atmospheric, nightmare-inspiring scenes.

"Whisperer" concerns one Professor Albert Wilmarth from the famed Miskatonic University at witch-haunted Arkham, Massachusetts and his inquiry into reports of extraterrestrial activity in the hills of Vermont. Published in 1930, it's one of the first works of fiction to deal with alien abductions, though they take a much different form than in modern media. It also invokes the dire god Nyarlathotep, who plays a central role in many other stories by Lovecraft.

There is (or was) apparently a film version of "The Whisperer in Darkness" being produced by an independent studio in the style of classic black-and-white 1930s chillers, but I haven't heard any news of it in over a year. Here's the trailer, which does a commendable job recreating the feel of the story.



And here is a gorgeously macabre picture of one of the alien creatures from the story.


Buzzer by ~psychohazard on deviantART

Stay tuned - more is on the way!

13 Posts: Death Seen

I said I'd revisit James Rolfe, and I'm as good as my word.

Death Seen is a very short film Rolfe directed in 2005 as part of the 48 Hour Film Project, in which directors are given 48 hours to create a movie using a few elements given to them at the start. Death Seen was assigned a genre (mystery), a prop (an umbrella), a character (a political activist), and a line ("I've never seen one of those."). What follows is the end result.

The film won the award for Best Cinematography.

13 Posts: Always 2

I had a longer post planned, but today pretty much kicked my ass. So in lieu of that, let me present something considerably shorter but hopefully still very awesome: a dream sequence from the beginning of the Japanese comedy/drama Always 2: Sunset on Third Street that's sure to wash the bad taste of a certain shitty Matthew Broderick movie right out of your mouth, and I'm not talking about Inspector Gadget.



Kick! Ass!

(Don't ask about the guy with the hair... I have no idea.)

13 Posts: The Deader the Better

I don't mind admitting that I have a bit of a man-crush on James Rolfe, known to the wider Internet as the Angry Video Game Nerd. I was first exposed to his work through his video game reviews, which are so chock full of profanity and scatalogical references that it made my head spin, but downright hilarious because of just how over-the-top he takes it. If you're a fan of NES games or just enjoy a blast from the past, you've gotta check him out.

Recently, though, I've been enjoying some of Rolfe's non-AVGN material. The man is seriously into horror and suspense cinema, and his devotion to the art of filmmaking is inspiring. He's created over 200 short films since his childhood through his production company, the Cinemassacre, and shows no signs of stopping. One of these films - and expect me to go back to this well more than once - is a zombie flick titled The Deader the Better.



Let me warn you - this is an extremely gory movie, though the blood 'n' guts are obviously (and deliberately) fake. The Exorcist it ain't, but as a send-up of the zombie genre it's good fun.

The Simpsons Movie

I have a confession to make.

I have never watched a single episode of The Simpsons.

(this is where you gasp and recoil in shock)

Yet due to the extent to which the series has permeated American pop culture (and particularly the Internet nerd/geek subculture), I still know pretty much all there is to know about the show. I know who everyone is. I know the relationships between the characters. I know that Smithers can't get enough of Mister Burns and why Sideshow Bob is public enemy number one. Yet I've never actually sat through a whole episode of the show itself.

So The Simpsons Movie was an odd experience for me in that going in I knew everything on paper but not in practice.

I liked it, honestly, but I get the feeling that I would have liked it more if I'd been tuning in every week for the last twenty years. I've heard it criticized as being like just another episode of the show only extra long, but I wouldn't know. It was sad watching Bart's growing rift with his dad and Homer coming to grips with how much of a jerk he was, but I think I would have gotten more out of it if I'd invested more into the franchise before now.

Still, the movie worked on a more basic level as far as jokes and gags went. ("Of course I'm going mad with power! Have you ever tried going mad without power? It's boring, nobody listens to you.") I had a smile on my face from beginning to end, and that's what matters.

It was also nice to see a successful 2D animated feature film afloat in the sea of lucrative yet mediocre CGI films about wisecracking talking animals that keep getting thrown at us. I like CGI, but not as much as I like traditional animation. They're really separate art forms that should judged by separate standards, so it saddens me that there's this feeling of competition between them.

Anyway, I recommend the movie to pretty much everyone, Simpsons fans and otherwise. Give it a watch if you have the chance - it's worth it.

The Queen

I saw The Queen last night, and it was fantastic.

Helen Mirren disappears into the role of HRM and totally deserved her Oscar. Michael Sheen was slightly less smashing as Tony Blair, but then the movie wasn't titled The Prime Minister, and it was still a good performance.

It was something else to see the events of Princess Diana's death from this perspective, since when she died I was only 13 and only knew that she was this pretty lady who helped a lot of people. I had no idea of her relationship with the royal family or the press, only that her death deeply affected many people, including my parents.

I also come away hating Prince Phillip even more than I did before, never mind that it was a fictional depiction and probably exaggerated.

More Batman Movie Thoughts (SPOILERS)

There's already talk that Christopher Nolan is considering one more movie in his Batman franchise, and that's got me thinking. We all know that Batman (or at least Batman movies) are defined by his villains. But the first two movies have pretty much used up the Bat's two biggest foes - Ra's al-Ghul and the Joker - and it's safe to say that neither of them are coming back for another. So who else looms large enough in the Caped Crusader's rogues gallery to carry a whole feature-length film?

My first thought was Bane, the villain from the early-'90s comic storyline Knightfall who appears mysteriously in Gotham, wears Batman down by staging a massive jailbreak at Arkham Asylum, confronts Batman, and breaks his back just to prove he can. I think that could make a decent movie, but I'd rather they not just adapt a storyline straight from the comics - The Dark Knight may draw heavily from Alan Moore's The Killing Joke and Grant Morrison's Arkham Asylum, but it's still its own story. On top of that, Bane just never appealed to me as a character. He's an important part of Batman's world and rightly so, but he's just not one of the "classic" rogues, and I just like them better.

Catwoman's rights are tied up from the horrible Halle Berry movie and she's not really a villain anyway, so that leaves Two-Face, who survived The Dark Knight and has a personal grudge against the Batman that would give him a reason to set the events of a third film in motion. Plus Aaron Eckhart has said he'd love to return to the role, which is another plus. But Harvey Dent was a supporting character in TDK, Could he handle a whole movie on his own?

What I would like to see is this: Two-Face leading a collection of madmen in a headlong rush against Batman. It would be a great opportunity to mine the Arkham crowd for villains who couldn't hold a film on their own but who would make great supporting characters. Obiously a lot of the more fantastic characters (Mister Freeze, Clayface, Poison Ivy, Man-Bat) would be right out, but it would still give the more human rogues a chance to shine, and it would follow up on the idea in the first two movies that crime in Gotham is getting increasingly stranger due to Batman's influence.

What I'm thinking is this.

Two-Face: Harvey Dent's role in the sequel is a mockery of his role as Gotham's "white knight" in the previous one. His desire for justice has been subverted into a desire for control: If he can't take down the mob, he'll run them, and now that Falcone and Maroni are gone he's in a prime position to grab the reins himself, using both mobsters and his more flamboyant allies to run the city's crime while striking back at Batman.

The Riddler: Eddie Nigma is Dent's idea man and second in command. He's the only one of Two-Face's circle that isn't seriously mentally ill. His riddles aren't a compulsion - they're a performance. It's his way of showing how much smarter he is than anyone he goes up against. The Riddler is a smug little bastard you love to hate. He never gets his own hands dirty. My choice for the actor? Johnny Depp.

The Scarecrow: Cillian Murphy returns one more time, but this time the character will play up the scarecrow theme more than in the first two movies. Instead of the black business suit, he's now wearing something like a ragged Western preacher-man's outfit like in the '90s cartoon. Scarecrow is Two-Face's enforcer, intimidating their enemies not with brute force but with fear gas. To make him scarier, this time around we don't see Jonathan Crane out of the costume at all: He's completely vanished into the Scarecrow persona.

The Mad Hatter: Jervis Tetch is insane to the point of having little to no self-control. I'm not sure if his mind-control gimmick could work in the more serious world of the Nolan movies, but he could still be an expert of some sort - electronics, chemicals, whathaveyou. Aside from Two-Face, the Hatter comes closest to being sympathetic, since he's so far removed from reality that he doesn't understand that what he's doing is wrong, but he's still frightening because of just how nuts he is. As for the actor, I'm thinking Robin Williams, or maybe Martin Short if he could pull off a dramatic role.

That's what I'm thinking, and now that I've thought it up there's no chance of ever seeing it on screen.

Filby at the Movies

I just saw The Dark Knight.

Without giving out any spoilers, I will say:

• The movie was FUCKING AMAZING
  
• Heath Ledger is the most amazing Joker ever (except for Mark Hamill).
  
• When I saw what happened to Harvey Dent, I literally jumped.
  
• The nachos grande from the concession stand were great.
  
• The Scarecrow wasn't as scary this time around.
  
• Did I mention the movie was FUCKING AMAZING

(Gawd, I love the unordered list HTML tag...)

In the end, it was even better than Batman Begins. Blows everything else out of the water. GO SEE IT NOW

Going off on a tangent, I saw a lot of posters for animated movies at the theater, and it got me thinking about super-heroes. I'm not very fond of CGI animation, but you know what would look great in the medium? A Shazam! movie in CGI.

I'm thinking....

• Patrick Warburton as Captain Marvel.
  
• Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson as Black Adam. (Can you smell what Black Adam is cooking?!! I think it's couscous...)
  
• Wallace Shawn (or maybe Armin Shimmerman) as Doctor Sivana.
  
• Sir Ian McKellan as the Old Wizard (though I'm not sure if I'd want to typecast him like that).
  
• The actress who played Darla Dimple in Cats Don't Dance as Mary Marvel.
  
• Charles Durning as Uncle Dudley.

I'm drawing a blank on Cap Junior and Talky Tawny, but something might come to me eventually.

For the Record

I don't really believe Doctor Who is a ripoff of Superman and Star Trek. I was just being glib.

But more importantly, bear witness to the Angry Video Game Nerd's top 10 list of giant movie monsters:



Stick around for Number One. It's a doozy.

Back to the Drawing Board

This is something that's been bothering me for some time.

It just bugs me when time-travel stories feature alternate timelines where things are present that just shouldn't be given the scope of changes that have been made. Specifically, people who were born after a history-altering event occurs should not be born. The larger the scale of the event, the less likely people born after it are to come into existence.

Say you go back in time and save Archduke Franz Ferdinand from assassination, trying to stop WWI from happening, and by extension Hitler and WWII. Now, events to which history was already rolling may still happen: Ferdinand's death was the spark that lit the European powder keg, but without the event, there'd still be a lot of very tense Europeans waiting for an excuse to go to war. It wouldn't go down exactly as it did in our timeline, and it may have different results, but it would probably happen in some form. (Plus our hypothetical time traveler should just know better that you can change anything in history except Hitler, but I digress :P)

However (and I'm quoting myself from a TV Tropes Wiki article), such an event (or lack of event) would disrupt the actions of pretty much everyone in the world as they reacted to it (or failed to react to it); after that point, practically no couple would have intercourse at the exact same moment they did in "our" timeline, so different eggs would be fertilized with different spermatozoa, leading to a completely different global population after the then-current generation is gone. There'd still be a Hitler, a Churchill, a Roosevelt, a Stalin, and so on, who would live very different lives... but there'd be no Bush, no Blair, no Kim Jong-Il (hmm, I'm liking this new timeline already...), and no hypothetical time traveler.

The most famous example I can think of is Back to the Future. The change to history is relatively small, but it still had a huge impact on George and Lorraine McFly's lives. There's no way they'd have sex at the exact same moment they did in the unchanged timeline, so neither Marty nor his siblings would be born. Instead, the McFlys would have a completely different set of offspring. They might name one Marty, but he'd have different genes from "our" Marty and a different upbringing.

So really, what should have happened for Marty is this: Marty goes back to the future, where there's a different Marty McFly (played by Eric Stoltz) and no one recognizes him, unless they happen to remember "Calvin Klein" from that one week 30 years ago. Doc Brown will have known of the alternate Marty and realized that he's not the same Marty he met in 1955, so he'll just keep waiting for "our" Marty to arrive in 1985. (He'd also probably also avoid stealing plutonium from those Libyan terrorists altogether, and the design for his time machine may be dramatically different.)

At this point, the only thing Marty can do while hoping for anything close to the original timeline he wants is to go back to 1955 again, catch himself before he interacts with anyone or anything (hopefully not causing the universe to implode in the process), and with his doppelganger go back ahead to 1985 to save Doc before he's gunned down. Unfortunately for him, stopping his past self from going back in time will erase both him and the Marty he intercepted from existence (oh, and his dad's still a loser and the happy and successful Stoltz-Marty from the new timeline is wiped, too), but at least Doc ain't dead.

All this hassle could be avoided if the DeLorean had some means of "jumping tracks" between different timelines so he gets back to "his" 1985 without a hitch (and the flux capacitor can't do that... yet), but that means Doc dies all the same.

There are probably a whole slew of paradoxes that I'm not even considering here, but that's why you shouldn't ponder time travel so early in the morning.

My City Screams!

You know, I'm kinda pissed off at Frank Miller for his upcoming adaptation of Will Eisner's The Spirit, which is apparently going to be Sin City 2 ("The city is my mother. The city is my lover." *GAG*). He seems to have missed the part where Eisner wrote the Spirit as an easygoing, compassionate protagonist in tongue-in-cheek life-affirming stories, and has instead opted to write him as a cheap knockoff of a version of Batman that hasn't been seen in 15 to 20 years.

I just really, really hate Frank Miller. He's such a disgusting conglomerate of every negative stereotype of masculinity there is. The Dark Knight Returns was a great book, I admit, but everything since then -- Sin City, 300, All-Star Batman & Robin The Goddamn Batman -- has been a festering mass of gratuitous sex, violence, and pandering to braindead fratboys who think being a man means acting like a fucking ape.

Oh, and whores. Can't forget the whores.

Gawd, Frank... just... just stop being such a damn parody of yourself, already...

Thoughts on The Golden Compass

Apparently a lot of religious people are getting up in arms over this movie The Golden Compass because its creator is an outspoken atheist and he used his books to get his beliefs across to young readers.

So... wait wait wait.

One British guy writes a series of fantasy novels explaining his personal beliefs, and they're hailed as being among the greatest young adult literature of the 20th century.

Another British guy writes a series of fantasy novels explaining his personal beliefs, and... controversy.

Huh?

Okay, honestly? I liked The Chronicles of Narnia. They were well-written, they had engaging characters and exciting plots, and while I didn't agree with C. S. Lewis's Christian message I thought it was stated gracefully and eloquently. In fact, the main problem I did have with Lewis is simply that his fictional world wasn't created with as much verisimilitude as Tolkien's. :P I highly recommend his books.

So why the hell can't right-wing Christians have the grace to let someone outside their group have their say? Hypocrisy, much?

Ahh, well. In a way, the Christian Right is actually doing the "atheist agenda" (heh) a favor by raising such a stink. No such thing as bad press, after all.

Anyway, if I end up seeing this movie for political reasons, it won't be because the author's an atheist. It'll be because the villain is an evil woman named Coulter. :D

Seven Things You May Not Have Known About Filby

I was tagged by DJ Black Adam some two weeks ago and am only now getting around to it. Exam season's a bitch, I tells ya.

Please follow the rules of this game to the best of your ability. The rules of the game are:

A). Link to the person that tagged you and post the rules on your blog...

B). Share 7 random and/or weird facts about yourself...

C). Tag 7 random people at the end of your post and include links to their blogs...

D). Let each person know that they've been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

Facts About Filby

1) I'd really like to call myself a Democrat, but as long as the Congressional Dems keep being such spineless paper tigers I'm ashamed to do so. Until times change, I'm alone in independent Nader-land...

2) I first got into anime when I saw Fullmetal Alchemist, Record of Lodoss War, and Project A-Ko all in the same week by chance.

3) I got into comics because I was hyped about the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen movie (boy, was I let down) and read Alan Moore's graphic novel of the same name. I got into DC specifically when I read Kingdom Come on a whim the week after that.

4) I think that Mister Terrific really should team up with Zauriel sometime. The angel and the atheist, tell me that isn't a great story waiting to happen. They could hang out at a bar and have deep theological discussions or something.

5) My favorite president is either Abraham Lincoln or John F. Kennedy, depending on the day. My least favorite president is Warren G. Harding (Dubya comes in a very close second).

6) I'm pretty picky in my taste for music. I can't stand country, rap/hip-hop, metal, religious music, punk/emo, or the Beatles. I do like Canadian folk rock, though.

7) I cry easily at movies. Like, when Sam carried Frodo up Mount Doom, man, I was bawlin'.

I elect to break the rules and tag NOBODY! Mua-ha-ha!

The Whisperer in the Dark

"And he shall put on the semblance of men, the waxen mask and the robe that hides and come down from the world of seven suns to mock..."

Check this out. It's a trailer for an adaptation of one of my favorite weird tales, Lovecraft's "The Whisperer in Darkness."



Pretty classy, huh?

Meme Time

Was tagged by Ami, so here's a "Fictional Characters Meme."

I've actually done something like this before, only with RPG characters I've played. That was a little easier, though, since most of them were from the same genre (fantasy). These are all over the place, making it a mite tougher.

First, select your ten fictional characters (from any medium) by whichever method you like best. Then answer the questions below.

1. Mister Terrific, Michael Holt (JSA)
2. Green Lantern, Alan Scott (JSA)
3. Power Girl, Karen Starr/Kara Zor-L (JSA)
4. Sir Parn (Record of Lodoss War)
5. Ferris Bueller (Ferris Bueller's Day Off)
6. Harunobu Madarame (Genshiken)
7. "Kyon" (The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya)
8. Bilbo Baggins (The Hobbit)
9. Professor James Moriarty (Sherlock Holmes)
10. Filby Pott (me! yes, I'm vain!)

1. Divide the list up by even and odd. Which group of five would make a better Five Man Band (like a Power Rangers team)? Who would you slot in each position: Leader, Lancer (second-in-command), Big Guy, Smart Guy, The Chick? If you think the team would be improved by swapping one character between the even and odd groups, which ones would you switch?

Evens: Alan, Parn, Madarame, Bilbo, Filby

Odds: Mr. Terrific, Power Girl, Ferris, Kyon, Moriarty

Odd wins out. Leader: Terrific. Lancer: Ferris. Big Guy: Power Girl. Smart Guy (and evil mole!): Moriarty. The Chick (not female, but still Daphne-esque useless): Kyon.

2. Gender-swap 2, 8 & 10. Which character would have the most change in their story arc? Which the least? Would any of these characters have to have a complete personality change to be believable as the opposite sex?

Ellen Scott, Bilba Baggins, and... Filbie Pott?

"Ellen" would have the biggest change in her backstory. Her personality and heroic identity wouldn't have to change much, but since women couldn't be engineers in the early '40s (not until Rosie the Riveter, anyway) or work their way up to business moguls, her civilian life would be considerably different. She'd also probably get stuck as the JSA's secretary instead of one of its leaders, though. :P

"Bilba's" life wouldn't be much different. A burglar is a burglar regardless of sex, and I don't think Thorin & Co. would be any more or less receptive to her.

And "Filbie"... hah... I don't even want to go there.

3. Compare the matchups of 1 & 8 and 5 & 9. (Ignore canon sexual preferences for the moment.) Which couple would be more compatible? Which couple would be more plausible to people from either principal's home culture?

Mr. Terrific/Bilbo and Ferris/Moriarty.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Welllllll, I don't think Bilbo carrying on an affair with a man twice his size would be very... respectable (not that he ever cared that much what the neighbors thought). And also, as Ami says, Sasha would rip the poor hobbit to shreds. So I'll have to go with Ferris/Moriarty, if only because they're both the same species. Ferris is pretty charming, he could make it work. ;P

4. Your team is 3, 4 & 9. The mission consists of a social challenge, a mental challenge and a physical challenge. Which team member do you assign to each challenge?

Power Girl, Parn, and Moriarty.

That's not too hard. Power Girl, with her innate Kryptonian powers, gets the physical challenge done without a hitch. Moriarty, as the greatest criminal mind of all time, gets the mental challenge. As a knight, Parn hobnobs with nobility and is expected to possess a level of refinement, so he gets the social challenge.

Being an utter blackguard, of course, Moriarty would be likely to betray me, but since Karen has super-senses and greater-than-human intellect, I'd have her remotely keep an ear on the Professor to see if he gets out of line.

5. 7 becomes 1's boss for a week in some plausible fashion. How's their working relationship?

Kyon as Michael's boss? That's... highly improbable. In fact it's impossible, since one's the smartest man in the world and co-leader of the most advanced spy organization on Earth and the other's just a below-average fifteen-year-old high school student. Not that they'd have a bad relationship, since Michael's an incredibly giving and understanding guy and Kyon would doubtless appreciate having a companion who doesn't speak in riddles and enigmas for once.

6. 2 finds him/her/itself inserted into 6's continuity. As far as anyone other than 2 or 6 is concerned, they've always been there. What role would 2 be presumed to have had in 6's story, and could they fit in without going wonky?

That would be weird. Madarame and his buds live completely mundane lives in a reasonable facsimile of the real world, and Alan would stick out like a sore thumb. Likewise, as a big-time American super-hero, he'd have no business hanging around a Japanese community college. I don't see Alan becoming a part of the Genshiken's story, but if he were operating openly the guys in the club might spend an issue/episode talking about how cool he is, before getting distracted by some new video game...

7. 3 and 5 get three wishes. The catch is that they have to agree on all three wishes before they get the benefits of any of them. What three wishes would they make?

Power Girl and Ferris? That's a toughie. Well, first I'll say that Karen wishes for Earth-Two to come back into existence along with her dead parent-figures Lois and Clark, which benefits Ferris because then he'll have a twenty-years-older doppelganger of himself to bestow wisdom upon him or something. Then the Ferrises Two would sweet-talk Peej into relinquishing her two remaining wishes so they could wish for unlimited days off and a totally sweet vintage automobile.

8. 1 and 2 are brainwashed by a one-time artifact that works even on people immune to mind control to attack and kill 4. They keep their normal personality, skills and competence level, except any Code vs. Killing has been turned off. Can 4 survive? How?

Power Girl and Green Lantern versus Parn? Geez. If he's on his own, he's dead, magic sword or no. That said, as the leader of a band of intrepid adventurers, it's only fair that Parn gets to fight alongside his friends. Since he's close friends with three powerful spellcasters, that would help him survive P. G.'s onslaught, since Kryptonians are vulnerable to magic. It would be a tougher fight against Alan, but Deedlit could summon elementals to keep him busy while Parn takes him out with a well-placed tree-branch, since his ring can't affect wooden objects. Power Girl would only be slowed down, though, since Slayn wouldn't unleash his full magical arsenal against her knowing she was mind controlled. So I think Parn could potentially win, but Karen would just as likely overwhelm the whole bunch of them.

9. 6, 7, 9 & 10 must help an orphanage full of small and depressed children have a merry Christmas. Who does what, knowing that at the very least the kids will be expecting a visit from Santa?

Oh geez, the two most useless plus the two most evil. This is further complicated by the fact that Kyon and Madarame don't speak English, Moriarty probably doesn't speak Japanese, and Filby doesn't speak either language. Well, being from a comedy series, Madarame has the greatest likelihood of getting stuck in an embarrassing costume, so he'd be Santa. Filby, of course, would be the elf, much to his chagrin. The good Professor would swindle the whole lot of them and leave the orphans out in the cold, leaving Madarame and Filby as the unwitting patsies. Kyon just stands to the side and snarks.

10. 3 and 8 are challenged to circumnavigate the Earth in eighty days or less, using only forms of transportation invented before 1900. Can they do it, or will they be fatally distracted by sidequests or their own personality conflicts?

Bilbo and Power Girl? Since Karen can fly around the world in, like, five minutes or whatever, yeah, totally. But assuming she agrees not to use flight or super-speed? Still possible. They're both pretty easygoing, so they'd get along just fine. Karen's pretty focused, which would help temper Bilbo's wanderlust. Plus Karen has all her other powers and Bilbo the Ring to help get them out of scrapes. So yeah, it's totally possible.

I tag... um, Adam and Ami have both already done it (Ami twice), and I don't wanna make them have to do it again. Tom Foss comments occasionally and Ragnell is probably at least tangentially aware of my blog if I've been linked by WFA, so I guess they can consider themselves tagged if they read this.

I am Iron Man!!!

Iron Man Trailer

There haven't been many great super-hero movies lately, not since Batman Begins in my opinion. I dunno if Iron Man will lift the genre out of its doldrums... but it sure looks cool. I kinda like Iron Man (even if he's an insufferable dick), and the filmmakers seem to have a solid grasp on the character. I've also always been a fan of his character design/costume, and it really stands out in that regard.

I'm glad they've also ditched his origin in Vietnam with the whole outdated Cold War-era "scary Asian people"/Yellow Peril angle. I've heard that the Mandarin will be an off-stage presence, like Sauron in The Lord of the Rings, and just the fact that he's involved at all makes me roll my eyes, but... I'll wait and see.

And hey! Sam L. Jackson's in it! How can that go wrong? *pretends not to remember XXX*