Month: October 2005

He predicts that “the part of the book that’s going to get most people’s attention — and raise hackles — is The Canon, which features the 50 science fiction films I have deemed to be the most significant in the history of film. Note that ‘most significant’ does not mean ‘best’ or ‘most popular’ or even ‘most influential.’ Some of the films may be all three of these, but not all of them are — indeed, some films in The Canon aren’t objectively very good, weren’t blockbusters and may not have influenced other filmmakers to any significant degree. Be that as it may, I think they matter — in one way or another, they are uniquely representative of some aspect of the science fiction film experience.”

So, what films are in The Canon? Here, in alphabetical order, are “the 50 science fiction films you have to see before you die”:
(The ones I”ve seen are in italics:

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension!
Akira
Alien
Aliens
Alphaville
Back to the Future– in fact all three of them
Blade Runner-is my omission a cardinal sin? (Cardinal Sin- didn’t he used to be the head of the Roman Catholic Church in the Philippines?)
Brazil- had fully intended to one day, and it didn’t happen
Bride of Frankenstein
Brother From Another Planet– but I’ve seen a LOT of John Sayles movies
A Clockwork Orange– but I don’t plan to watch it AGAIN
Close Encounters of the Third Kind– I think I’ve seen both versions
Contact
The Damned
Destination Moon
The Day The Earth Stood Still
Delicatessen
Escape From New York
ET: The Extraterrestrial
Flash Gordon: Space Soldiers (serial)
The Fly (1985 version)
Forbidden Planet
Ghost in the Shell
Gojira/Godzilla
The Incredibles– so there, Hemby!
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956 version) – I saw the later version, too
Jurassic Park
Mad Max 2/The Road Warrior
The Matrix
Metropolis
On the Beach
Planet of the Apes (1968 version)– I saw all 5 Apes movies at a drive-in in one night! Brutal.
Robocop
Sleeper– but then, I saw all of the Woody Allen pictures of that era
Solaris (1972 version)
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan– saw the first five films, none since
Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back – I also saw VI, and I
The Stepford Wives– I HAVE to assume he means the original film, not the recent remake
Superman
Terminator 2: Judgement Day
The Thing From Another World
Things to Come
Tron
12 Monkeys
28 Days Later
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
2001: A Space Odyssey
La Voyage Dans la Lune
War of the Worlds (1953 version)

Rosa Parks sat down in the white section of that Montgomery bus because she was tired from working all day.
The only thing Rosa Parks was tired of was sitting in the back of the bus.

Rosa Parks was a simple seamstress who didn’t know that she would be arrested.
Rosa Parks was a secretary with the local NAACP and had a pretty good idea that she would be arrested.

Whatever the particulars, they do not alter the fact that Rosa Parks’ action, followed by the 13-month Montgomery bus boycott, altered the country for the better.
When I heard Rosa Parks died, I pulled out my Neville Brothers’ album, Yellow Moon, and played the track “Sister Rosa”:

HALLOWEEN

For those of you too broke or too cheap to buy your own pumpkin.

MUSIC

Pete Townsend of the Who has a blog, on which he is publishing a story called ‘The Boy Who Heard Music’. I saw this on a wire story, but it gave the URL as Blogger.com or Blogspot.com. Lazy journalism, that.

A lot of interesting-looking articles and reviews about books (Dream Boogie: The Triumph of Sam Cooke), music (Sigur Rós, Anoushka Shankar Charlie Sexton), film in both DVD (Batman: The 1943 Serial Collection) and in theaters (David Cronenberg’s History of Violence) and TV DVDs (Arrested Development, Veronica Mars)in a magazine called Paste.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t find online the one story I most wanted to read, about Sir Paul McCartney, which may have been the point. The Elizabethtown cover is a watercolor by Joni Mitchell, her first watercolor piece since the So Far album cover for Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.

Stevie Wonder’s much-delayed album, “A Time to Love”, which I said was coming out in May, and then in June, was FINALLY released on October 18. My wife promised to get it for me for our anniversary, which was in May.

Here is a review of an album that I’ve never heard by an artist I never heard of. It gives me hope for the future of the Republic.

OH, ALBANY

An old pic of a bridge only a few hundred yards from my workplace. Familiar landmarks should be obvious to the locals, especially the building to the right of the closest footing…

Oh and click on the “picture” of me for my not-so-secret message.

POLITICS

The Bill of Rights Defense Committee’s e-mail newsletter
September 2005, Vol. 4, No. 7
Dissent Is Patriotic

Beyond Reason
“This extremely powerful 89 minute film presents comprehensive documentation from United States Government archives of a massive cover-up, including military and civilian experimentation, dating back over 60 years.”

Go to this site if you wish to pledge to only support candidates who:
Acknowledge that the U.S. was misled into the war in Iraq
Advocate for a responsible exit plan with a timeline
Support our troops both at home and abroad

A better way to vote.

DeLay’s Lawyer Lies About MoveOn. Unless he just repeated a lie told by his client. Or he was just mistaken. And the lie has been perpetuated by the mainstream media.
Naturally, my pal Dan is outraged:
Dear Associated Press:
I have become aware that you people have happily and enthusiastically repeated the lie spread by the lawyer for the criminal corporatist Tom DeLay, that the patriotic organization MoveOn is printing t- shirts with DeLay’s mug shot.
Because you are a virtual monopoly, you have an obligation to print the truth. You people need to immediately provide a retraction, and recommend to the corporate media outlets for which you provide content to print the retraction.
I realize that such an act of integrity runs counter to the corporate political agenda which it is your mission to promote. However, each lie that you amplify, each bit of truth that you suppress, each line of disinformation that you spread undercuts the perceived integrity of the corporate media outlets that you people provide for.
As more and more of the public becomes aware of the unreliability of corporate media outlets, the more of the corporate print outlets go out of business because of lack of readership. Each outlet that goes under brings the Associated Press closer to bankruptcy and dissolution.
Rest assured that I am working every day to cause your demise. It’s easy. All I have to do is point out to the people around me the lies that you people spread, and eventually they understand.
So I ask you to tell the truth. But, since I live in a reality based mode of existence, I understand that you people can no more tell the truth than flap your arms and fly. Thus, all I can say is, if you want to lie, then go ahead. Bring ’em on.

VERY disrespectful.

INFORMATION

This is a great resource for those of you who want to study the history and impact of communications technologies on society.

A new blog with a collection of information policy articles

Should Amos ‘n’ Andy be aired?

Absolutely Yes. It occurred to me, during the discussions of Banned Books Week recently, that there is a great deal of fear of things (books, movies) that people haven’t even seen or read. Recall, for instance, the protests before the movies Passion of the Christ or Farenheit 9/11 were even released.

I’ve never seen Amos ‘n’ Andy. Even *I* am too young. The only part of I’ve ever viewed was a short segment during some TV Land documentary about blacks on television a couple seasons ago. Maybe I SHOULD see it, maybe we ALL should see it, to find out what the controversy is all about, first hand. We’ll have a national discussion about it.

In what manner? With caveats? Only late at night? Only on cable? Only available on video and/or DVD?

On PBS, educational TV. It seems to me that it fits in with that promise to “enrich the lives of all Americans.” Let’s face it: there are other outlets that take address issues that were once pretty much the sole provence of public television (History Channel, Biography, and a number of networks geared towards kids.) PBS’ other advantage is that it is a broadcast outlet that reeaches most homes without cable. Of COURSE, with caveats, discussion of the historical context, etc.

Of course, it will NEVER happen, since PBS stations, understandably, are worried about their fundraising abilities.

“Have you personally ever felt that you were being discriminated against because of your race?”

Oh, God, yes.

“How close do you think we are to eliminating discrimination against racial and ethnic minorities in America once and for all? Are we very close, fairly close, not too close, or not close at all?”

Not too close. That overt “separate water fountain” stuff that one associated with the American Souith is largely gone, replaced by that more subtle form that existed in the North even in the 1960s, when Northerners were so good at tsk tsking the folks in the South. Now, that more subtle form is by and large the universal form. One of these days, I’ll write more on this.

If you are a-mind to, please indicate your race.

Black. And I promised some months ago, to say why I prefer that to “African-American”. Well, partly, it is that it’s too limiting. There are lots of folks who are black Africans, or from the Caribbean or elsewhere, perhaps originally from Africa, but removed from it.
When I see the code A on some forms, I automatically think Asian.
Also, I’ve lived through colored, Negro, Black, Afro-American, Black again, then African-American. Black is plain simpler, six syllables less, and life is just too short.

Beyond that, I also appreciate the fact that he wrote many plays and screenplays, most notably for me, the screenplay for the movie The French Lieutenant’s Woman. And his fight against political oppression, as well as his scathing criticism of W’s invasion of Iraq, warmed my heart as well.