A Microsoft Corp. product is headed to the big screen for the first time — but don’t worry, moviegoers won’t be asked to suffer through two hours of Clippy. The company’s “Halo” video-game franchise and its hero, Master Chief, will provide the basis for a major movie under a deal between Microsoft and movie studios…
The cool gadgetry on the classic TV series has made dreamers drool since the first time Captain Kirk barked the words “Beam me up, Scotty!” into his little black box and snapped it shut. —Holly J. Wagner —Star Trek Phone Set to Thrill (Wired) Cute, but Kirk never actually said that line, just as Sherlock…
If daily life is not concerned with familiar economic activities and the whole of life is not informed with religious purposes, then what is life all about in Star Trek? Well, the story is about a military establishment, Star Fleet, and one ship in particular in the fleet, the Enterprise. One might not expect this…
Doohan, whose role was immortalised in the line “Beam me up, Scotty”, had been suffering from pneumonia and Alzheimer’s disease, his agent said. —Star Trek’s Scotty dies aged 85 (BBC) Just as Sherlock Holmes never said, “It’s elementary, my dear Watson,” nobody in the original show ever said “Beam me up, Scotty,” but that’s OK. (Favorite…
Modern English has given us two terms we need to explain this phenomenon: “geeking out” and “vegging out.” To geek out on something means to immerse yourself in its details to an extent that is distinctly abnormal – and to have a good time doing it. To veg out, by contrast, means to enter a…
Ross, a professional actor who had spent years working with theater groups across Canada, knew how to mimic all the voices in “Star Wars” – as well as the fluorescent hum of a lightsaber – when he set about adapting the trilogy for stage. Ross and director T.J. Dawe then devised ways to physically represent…
Tolkien, earthed in Old English, had a head start that led him straight to the flinty perfection of Mordor and Orc. Here, by contrast, are some Lucas inventions: Palpatine. Sidious. Mace Windu. (Isn’t that something you spray on colicky babies?) Bail Organa. And Sith. [..] What can you say about a civilization where people zip…
—Ladies of Star Trek (SixtiesCity.com) Knee boots and beehive hairdos… I’m in heaven. (Thanks for the link, Scribblingwoman.)
I take the view that computer languages, robot ethics, method acting, and biomechanics are the main ingredients that fused, in the 1950s, to become the cultural meme we call Artificial Intelligence, or AI for short. None of those ingredients was wholly new at that time: biomechanics and the Method – first known as the Stanislavski…
The later spinoffs were much better performed, but the content continued to be stuck in Roddenberry’s rut. So why did the Trekkies throw themselves into this poorly imagined, weakly written, badly acted television series with such commitment and dedication? Why did it last so long? Here’s what I think: Most people weren’t reading all that…
I remember being eight years old, and reading in “Starlog” that Darth Vader became the half-man/half-machine he was following a duel with Ben Kenobi that climaxed with Vader falling into molten lava. Now, twenty six years later, I finally got to see that long-promised battled – and it lived up to any expectation I still…
The movie wasn’t perfect, but there was a lot to like and a lot to laugh at. I so enjoyed myself that I became even more puzzled than I was before about the handfuls of invective that many reviewers of the film have been flinging at it, risking damage to their digital watches in the…
Adams had a knack for describing thorny space-time problems and then squeezing them until they sprayed out juicy absurdity. The novels could be silly — Adams was a comedy writer — but they also made dark sport of humans’ self-importance. We look pretty small, he constantly reminded us, against the backdrop of a nearly infinite…
I discovered an abandoned deposit in my company owned by one of our Outer Rim customers who died along with his entire family as a result of an landspeeder crash. He actually deposited this funds amounting to IC12,000,000,000.00 (Twelve billion Imperial Credits), for safe keeping in my company here in Mos Eisley. Company file records…
OTBs, or “Outside The Boxers,” as they call themselves, are unconventional thinkers who believe “there are no stupid ideas,” Lessjo says. “We really just wanted to know what would happen if Civil War soldiers fought the crew from ‘Star Trek.’ You never see that in the movies or TV reruns.” —Tim Chitwood —A battle outside…
The real appeal of the game is seeing Star Wars characters rendered in itty-bitty plastic form. By the end of the game, there are more than 30 different little guys you can be in Free Play mode. The good guys are cute, but the evil folks are just adorable. Mini-Maul! Sen. Palpateeny! Bite-sized battle droids!…
The moon base landing dome opens in pie slices like eye muscles, or the jagged mouth of a cyclops. Pods are not designed strictly for function but thematic meaning: who would fly one without side ports? Tunnel vision. The dark port in the white pod body is very eye-ballish. Similar also is the deep socket…
—Star Trek Personality Test Apparently I’m the middle-aged, toupee-sporting movie-era Kirk, though I’m 36 now, which is about the age of the TV-era Kirk. Ah, well… I’m still Shatner, and to be Shatner is good! My wife picked up two more Star Trek paperbacks for me at the library booksale… one tells of Spock’s first…
That’s your lot. That’s the movie we’ve been waiting 26 years for. And let me tell you, it was not worth the wait, not for this. The whole film is true to neither the letter nor the spirit of Douglas Adams’ books and scripts. And it really seems that many of the changes have been…
Q. If you could travel in time, where would you go and why? A. I’d like to see what my 30s look like, not too far – we’re talking about eight years down the line. I’d like to see what’s going on in my life, that’s quite interesting to me. —Q&A: Billie Piper (BBC) My wife,…