I Am The Last Omega Man Legend On Earth

I Am Legend begins today. The next big vehicle for the Fresh Prince. Hollywood continues their trend (when did they ever stop) of redoing classic movies, and this one is the redo of The Omega Man. I have claimed in the past I am a sci-fi geek, but I've never seen this movie, so I found it today on HD-DVD and I will absorb it in all its glory before seeing the new one. Both movies are based on the book by Richard Matheson named I Am Legend which also spawned a graphic novel. I have heard a few origin arguments and I'm here to tell you (thanks to Wikipedia) The book came first. There have actually been four (4) movies made but Omega Man has been the most famous, presumably until now. However, The Omega Man differs in many areas from the novel and I suspect Will Smith's version will be more accurate, so I'll hold off on any comparisons until I see both movies and get a book in my hand.

Yesterday (December 13) was the 5th anniversary of Star Trek: Nemesis (aka Star Trek X). Next December will be the new JJ Abrams Star Trek so doing the math equals six (6) years between Star Trek movies. This is the longest gap between Trek movies, ever. Like Blue Harvest before it the Trek movie has a code name disguising its purpose. That name was used this week at the Long Beach City Hall building that's doubling as who-knows-what for a project called Corporate Headquarters. This is the same thing Abrams did with "Cloverfield," however that name stuck. I don't care who is the cast I may not spend my money to see "Star Trek XI: Corporate Headquarters." I can see the tagline now, "Star Fleet HQ... not even close to a frontier... these are the jobs of StarBase 1... to search for meaning in a sea of computer work... to boldly head to the break room before everyone drinks the coffee." If it's done like Office Space uhh.. in space... I am so there. BTW the City Hall site was used as part of Caprica in the original Battlestar Galactica.

The past two (2) Trek movies, Insurrection and Nemesis, didn't do to well in the box office. I have always felt Insurrection as the weekest of the four (4) Next Generations but Nemesis is an excellent Trek movie. This movie exemplifies Space Opera and becomes theatrical in nature during some of the scenes. This was supposed to be Picards "Wrath Of Kahn" but it slightly missed the mark. Of note on the writing staff is John Logan, one of the co-writers of Gladiator, and a professed Star Trek fan who loves Romulans and pushed the movie to include them. He even went so far as to rally the powers to be to let him write the Romulan episodes of Enterprise, but sadly that show as cancelled before the Earth-Romulan war could be told. Where "Wrath Of Kahn" had an established villian to mirror Kirk, Picards "Nemesis" is a clone of him named Shinzon, raised in the hell pits of Remus, Romulus' slave/mining planet. If the writers had layed some clue as to the Romulan Cloning project or Shinzon himself during Deep Space 9 or Voyager the impact of who Shinzon is to Picard would have been batter. All this aside once you see him face-to-face with Picard you can feel the tension, and you know it will have to be relieved by an all-out starship battle. You don't introduce an awesome ship like The Scimitar and not use it in battle. It should be noted STX came out around the same time as the next movies in the Harry Potter, Lord Of The Rings, and 007 (Die Another Day) franchises. No wonder nobody saw it.

SPOILERS. Star Trek Nemesis is about a revolution on Romulus by the Remans, lead by Shinzon, to regain the glories of the Empire and attack the Federation while it is weak, I'm guessing from the end of the Dominion War. In a lesser plot point Shinzon needs Picard's DNA to cure a fatal illness indemic to his type of cloning. In the background is Riker and Troi's wedding and his Captaincy of the USS Titan. This movie repesents the most current (or farthest) point in the Star Trek timeline, set in 2379 and the novels have picked up where the movie left of to Chronicle Riker and the Titan. This is a darker toned movie which slowly builds to an impending starship battle we've all come to love in Trek movies. The slow parts are almost too slow. If the writers hadn't given away the "punchline" for Shinzon they could have kept us in suspense much better during the dinner scene. That is probably my biggest problem with the movie. That and the amount of character development that hit the cutting room floor in favor of the action scenes. Many of the scenes in the previews were all axed by the time film reached the screen. John Logan gave fans a starship battle we've been waiting for, all the things we hoped to see and more. You didn't have to be a genius to understand the tactics and it really felt like battleships were going at broadsides-to-broadsides. It reminded me a lot of the Leiji Matsumoto's Captain Harlock space battleship attacks.

Some oddities appear in the movie worth mentioning, like Wesley Crusher. He left during season 7 of Next Generation by quiting Starfleet Academy, becoming a trans-dimensional being, and exploring the universe with The Traveler. But now he's back from Outer Space, with that look upon his face (sorry, I don't know how that happened) and he's at the wedding reception in uniform again. According to the editted stuff he's even an engineer on Riker's Titan. Someone just glossed over nine (9) years with no explanation. Shinzon is bald, and appears at the young age Picard was at the Academy. But Picard had hair during his early years and only began loosing it after the death of Jack Crusher, an event that takes place a decade before Picard gets Enterprise D. My only guess here is that during some of his academy days he shaved his head (or maybe Starfleet has a Boot Camp with mandatory head-shaving rituals). It is possible that since we only see the above two (2) time periods of Picard with hair during a Q flashback and an unballanced dream sequence, maybe he lost all his hair in his youth and he just remembers wrong. When Picard rams the Enterprise into the Scimitar (wicked cool) Shinzon orders full reverse and breaks free. Huh? It should have just dragged Enterprise around. He must have pushed Enterprise with a Tractor Beam and but the transmission in backwards. Finally, I think Shinzon went through a huge ordeal to find another Soong-type Android, called B-4, scattered across a pre-warp planet just to bait a trap for Picard so he can steel some DNA, and declare war on the Federation. It seems some his machinations could use some explaining. Regardless, this movie still kicks ass when it has to and takes names. All hail Data, pour some Romulan Ale on the curb.

Tarantino has claimed many of his influences have come from Japanese and Chinese cinemas and their bloody, violent obsessions with killing everything on screen. Now Japan has a new movie sure to be a cult hit, and their answer to Planet Terror, called The Machine Girl. Another Asian movie doing the Hollywood remake rounds is The Eye. A buddy of mine showed me the original a few years ago and I was impressed, sort of a Sixth Sense thing about a blind lady who gets an eye transplant and can see things others can't. The remix now has Jessica Alba (thank you God) and now I'm definately gonna see it. BTW Office Space is airing once again on Comedy Central this Sunday (December 16) and I know I'll be watching it for the 87th time. I own this on VHS and DVD and I still watch it on TV. I love this movie. However, this writer's strike has got to end before I start watching more Reality Shows.

I used to build Star Wars models when I was a kid (I think I still am) but this dude built the coolest AT-AT model since the one used for filming. In a close second is this Vader's TIE/N64 morphling. If only I can mash one thing not Star Wars with one thing Star Wars and output an awesome psuedo Star Wars item. Like a Land Speeder and a Space Shuttle model duck taped together and try to sell it to NASA to replace the Shuttle Fleet. What happened to replacing something with something better. I know the Orion is gonna be better, but it still looks like the Apollo capsules it's based on. You know, cars now don't look like cars of the late 60's. C'mon NASA I want to see the Lambo of interplanetary space craft.

Now for a not-so-cool idea: GLOW IN THE DARK CAT CLONES. Yeah, South Koreans are still trying to clone things (remember the guy who faked his experiments and is in a heap of trouble) like cats, and they succedded. I'm not gonna get technical but through some gene therapy (I think) with a florescing DNA something or other... look just read the news here. At least they get to experiment with cloning, not like America where some confusing religious zelousness ruined our T-Cell research. So now the world has UV glowing kittens from South Korea and not America. We should be making glow-in-the-dark clones bunnies or meerkats or something. We're going to learn that a glow-in-the-dark kitten in every home cures cancer, reduces road rage and lowers the planets temperature. All that will go to South Korea's credit while we keep occupying Arab/Muslim/Persian countries looking for free oil. This week the price of Munchkins went up at my Dunkin Donuts, solidifying my theory they're made from Crude Oil. See you next broadcast.

My God, It's Full Of Stars

By 1990 our understanding of the sky at night was simple. We have nine (9) planets (Pluto was still a planet then) and the rest of the galaxy does not. We might have seen evidence in Infra-Red of primordial discs around younger stars but there was no evidence of planets. Flash forward five (5) years and a team of astronomers made an extraordinary discovery, a planet around another star. And it was like no other planet in our solar system. This planet was bigger than Jupiter and "hugged" its parent star so tight that it orbits it about every four days. This, however, was the tip of the iceberg. Every month since then teams of planetologists and astronomers have been discovering new planets. The smallest mass planet so far found is about 5 times Earth mass all the way up to more that 15 times Jupiter mass. These are all heady figures but I wish to impress upon you the menagerie of planets goes well beyond our comfortable eight (8) into new realms never dreamed up by sci-fi. Hot Jupiters, Water Giants, and Super Earths to name a few.

Growing up as a Star Wars and a Star Trek fan (not mutually exclusive fandoms) I believed there was no way our solar system had the only planets in the galaxy, let alone the rest of the universe. My teachers and superiors patronized my "delusion" and told me our solar system is it, the galaxy is empty. The same old crap the likes of Galileo had to deal with. In fact since the beginning of our endeavours to understand nature by science, they are always opposed by those that declare Humans the center of the universe. And each scientific revolution proves them wrong. We aren't on a flat Earth, the sun and stars don't revolve around us, the universe isn't static and forever. My reasoning for writing this is not to "toot the horn" of science, merely show a connection from the past and the learned scholars and teachers I dealt with in my youth. With a certain feeling of vindication I can say, not including our solar system, there are 264 confirmed exo-planets. That is way more than the zero of just 20 years ago. To keep track of these new discoveries JPL & NASA run a helpful website. Included is a 3D interactive map of the planetary systems within 300 Light Years of us. Science Fiction predicted other planets for at least a century, and here we are with new worlds to explore, someday.

I tracked down a re-released copy of the manga Parasyte, as well as a lesser known Japanese horror Manga, Uzumaki. Meaning "Spiral" it is a story of the Japanese town's obsession with anything spiral, to the point of dementia. The main character, a high school girl, watches as her friends and family are consumed by spiral, or Uzumaki, obsession. A fascinating read with strange, grotesque imagery: a student turning into a snail, a father who wants to be one with the wash tub, and a mother so fearful of uzumaki she begins to cut spirals off her body. A live action version was made in 2000 and subtitled in North America. An untranslated preview is available on YouTube. More creepy than horror, I recommend this movie for any fan of the manga, or any movie fan who likes Asian cinema. I especially like the spirals that form out of the screen as you watch the movie, very subtle.

Two geek events filed me with joy this passed week. I took a co-worker out to buy his first Xbox 360, and the other I introduced to Guitar Hero. I love the fact I'm in the future (relative to when I was younger) but some things should become better, not more confusing. When Christmas rolled around in the past kids wanted an Atari or a Nintendo or a SEGA Genesis. Parents (usually the ones buying) payed little attention to the console market (with exceptions I'm sure) but wanted happy kids and blindly bought their kids a system. And it was easy; go to store, trade money/credit for Nintendo, take Nintendo home, happy children. I had the honor this week to help a co-worker buy an X360 for his son. I'm always spewing game information so he came to me for help picking out which 360 to get, splurge on the Halo edition, buy the Elite, or get the 20GB joint with two (2) free games. It occurred to me later to ask, why did he need help? Why isn't it simple to go buy a system? He would have had the same problem buying a PS3, but Nintendo only has one Wii and that makes sense. When Neo-Geo came out it was just as expensive as a PS3, at that was in the early 90s. They didn't make multiple types depending on budget, there was one, buy it or don't. I didn't. I'm a little more annoyed with the "Goldilocks" effect, trying to find the mix of technology and price that's just right for you. WTF! I had a great time helping my co-worker figure out which X360 wasn't too hot or cold, but I shouldn't have to. Anyone buying an X360 or a PS3 has to juggle info on gaming specs, backwards-compatibility, HD connections and TV specs, and wireless options. Back in the 80s the deciding factor was, "which console has Pac-Man?"

On the Guitar Hero front, an ultra geek moment occurred when I found out there is a Halo battle music mix, set to guitar, for free download. And it actually sounds good. I am 2 songs shy on Medium for all 5 stars, but I've also worked my way into Hard. I think Hard will be where I wash up. Cords are not my friends and unless I grow a sixth finger like an inbred kitten I won't be getting even four stars. Not looking forward to facing Slash this time. The first two times were straight forward (and a let down) but this time he's armed and fully operational. I introduced a friend to the game and it's awesome to watch him slowly figure the buttons and eventually transition to listening to the beat and getting coordinated. I was there last month, stabbing at three (3) fret buttons trying to "play" music. Now after playing for three (3) weeks I've started playing hard. Its amazing how the game preps you for later levels. Still looking forward to Rock Band for christmas. See you next broadcast.