Top Ten Casting Choices In SciFi/Fantasy

10. Christoper Reeve as Superman
He made us believe a man could fly. Somehow breathing absolute conviction into a fundamentally absurd role, Reeve took the fine legacy of Siegel & Schuster via George Reeves and gave it the authenticity it needed to work. He was the first to really make us believe in an on-screen superhero, paving the way for the Spider-Man flicks and Heroes. And did he ever look the part – both nebbish and hunk, we could even go along with the glasses-disguise bit.

9. William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy and DeForest Kelley as the core Star Trek crew
Sometimes lightning just strikes in a casting lineup, and it did here. Wagon Train to the stars wouldn’t have hit the culture nearly as hard if it didn’t have the incredible chemistry between these three to anchor every episode. There’s a reason we have Star Trek conventions and not Lost In Space conventions, and these three actors are that reason. Notably, only Nimoy was in the pilot episode shot for the show.

8. Alyson Hannigan as Willow Rosenberg
Whedon’s Buffy TV series was never as much of an ensemble show as he claimed, but it would have been even more narrowly focused on Buffy without Hannigan in the cast. Her expressive face and unique line readings made her the emotional channel for the audience – whatever she felt, we felt. She gave us the grounding we needed to buy into Buffy and Xander and Giles and the universe that grew up around them. And of course, without the Buffyverse, modern TV would look very different indeed. (It is worth noting that Hannigan is another recast – in the pilot her role was played much more conventionally by Riff Regan.)

7. Viggo Mortensen as Aragorn
Lord of the Rings was a huge success, and is well on the way to becoming this generation’s Star Wars. But without Mortenson, the whole edifice would have come crashing down. More than most fantasy and sci-fi movies, Lord of the Rings relies on audience buy-in. At its centre it needed a person of absolute integrity whose belief can be shared by the audience. Mortensen filled that role. His commitment to the part is legendary – living off the land with his horse during filming, disappearing into the character – and we believe him every second he’s on screen. And without him – just imagine Orlando Bloom’s flat Legolas and John Rhys-Davies’ hamming Gimli without an Aragorn of particular gravitas to balance them. It hardly bears thinking about. (And, yet again, this was a recast – shooting was underway when first-choice Aragorn Stuart Townsend was given the boot and Viggo got the call-up.)

6. Sigourney Weaver as Ellen Ripley
The cast Ridley Scott assembled for Alien was incredible. John Hurt, Ian Holm, Yaphet Kotto – this was the real deal. And yet the movie hung on its unheralded, inexperienced young lead, Sigourney Weaver. Scott’s faith in Weaver was rewarded, as she gave a performance simultaneously tough and vulnerable, all by herself making the female action hero a possibility. Weaver’s Ripley casts a long shadow over film and TV that followed, and her Academy Award nom for the sequel was well-earned recognition of this fact.
…the rest next week. Who are your picks?

Why Teenage Girls Feel Ugly

(while I’m on the subject of teenage girls)
Something that has been doing the rounds in the last couple days…. a photo retouch service, with some incredible comparisons of photos of film stars before and after retouching. You see the beautiful, smooth, magazine-cover image, and then when you mouse-over, it changes to the untouched version. You can wiggle the mouse back and forth on the edge and see the images switch back and forth. Watch boobs get bigger and smaller! Watch wrinkles appear and disappear! Watch waists and arms get thinner! etc. But there are also a bunch of less obvious changes – the way brightness and contrast are enhanced, in particular, has a crazy impact on how we see them.
I would say checking this out is required for anyone operating in the early 21st-century media environment. We’re being bombarded with these images – a quick look at these will give you a bit of mental shielding you don’t even know you need.
To view, follow this link, and click on “Portfolio”. There’s an array of little thumbnail photos there – click on any one and the big image will appear.
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Today I met my artist for coffee. Can I say “my” artist? She’s drawing the comic I’ve written. It’s quite cool. I looked at her latest page breakdowns and handed over some more script. We’re not working at full-speed smooth-collaboration level yet, because we’re both still just starting to feel our way through the whole comic-making process, but signs are very positive. Yays.

2 Things I Have Learned On The Bus

1. If you are a teenage boy, and you are worried that somewhere there are teenage girls talking about you in less-than-flattering terms while they ride on the bus: Yes, they are, and very loudly.
2. The customary riposte to a bus driver who has the temerity to (for example) ask you to pay for your ticket: “fag”.

Karl Rove’s Brain Lizards

So Karl Rove is to resign. If the wickedness of Tony Blair could be said to arise from his infatuation with his own unfolding narrative, and that of George W Bush from his absolute lack of creativity and empathy, then the wickedness of Karl Rove could be said to arise from the gnawing sharp-toothed brain lizards that sit inside his skull where other people have a “conscience”.
The article says: “There’s always something that can keep you here, and as much as I’d like to be here, I’ve got to do this for the sake of my family,” he said.
Translating that from the brain lizard: “I’ve presided over such a fouling of my own pool that even I can’t handle the stink any more.”
(Oh, and where it says “family”, he means the Cheney inner circle, not his wife and son. There’s a subpoena coming his way and he really needs to be out of the White House circuit for damage control purposes.)
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In good news: Newsweek runs a cover story on the climate change denial industry.
And, via Paul Cornell, clips from every single classic Doctor Who story forming a 5-minute summary of the classic series run.

Flashy Halos of Death (reprise)

When I finished my last post with a blatant lie about gambling away my meagre savings, I was tempting some kind of karmic payback. It didn’t take long to show up. About fifteen minutes after I made that post, I started editing a spreadsheet; less than two minutes into this activity I noticed that the entire bottom left of the screen was invisible to me. It just didn’t exist in my visual field, as though it had disappeared into a fold in reality.
As I normally do when some kind of visual anomaly turns up, I turned to face a neutral surface (the other wall of the room) and blinked to clear my vision, hoping that it would turn out to be just a bit of rogue moisture or something.
Nope.
Five minutes after that I’d brushed my teeth, taken some neurofen, and gone to bed. As I lay in the dark, the flashy halo was well-established, expanding across the complete darkness of my visual field from the bottom left like the filmy edge of a gigantic soap bubble. About ten minutes after that it hit the far side and disappeared, and the migraine proper began.
About four hours later, 5.30 in the morning, I was finally able to drift off to sleep. It was not fun getting there. But it wasn’t too bad either; the neurofen and the quick departure to peaceful darkness must have helped. I slept through the morning, rising at about 10.30 to groggily wander around the house and slowly come back to my senses. By 1pm I was feeling okay enough to go to work. So that was nice.
That’s the first migraine since January ’04. As usual, I have no idea what set it off – staying up late on the computer is what I do literally every night, so, huh. Anyway. It did remind me of the blog comment I received from Klaus Podoll, asking for permission to excerpt the very weird dreamstuff of the last migraine on his migraine-aura website. I don’t think it ever turned up there, but the site is worth a look. The migraine art section is particularly interesting. A sign of how well this stuff captures the experience of migraine is that I can hardly look at most of it.
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Back up to Hastings this weekend.

My Winningest Day

Basketball’s end-of-season game was a win. Post-season celebratory drinks at the pub with teammates and we enter the pub quiz because, why not. But I leave early to go play netball – another win. And I come off the court to find a text from my brother, saying that we won the pub quiz as well.
And as I’m getting a lift the short distance home, a new text message beeps in, and it’s my mother saying she’s found Freaks and Geeks exactly where the Alligator said it was in his comment. Aaron found my DVDs from the other side of the world! Truly he is gifted.
Anyway, it was clear that everything was going my way, so I’ve just spent the last three hours internet gambling, and I’m sure my winning streak will kick in there too aaaany time now. Yup.

Cliff and Mortimer

I was amazed the other day to stumble upon this:

That’s a genuine Disney Mickey Mouse newspaper strip from the 30s which has, as a punchline, a despairing Mickey’s decision to blow his own head off with a shotgun. It wasn’t a one-off – the actual suicide attempt is the subject on the next strip, and the two after that. See the full story where I came across it, at Comic Book Resources’ Urban Legends column.
And while I am thinking of matters strip-like: why are you not reading Perry Bible Fellowship? New three-panel gag strips once every week or two, it hardly takes up much of your time.
(Behind the cut is what may be my favourite PBF strip. It is certainly today’s favourite. It’s too big to fit before the cut, though.)

Continue reading Cliff and Mortimer

Ou est F&G?

Among my most prized possessions is the deluxe DVD set of the TV series Freaks & Geeks, packaged as a yearbook with all kindsa wonderful extras. It looks like this:

And, in what is a typical example of my treatment of prized possessions, I have no idea where it is. I must have encouraged someone to borrow it and then forgotten about it. It is somewhere in Wellington, that much I know.
Do you have my Freaks & Geeks? There are other people wanting to borrow it. And I’d like to finish listening to the commentaries. And it has been missing for a while now and I’m starting to get worried.

It Begins

And so, today it all kicked off. The small groups took shape, and with them came the small group actions that will be the basis of a whole bunch of Psyc undergrad assignments.
It was neat to see. Mostly, I think, the students are treating this just like we want them to treat it – as a chance to do something they think they should do anyway, but haven’t had the motivation before now. And as co-researchers in our exploration of the question, why is it so hard for us to live up to our own good intentions?
It is good. I love this research. I hope it finds its way to the close without the discovery of unforeseen pitfalls.
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The Nia Glassie post continues to sit in the top ten Google results for her name, and draws heavy traffic (and the occasional comment) as a result. (Those out of NZ will not have heard that Nia died from her injuries a few days ago.)
Things have moved along quite significantly since I made that post. While there was no shortage of venom directed at Maori culture, that has been eclipsed by what amounts to an adoption of the problem by a cross-section of Maori voices. “Child abuse is a Maori problem” – the words are the same as those used by Michael Laws and his ilk, but their meaning here is diametrically opposite. Child abuse within Maori community is a Maori problem because Maori are best-placed to help; because Maori have a responsibility to help; because Maori help is the best kind of help. It’s an amazing approach, forceful with its claim for a legitimate and positive cultural identity, and it seems to be winning the battle of public perception.
In soundbite terms: Laws and his talkback electorate see Maori culture as the problem; but the rest of us are happier seeing Maori culture as the solution.