Ah, the 2007 Results of the annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, in which participants attempt to craft a single sentence as mind-blowingly awful as certain of those composed by Edward George Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873). There is kind of an art in it.

I need to stop going to movies in these crowded neon multiplexes. I loathe the experience! It sickens me! From the sticky floors to the sticky people (children that is, wave after wave of them, all covered with germs and soggy bits of candy in the corners of their mouths, making noises all the time, noises eeegh) to the bloated trailer-park refugees loudly commenting, "Oh I hate him!" or "It's Dumbledore!", and the screen filled with ads for the first half hour and always some ass sitting right behind you picking his nose all over your head like you're his trashcan, anyway.

The Simpsons Movie was a disappointment. I was surprised; I fully expected something original and interesting, something worth putting on a big screen like Trey Parker and Matt Stone did with their masterpiece "South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut" and even Mike Judge managed with "Beavis and Butt-Head Do America". But alas no. The Simpsons Movie is pretty much just a long, above-average Simpsons episode. It's better than many recent years of Simpsons episodes, but there's nothing really special about it, and there's certainly nothing cinematic about it. The movie retreads many old formulas from the television series: Homer does shoddy house repair; the Simpsons get in trouble with the town so have to run off somewhere; Lisa is smitten by a handsome kid never before seen on the show; Homer takes a spiritual journey thanks to an aboriginal medicine doctor; Bart wants a new father; Homer adopts an unusual pet; Marge leaves Homer until he can redeem himself. But -- conversely -- my biggest complaint is that the villain is NOT Mr. Burns. A Simpsons FEATURE FILM and there's only ONE SCENE with Mr. Burns (although he is villainous in it). The movie is filled with other strange choices too: the opening sequence is interrupted by a Green Day concert; Rainier Wolfcastle is recast as Arnold Schwarzenegger; much of the action takes place outside of Springfield; and the preachy environmentalism gets annoying quickly. I guess Homer sums up it up early on when he complains about the Itchy and Scratchy movie, "I can't believe we're paying for something we could get for free on TV. If you ask me, everyone in this theater is a big sucker. Especially you!" This is supposed to be ironic. Sadly it is not. 5of10 spiderpigs.

Still can't find any.

Since some dude is remaking (or rebooting or re-imagining or whatever) Friday the 13th, I feel compelled to comment on the original film franchise (one of several with which I grew up and got over). The most interesting thing about the early Friday the 13th slasher flicks, especially when compared to Halloween (and even its inferior sequel), is how much they suck. The one thing the franchise always had going for it was the iconography of the Jason Voorhees character: the hockey mask, his tank-like inexorability, the bloody machete. But dim memories forget that most of that stuff isn't present in the early films. It's not until Part 3 that the hockey mask shows up. In Part 2 Jason's got a bag over his head, like a pillow case or something; and rather than the dark ratty clothing of the iconic Jason, all ripped up from a multitude of spear shafts, bullets, and pitchfork prongs, in the early films he wears jeans and flannel and denim overalls like some backwoods hillbilly. And he's not in Part 1 at all (I guess he shows up at the end, launching himself from the murky depths of Crystal Lake to make a grab for girl-flesh, but that hardly counts): it's his mother doing all the killing, and what a lousy villain she is, going from psycho crazy to chatty kathy, back to crazy, then to smeary weepy, back to crazy. She's entirely annoying. Then in Part 2, bag-headed Jason actually *runs*, which is just wrong wrong wrong. And he uses all manner of different weapons. In Part 3 he mostly uses farm equipment. And just to sort of ensure suckiness, Part 3 was shot in 3D, so it's filled with all those awful 3D gimmicks like balls flying toward the camera, a yo-yo aimed at the audience, lots of long handles jutting through the screen, all very annoying, especially when watching it in 2D. Then there's the music, like a cross between Psycho and Jaws, just awful, turn the sound down! In later films the pattern was established, and while those movies also suck, they suck for different reasons; the real Jason is finally there, having grown into himself (ecce monstrum!).

Send me any floxspects you've found, I'll totally thank you for them. Attention! I am looking for floxspects! Damn it!

This year's British writer award nominees "long list" includes a bunch of nincompoops nobody cares about: some first-timers, several drooling wackos, and at least one sociopath. What is this trend toward anonymity, this reaction against celebrity, status, consistency? Is it blogging, is that what it is? Or some kind of deal with the publishers? Some kind of deal, hey?

Now I've seen the last episode of Stargate SG-1 I'm forced to look back upon it -- as a teacher of special students looks back upon a career filled with stupid stupid people -- and make certain comments about the so-called Jaffa. These guys, these Jaffa, are basically the tools of the show's villians, the Goa'uld (which are serpent-like parasites who take humans as hosts and then get all arrogant and glowy-eyed and shit). The Jaffa have been fooled for thousands of years into serving the Goa'uld as their mamelukes, fighting all their many wars for them, torturing all their many Teal'cs, and acting as incubators for the Goa'uld young (seriously, they each have a big parasite worm in their belly, like a friggin' kangaroo for monsters).

They each carry around this thing called a Staff Weapon, which is pretty much the worst weapon ever invented. This cumbersome wonder produces a short beam of "energy" about an inch in diameter that travels slowly enough for the naked eye to follow, and for any mobile target to pretty easily dodge. Effectively it's little better than a spear, and hurts a bit less. It also looks like it weighs about 50 pounds. Mostly the Jaffa use it for clubbing each other over the head.

Then there's the other Jaffa weapon of choice, the Zatt gun. This is a handgun capable of stunning a human with one shot, killing with a second. It used to be able to disintegrate things with a third shot, including people, but it doesn't seem to do that anymore, or maybe SG-1 forgot about that since they're always hiding bodies on Goa'uld motherships. The best thing about this little masterpiece is you squeeze the trigger and it takes a couple of seconds before firing, pausing to emit a distinctive beeping noise. I guess that's in the interest of fairness to the target, just to give him a chance to take some cover. But Jaffa never do because they never seem to associate the sound of the Zatt with the concept that somebody might presently be shooting one.

The Jaffa like these weapons because the Jaffa are stupid. They stumble around in heavy chain and mail armor that can't protect against a single blast from a Staff Weapon or Zatt or a single slug from one of SG-1's P90s. Some of them have gigantic cobra shaped helmets on their heads that wobble around and seem about to topple a Jaffa over. And did I mention they have worms in their bellies, big ones?

Long live the Jaffa!

I'm not sure why this concept amuses me so much. Of course it should be a big, awkward sort of hat, one perpetually in danger of falling off, like the Cat in the Hat's hat, or maybe one of those gigantic 19th century top hats like in Gangs of New York. I suppose one could install chin straps or something.

I lay awake in bed late last night chuckling over the Immortality Hat. Imagine something completely cumbersome and annoying -- a tall fluffy furry striped Cat-in-the-Hat hat -- that bestows upon its wearer a wonderful effect: while wearing it one cannot die. Now imagine someone starts manufacturing Immortality Hats and selling them for like 500 bucks each -- would anybody NOT have one? What a freak, the one NOT wearing a big stupid hat. So everybody wears an identical hat: fashion models prancing down runways each with a big stupid hat flopping around. Basketball players, ski-jumpers, coal miners, sky-divers. People have no sense of humor about their Immortality Hat. Touching it becomes a taboo. People stop and gape whenever somebody's hat falls off. A whole industry grows around the hat: keeping it securely in place, modified beds for sleeping with it comfortably, giant shower caps to keep it dry in the shower or while swimming, an overhat to go on top of the Immortality Hat to keep it safe at all times, some way to clean underneath it without taking it off, cut the hair under there, emergency hat replacement services. Soon it becomes a political issue. Democrats insist that people have a right to immortality, demand that regulations be applied to lower the cost for people who can't afford one. They want to tax cigarettes in order to subsidize Immortality Hats. (Which would prove profitable since everybody smokes now that they've got an Immortality Hat on their head.) Meanwhile Republicans bluster about banning the hat since God Himself didn't bestow immortality upon mankind (except for up in Heaven), and the Bible makes no mention of any hat. Some of them go around campaigning without any hat on their head (although privately they wear one). Assassins have to shoot the hat off first. Removing the hat during sex is the ultimate gesture of love and intimacy. Hat theft is punishable by death. Cars are made with much higher roofs. Back strain increases from all the ducking under low doorways. YAWN!

This is what kept me awake last night, and I'm very tired this morning. There's a story in this somewhere, something to do with the culture of fear and overprotectiveness we're evolving toward, but I don't write stories anymore.

Freeman Dyson, whose brain is bigger than yours, is all full of heretical thoughts about Climate Change. It's a long read but worth the time.

Stephen King, whose brain is about the same size as yours, has some comments about J.K. Rowling's last Harry Potter book and its treatment by the press. He praises the book, trashes R.L. Stine, and declares Rowling the linguistic equal of Martin Amis (which is sort of like comparing Saul Bellow to, oh I don't know, wait for it, okay then, Stephen King).

This is for works published in 2006 so no, Deathly Harry is not on the list.

Hollywood Reporter reports on the cancellation of JFC. Which makes me sad but not, you know, traumatized.

Blech! Fooey! Barf! Hold on, I'll compose myself and start over. Up until about a minute before I watched it I believed this new show from the SciFi Channel was about The Flash, the dude who runs really fast. Somehow during all the pre-air promotion I never noticed the "Gordon" part of the title; that's how interested I am in The Flash who runs really fast. But then -- then! -- there it was, Flash Gordon, and my brain exploded. Flash Gordon?! Savior of the Universe, Flash Gordon?! King of the Impossible, Flash Gordon?! I leaped out of my chair and did the happy-dance, you know the one, Snoopy does it best. A whole new Flash Gordon series had just landed on my TV screen like a rocket ship from Mars. Happy were the ways! I love Flash Gordon. I love the sparkler-assed buzzing deco rocket ships, ray-guns, mind-controlling doomsday machines; I love Ming the Merciless, tyrant of Mongo, and his henchmen all eager to commit genocide at the droop of one evil eyebrow; I love Doctor Zarkov and his mad talent for survivable crash landings; I love sexy Dale Arden, all set to faint or swoon from too much excitement or melt in the general direction of Flash's tights; and so on.

So but then -- then! -- I watched it. I went and I watched it.

Sigh. I had intended to write lots of vitriolic comments here, but the show really isn't even worth trashing. Let it suffice that the new Flash Gordon is like a visual catalog of bad decisions, from the casting (Ming looks more like Gary Cole than Fu Manchu, and Zarkov like he just got back from Comicon) to the setting (mostly on Earth) to the plotting (thinner than gruel), and the terrible, terrible acting. It's mostly like one of those crappy twenty dollar original movies SciFi airs on Saturday night for all the losers who couldn't get a date (or even the Netflicks URL).

If you really need a review, here, this guy agrees with me. Meanwhile, this idiot actually liked it.

Light speed here we come! I can't wait to turn invisible.

Description: A mostly accurate and semi-documentarian account of the D-Day invasion of Normandy (Operation Overlord, June 6, 1944) told from the perspectives of the Allies, the Nazis, and the French Resistance.

Notable Cast: (e-gads!) John Wayne, Henry Fonda, Robert Mitchum, Rod Steiger, Richard Burton, Red Buttons, Sean Connery, Mel Ferrer, Robert Ryan, and on and on; this is one of those great ensemble war movie casts (see also e.g. A Bridge Too Far).

Notable Crew: Producer Darryl F. Zanuck, 5 screenwriters, 4 directors, 4 cinematographers; the scale of the production crew almost parallels the scale of the film's subject.

Discussion: Perhaps the best movie specifically about D-Day, spanning from the point right before the invasion to the point where Omaha Beach is finally won, and including the paratrooper drops, the siezure and defense (and eventual relief) of the Pegasus bridge, and some of the activity of the French Resistance fighters.

The acting is generally less than terrific (start with John Wayne and extrapolate from there) although it does include several heavies (Henry Fonda, Richard Burton). Fonda is pretty much wasted in the role of Theodore Roosevelt's son: determined to land with his troops (4th infantry at Utah beach) despite his crippling arthritis, he discovers they're a mile off target, decides to press on anyway, roll credits on the character. Burton has a better if not larger part as a British flier who's already seen his share of the war and is able to provide some nice contrasts with the wide-eyed rookie troops. Robert Mitchum and John Wayne are all stereotypes (but hey, these guys more or less invented those stereotypes): tough like iron, cigar chomping, pain ignoring, get-the-job-done types. Sean Connery is actually used for comic relief.

While mostly factually accurate, the movie lacks the realism modern audiences have come to expect (this was 1962): soldiers die immediately when shot, there's very little blood (and never incidental), etc; but this is not necessarily a failing, depending on your point of view. Who decided that realism is better or necessary, even for a war film? (The argument tends to be pursued more on political than on artistic grounds, so I'll refrain from joining it here.)

Music: Fairly typical but above-average War Movie soundtrack by Maurice Jarre.

Cinematography: Boasts two of cinematic history's greatest aerial shots: a strafing run down Omaha beach from the perspective of a German fighter plane, and a panoramic sweep (shot from a helicopter) of Free French troops invading the village of Oustreham. (This second shot is probably my favorite single film shot ever; the density of the detail and activity has probably not been equalled, nor the size of the set filmed.)

Acclamations: Again, this movie can be watched for the cinematography alone: some of the shots are eye-boggling. Richard Burton's several scenes are strong. The Scottish "beachmaster" with his bull dog is quite amusing (while also impressive), perhaps an inspiration for Robert Duvall's character in Apocalypse Now. Provides an adequate introduction to the history of D-Day for anyone lacking familiarity.

Gripes: Aside from the general cleanliness, it does have some other departures from fact but they are minor: British troops remove explosives from the Pegasus bridge which historically was never mined; the US troops on Omaha blast through the German fortifications using bangalore torpedoes (a myth which for some reason has been propagated ever since) where in fact they were forced to sneak troops around and behind in order to break the line; 82nd Airborne troops use crickets for identification where actually only the 101st had them. Etc.

Awards: Academy Award Winner: Best Cinematography (Black and White), Best Special Effects; Academy Award Nominee: Best Picture, Best Interior Decoration (B&W), Best Editing; Golden Globe Winner: Best Cinematography (Black and White).

Rating: 9 out of 10. This is a great movie, among the top five war movies ever made.

This dude over here has taken some of the Important Works of Western Philosophy and abridged them like a SportsCenter for books. I guess this is a crash course sort of thing, in case all your friends are discussing Hegel's ideas about history or Bacon's ideas about ham, you can go over there and get yourself caught up quick. Also, this guy is named Glyn, which what is that, Welsh? I can't ever understand a damned thing those Welsh are saying.

Star Trek: Nemesis was a top contender for the most disappointing film of 2002, and if it weren't for George Lucas it probably would have claimed that distinction. (My bitterness toward Mark Berman has long ago subsided into a dull disfavor, and unlike Lucas he never stood upon a cinematic pedestal anyway). Both films had poor predecessors, but Attack of the Clones had much more to live up to, and so its failings are made more acute.

Nemesis would have been a decent TV movie, and could have done fine with a smaller budget. The script certainly sought no higher plain, hacking out many of the tattered Star Trek: The Next Generation clichés people must now expect: there's a duplicate Data with a different personality (this must be like the fifth one of those); there's psychic grappling between Deanna Troi and a cruel psionic invader (which as usual plays out almost entirely in the pained expression on Troi's face); there's Picard grappling with weighty issues of identity and humanness (which Patrick Stewart's agent must insist upon while drafting contracts as recompense for being cast so many light years away from Shakespeare); there's a second-in-command thug for Riker to rumble with at the end (but not the very end of course, the second-to-the-end); there's the poor cloaking-shield-challenged Enterprise dueling with a cloaked enemy vessel (this one equipped with a gizmo that beats the cloak-detection hack they figured out the last time they fought a cloaked enemy vessel); there's the super-weapon that only lacks sufficient range before it will annihilate the peace-loving Earthlings (and I don't have any parenthetical comment for that one); there's the disabled warp-drive (first shot always the charm when it comes to disabling the Enterprise's warp drive), and so on until morning.

All this amounts to the condition that came to characterize the Berman-era Star Trek franchise more than anything else: formula. There are no risks here. There are lots of digital effects and vacuum explosions and noisy spacecraft intended to please the dull-witted average moviegoer, and the effects are fairly impressive (a much better movie would have been one without any plot at all, just spacecraft shooting at each other). Mainly there is redundancy upon redundancy; nothing in this film hasn't already been done in another Star Trek film or in one of the television programs.

Roger Ebert had a good quote in his review of Nemesis: "I think it is time for Star Trek to make a mighty leap forward another 1,000 years into the future, to a time when starships do not look like rides in a 1970s amusement arcade, when aliens do not look like humans with funny foreheads, and when wonder, astonishment and literacy are permitted back into the series. Star Trek was kind of terrific once, but now it is a copy of a copy of a copy."

5 out of 10

It's a new episode of Star Trek starring George Takei and nobody else, premiering tonight at 7pm (PST I think). Get more info here. I'll watch it just to find out what the hell the title is supposed to mean.

This guy has 50 reasons why Return of the Jedi sucks. Damn, I thought it was just the Ewoks.

RiffTrax is pretty much the greatest thing since diapers. Mike Nelson (Mystery Science Theater 3000) has been making these MP3 movie commentaries pretty much in the same manner as MST3K, often with other MST3K alumni (Kevin Murphy, Bill Corbett). These are movies they'd never be able to license the way they did those crappy B-movies for MST3K, so they just provide the commentary, and you sync it up with the movie (i.e. you listen to the commentary while watching the movie). Of course, in certain dark corners of the Internet you can find both movie and commentary pre-synced for your lazy ass, but for entertainment both this esoteric and excellent you really should cough up some dough ($2.99 each) -- they even make it easy to donate. Hell, I even did.

According to this site, which is an online poll for US presidential candidates sorted by country of origin, the World, or at least those members of the World with an Internet connection, awareness that this poll exists, and the proclivity to vote in it, would elect Ron Paul, who presently leads Barack Obama by almost 4,000 votes. Which implies that people in the World have heard of Ron Paul, unlike people in the US. Or it could be the "Digg Effect" in action, which is the result of legions of irritating know-it-alls and loud-mouths, many (many) of whom have been infected by Conviction (a symptom of a deadly and virulent meme-complex like Religion or Environmentalism -- eeeegh), and who have wasted yet even more of their abundant time to repeatedly erase their browser cookies in order to vote numerous times for the candidate they have been convinced (by their tyrannical meme-complex) should win. The circumstantial evidence of this poll is that the World, or at least [see above], is decidedly liberal. In fact, if not for Ron Paul, who casual poll-voters and general idiots might take for being "liberal" due to his anti-war position, the poll results would overwhelmingly favor the Democrats. (Indeed Ron Paul is a classical liberal, which makes him perhaps the least "liberal" (strong federal government, social programs, controlled economy) of most of these candidates, certainly of all the Democrat candidates, and yet also one of the more "conservative" (strong state and local government, low taxes, free-market economy) candidates, which is why most of the Republicans hate him too. Certainly most of these other candidates, especially those with current political office, would choke and gag and puke out fiery globs of panic if Ron were actually to be elected.) Coming in third place is that eternal wacko and genuinely creepy dude Dennis Kucinich, which proves that this whole thing is just a big goof, not unlike the election itself.