Cat conversation

Um, I'm just an actor...

Take down that poster - it offends my fear!

Okay. I have to say something.

I'm excited about the onslaught of movies coming, some of which look like they won't totally disappoint me. But what I've been noticing a lot lately, especially with movies like I Am Legend (Dec 14) and Cloverfield (Jan 18) is that people are all in a fuss because they think that these movies which depict New York in danger are capitalizing on our 9/11 fears.

Well, okay. Sure. Fine. Let's say they are. This means I won't see I Am Legend (which is actually another film adaptation of the Richard Matheson book by the same name written in 1954) because it's really about our fears of 9/11 and has nothing to do with the fears of being isolated, darkness, the occult, disease, insanity, vampires, apocalpyse, nope... Hollywood isn't smart enough for that.



I'm certainly not going to see Cloverfield, which has had one of the more brilliantly successful advertising campaigns of any movie in the past few years (all because Mr. Abrams was trying to capitalize on your very real fear of 9/11, and nothing to do with the feeling that you're a part of the movie because of the hand-held cameras and you can't see what's scaring you, or the confusion and mass hysteria - nothing that Hitchcock or Spielberg or Shyamalan has experimented and been successful with in the past.

And speaking of Cloverfield, those horrible posters! They depict the Statue of Liberty decapitated while smoke rises from the broken skyline of New York. Those are exactly like those images of the World Trade Center burning (you know, all 50,000,000,000 of them taken from an infinite number of angles). No matter that you could have a tree or a park bench be the subject in the Cloverfield poster with New York burning in the background and someone would link it to some 9/11 photo someone took somewhere). Nope, that was all J.J. Abrams' fault for making that poster capitalize on our 9/11 fears and it's got no similarity whatsoever to this famous victory bond poster from 1918 (because 1+9+1+8 divided by 23 to the square root of your mom's age = 9/11).

I'm going to go a step further with this and proclaim all people who have damaged the Statue of Liberty and or New York or terrorized New Yorkers in fictional formats should be ashamed for capitalizing on our 9/11 fears.

(deep breath)

You know who you are Michael Bay, Jerry Bruckheimer (for Armageddon), Roland Emmerich (for Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow, and - ahem - Godzilla), Speilberg for War of the Worlds and AI: Artificial Intelligence, Franklin J. Schaffner and Charlton Heston for "Blowing it up, you maniacs! Damn you all to Hell!"), Matt Groening for the entire plot of Futurama, Mysterio for turning the Statue of Liberty into a Mysterio Statue with flying orbs all around it in the Spiderman 2 game, David Copperfield for making Liberty vanish back in 1983 - you sneaky bastard, Agent Kay for Neurolyzing all of New York in Men In Black II, Nuclear Man for throwing the Statue of Liberty at Metropolis in Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, Ben Stiller in Night at the Museum for letting his giant dinosaur escape, and Queen Narissa in Enchanted for being a bitch and breaking some pretty Times Square advertisements in the trailer JUST TO NAME A FEW.

Of course, J.J. Abrams and Will Smith have shown us that six years is all we need to see New Yorkers in peril or New York being destroyed (even though Sci-Fi has been making crappy movies to this effect for a while, see Disaster Zone: Volcano in New York. [Or don't.]

Certainly, we shouldn't be reminded at all of 9/11 even though New York City is a real city that survived the horrible events of that day and thus will live on in film as it always has. Let's forget about the fact that maybe New York City is constantly destroyed on film because it's a city that most of us can call home, or identify with, or even recognize see it as how there's a significant number of Americans that can't even locate the capital of their own state.

Let's boycott all movies that show NYC in peril at all (that means sticking to films like New York Minute and Autumn in New York). While we're at it, let's pull down our pants, bend over and let Osama's buddies give it to us in the rear.

[sarcasm button off]

Because wasn't that the whole point of 9/11 in the first place?

Seems to me, the real issue here is that we're not allowed to be afraid of something imaginary (whether it's vampires, Godzilla 2, Voltron or a lion) because in actuality we're afraid of something real. Most of the things I've named are science fiction, and if we're not even allowed to be scared of something made-up, how are we going to be brave against real threats?

"There is no terror in a bang, only in the anticipation of it."

- Alfred Hitchcock

Dreamcast 2: The Failure Continues

G4 has come out with this article saying that Sega has trademarked the name Dreamcast again, setting off rumors that a next-gen Sega Dreamcast console might be coming to a home system near you. That's a great idea. Let's hype consumers into buying another expensive piece of a equipment that may or may not stick around for more than 18 months and remind people of their last expensive piece of equipment that wasn't around for more than 18 months by naming after that thing you've been using as a doorstop since 2001.

Go Sega!

Soup of the Day

"If you allow yourself to be manupulated into thinking that one movie is the best movie this year... make it... The Oscar Movie."

I love Heroes

And I love the people who make captions to Heroes episode images.

Like this one

What the hell is it with Skeet Ulrich's obsessive fan base?

Here's a bit of randomness.

You remember when Skeet Ulrich finally found a good acting job - Miracles? And it got dropped like a hot potato by ABC? Well I'm sure I told you about the obsessive crusade that Miracles fans embarked on to get the show back on the air. They wrote emails, old fashioned letters, took out ads on bus billboards and in Variety magazine asking to SAVE MIRACLES. But the strangest was when people sent in loads of napkins with the words "God is Now Here" written on them and then "Save Miracles" on the back.

Well, the most it got was a release on DVD.

Poor Skeet.

Then came Jericho on CBS. The first show in... ever... that Skeet Ulrich was on that people were actually watching. A lot of people. But after the break in the fall and when it began to reair in February, less people tuned in. Ratings fell a little. But people were still watching. Then towards the end for the season finale, there was a plotline in the show where Skeet Ulrich ended up leading the townspeople of Jericho against another town (led by the leprochaun guy [from the disney movie Luck of the Irish with my other boyfriend in it] who also plays Lassiter [on that show Psych with my other, other boyfriend in it]). They were just about to have a major showdown when scraggly Lassiter asked Skeet Ulrich over a radio if he wanted to surrender before his town was crushed. Skeet's reply, "Nuts," which in the show meant "go fuck yourself." Then right before the big showdown, the episode ended, leaving the season on a cliffhanger until fall.

Which was cool. Until a week later when CBS announced that it cancelled Jericho. Funny part: Skeet Ulrich's - or I guess Jericho's - fan base did more crazy crusade things. They sent emails. They wrote letters. They did a lot. Then the president of programming at CBS posted a letter on the Jericho site thanking fans for support and told them that they would find some suitable ending to the Jericho plotline. But apparently, that didn't stop Ulrich, Inc. They started sending pounds and pounds of nuts to the CBS office. A little over 20 TONS, to be exact. And all of them say "Save Jericho."

So a few days ago, CBS prez posts another bulleton, starting with "Wow," continuing with "Jericho has been picked up as a midseason replacement for Spring 2008," and ending with "Please stop sending us nuts :)"

Now why couldn't ABC cave for Miracles? lol

Nuckin' Futs.