Please kill me now.

My first foray into science fiction was at age 12, reading Isaac Asimov's Foundation series. In those days, it was still a trilogy.

I've always though that there were at least two SF classics that could never be made into a movie. One was Dune (and David Lynch and Dino De Laurentis proved me right), the other was Foundation. And now, Roland Emmerich is going to prove me right again.

For those who don't know Roland Emmerich, his name translates from the original German into Michael Bay. Every couple of years, he releases a turd in the punch bowl action flick with too damn much CGI, and with the stupidest plots and characters imaginable.

After directing such works of genius as Moon 44, and Universal Soldier (with Jean Claude Van Damme, who couldn't act his way out of a paperbag), and succeeding in turning Stargate into a dull work of sci-fi (and compared to the later TV series, it is dull), his first big success was with Independence Day. A film so bad that it had poor Jeff Goldblum taking down an enemy starship with a freaking Macbook, with Bill Pullman as a wholly unbelievable President, and Randy Quaid as the hero you really wanted to die from the moment he appeared on screen the first time.

It only got worse from there. The Patriot. A really god-awful Godzilla remake. producer of Eight Legged Freaks, The Day After Tomorrow, and 10,000 BC. One brain dead film after another, each stupider than the next.

And that next movie is apparently, you guessed it, Isaac Asimov's Foundation.

I'm not sure if Mr. Emmerich has ever read Foundation, but it's basically the anti-Independence Day. The only person we see actually die on screen happens in the first 75 pages of the novel. And that's a suicide. The novel, which is actually a collection of short stories written by Asimov in serial form, are all about plot, and story, and intrigue, and high-level science fiction with a political edge. In other words, it contains every element a Roland Emmerich film NEVER has, and the very things that Mr. Emmerich has never shown any inclination to take seriously in a film.

I'll say it right now. I'd have rather left Foundation as one of those novels that just never could be made into a movie, instead of leaving it to Roland Emmerich to prove it couldn't be made into a good movie.

(h/t Atrios).

It's June, Guess it's time for an Update

I've been spending a lot of time with the following this month:

Running games of D20 Modern, or more specifically, Thrilling Tales, the 1920's and 1930's era pulp add-on for D20 Modern.

Running Star Wars Saga Edition, specifically the Dawn of Defiance Campaign. Easily the best RPG system I've ever played or run.

Playing Battlestar Galactica, the Board Game. Highly recommended.

Playing Pandemic. Also highly recommended.

I've also gone to a couple of movies, but nothing that sticks in my mind.

I miss BSG. Fortunately, True Blood is back, and looks better than ever.

What have you been doing?

Brief Book Review

For anybody who is a fan of the Star Wars EU, Star Wars in general, or just looking for a fun, little pageturner SF story, get thee to a bookstore to purchase a copy of Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor by Matthew Stover.

It's easily the best Star Wars novel since Timothy Zahn's Heir to the Empire, all those years ago.

It may be the best work of fiction in the Star Wars universe since The Empire Strikes Back.

Give It Up, David.

If I'm ever elected US Dictator for a Day, I will ban the use of the following terms from political life:

game-changer.
race card.
Bradley Effect.

As well as all of the other clichés on this list.

Finally, my inner film geek will immediately pass a law providing for life imprisonment, without parole, and forbidding television privileges for any political idiot, left or right, who uses a basically non-political film to make a tortured, shit-stupid political point, like say, this gibberish from David Sirota, who has pretty much gone around the bend since Obama won the election, because Obama hasn't given him a job, or hasn't passed some arcane ideological purity test of David's with his appointee for White House janitor or some such.

I watched one of the two Best Worst Movies in film history this weekend - Big Trouble in Little China (the other Best Worst Movie is Army of Darkness). Whether brought on by the natural high of a leftover-filled stomach, or the artificial high of Thanksgiving night Maker's Mark, I had an epiphany that this movie is a highly accurate - if artistically absurd - portrayal of a deeply important aspect of how America sees itself in the world.

Funny me, I just thought it was a silly, B-Grade film that possesses enough of a quirky charm in its characters to hold up 20 years later. And blaming the Maker's Mark would have been a valid excuse, if just about every other post by David Sirota since November 4 wasn't equally incoherent.

The main character, Jack Burton (Kurt Russell), is obviously cast as America. Indeed, director John Carpenter pretty overtly wants him to be something of a Western cowboy (for instance, though a truck driver, Burton carries his belongings in a saddle bag). As the Toronto Star praised Russell in its review, "He does a great John Wayne imitation." Meanwhile, David Lo Pan and his gang are the Rest of the World, and more specifically, the Non-Aligned Countries, otherwise known as the Axis of Evil.

No, that's the funny part. Actually, he's a millenia old Chinese Warlord who got his ass-kicked by another Chinese Warlord, who's trying to put together another army in Chinatown in San Francisco. What the hell movie was Sirota watching?

The plot casts these Foreigners as having created a terrorist cell in San Francisco's Chinatown

Terrorist cell, Chinese street gang, same difference.

In fact, every Chinese person in the movie - good guy or bad guy - is made to seem like their first and foremost loyalty is not to the United States, but to China ("China is here, Mr Burton!") - a key fear propagated by American pop culture, from the McCarthy witchhunts for communist infiltrators to George W. Bush's domestic "war on terror."

That would include the other main protagonist, Wang Chi, who at one point proclaims his love of America, in pretty stark flag-waving relief, early in the film. Clearly David passed out early in this film, and recalls the rest from a hazy, alcoholic dream state.

Let's read on though. Maybe he'll be more coherent in the next paragraph.

So how does Burton/America deal with Lo Pan/Foreign Terrorists? He has no plan at all, other than to head to their headquarters and bust in guns blazing. The lack of planning is not an accident or something looked down on - it's how he rolls and he's proud of it, as evidenced by his repeated refrain that he doesn't need to plan because "it's all in the reflexes." And everytime he says this line, we're supposed to laugh and cheer with him, because this is how we roll.

Then again, maybe he won't be any more coherent.

This takes things to a whole different level of stupid. As pointed out by one of the commenters in the thread, and the director's commentary, the point of Jack's character, the main driving force, is he thinks he's the big hero, when he's really the sidekick. Reading anything more into this just shows David to be looking for a message that isn't there.

We don't plan when dealing with foreigners who have different customs and cultures and who threaten our interests - we don't need to plan because planning is for pussies. We're fellow truck-driver cowboys with daggers in pocket of the boots we're wearing over our acid wash jeans - and dammit, "it's all in the reflexes."

You know, it almost hurts to think about the pretzel-like contortions Sirota had to get himself in so he could try to extract deep political thinking out of a B-Grade Comedic Action-Adventure Flick.

While Burton stumbles a lot and makes an idiot out of himself, his lack of planning ultimately works. He defeats the evil foreigners, saves the day and gets the girl (who he's too cool to keep around). The moral of the story is that while America might make some blockheaded mistakes, they're honest ones and because we're the "good guys" we'll end up winning the day. There may be "big trouble" but it's manageable because compared to American power, everything is little (in the movie's case what's little is China, but it could be anything - Iraq, Al Qaeda, etc.).

Um, actually, his Chinese-American comrades do most of the heavy lifting, while Jack pours bullets in the ceiling, knocking himself unconscious. Knocking myself unconscious after reading this is sounding increasingly tempting, by the way.

Big Trouble in Little China debuted in 1986 - arguably the peak of American world supremacy. The Soviet Union was on its heels about to collapse and there were no other superpowers, or emerging superpowers. So, in that sense, the movie was a vaguely accurate metaphorical depiction of the United States at the moment. We could kick some ass without really having to think about it.

Wha? This paragraph hurts my brain.

That said, the tongue-in-cheek flavor of the film suggests Carpenter is using the Burton character to deliberately ridicule American hubris (and let's not forget the very end of the movie just before the credits roll: the crazy-eyed demon about to get his final revenge on Burton could be the world taking revenge on that hubris).

Or Carpenter might have just been trying to make a funny, action-adventure film on a shoestring budget. As at least one movie mogul was once quoted as saying, "If you want to send a message, try Western Union."

Look, Sirota's third-rate movie screed doesn't get any better. In fact, it could have only got worse if he'd shouted "Wolverines!" at the end of it.

Here's the deal. It's a point that a lot of highly politicized people on the left and right really miss about entertainment. It's stupid when the Laura Ingrahams, and Bill O'Reillys, and Jonah Goldbergs of the right do it, and it's equally stupid when David Sirota does it.

Excluding documentaries, probably a good 95% of the films released by the film industry are generally devoid of any great political meaning. 3-4% may make a point without trying to make a point. 1-2% may seek to actively make a political point.

Frankly, the films in that 1-2% are usually pretty dreadful films. Remember Syriana? An American Carol? Lions for Lambs? They all tried to say something deep. They were all pretty fucking awful.

And if you're trying to derive deep political meaning from any film in the collected works of John Carpenter, it's time to back away from the keyboard, swear off political blogging for a good month, and maybe go watch some films without viewing everything through political lenses. It will be good for you to see how a good 80% of the country lives everyday. You might actually learn something new that way as well.

Though I have to say that there was no more searing indictment of the Nixon Administration than Sorceror from Outer Space, and The Thing and Christine were a one-two punch of a takedown of the Reagan Administration.

Please shoot me now.