Recently in film Category

Oh my god, the whole world has gone geeky. Even the federal government.

Have you come across one of these R2-D2 mailboxes? (Apparently there's only 400 of these geeky mailboxes around the country, so count yourself geekily blessed if you've been in the presence of one.) Didja wonder what the heck was up? Yeah, me too. Turns out the good ol' stodgy United States Postal Service will be issuing a series of 15 new First Class stamps (at the soon-to-be-new 41-cent rate) on May 25th to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Star Wars.

Man, I feel old. I remember being scared to death as an eight-year-old by Darth Vader and those skeleton-looking stormtroopers, and now I'll be able to buy Princess Leia stamps to slap on my obscene credit-card payments.

I was at my brother Ken’s place last night, and we were flipping around the tube, and we came across The Empire Strikes Back on one of the HBO channels. Shockingly, Ken had not heard of the saga of the Bespin Ice Cream Guy, so after Bespin Ice Cream Guy made his brief appearance, we Googled him, so I could show Ken the hilarious action figure fans have developed.

BICG Central seems to revolve around these two sites:

http://www.geocities.com/ocb75/
http://www.thecustomalliance.com/curto/willrow.asp

Look at those URLs. My shock at discovering Ken’s lack of exposure to BICG’s saga was nothing compared to learning that no one has registered any of these domains:

bespinicecream.com
bespinicecreamguy.com
bespinicecreamcompany.com
bespinberryblast.com
willrowhood.com

So I challenge geeks to steal these domains, and create a worthy tribute to one of Cloud City’s bravest and more ingenious citizens.

(Technorati tags: Bespin ice cream guy, unregistered domain names)

“You’re not a geek, you’re a lot of fun,” Marisa Tomei’s cute and perky diner owner says to William H. Macy’s computer programmer in the all-around abysmal Wild Hogs, which opens today in theaters. Macy’s character is a total nerd, the worst and most negative stereotype of a geek: more comfortable with computers than with people, and especially awkward around women; physically uncoordinated and weak; all the usual nonsense. And so naturally he could not possibly be a geek and be a lot of fun at the same time. This is hardly unexpected: the movie is a sitcom in which every character is a cliché, and Wild Hogs is aimed at an audience older than Xers for whom geek is likely nothing but a dirty word, if it means anything at all. The director, Walt Becker, born 1968, is an Xer, so you’d think he might know better, but then again, he also directed the awful college frat fantasy Van Wilder, which makes me suspect he was probably one of those guys who wasn’t into computers in high school and now feels left behind to see that it’s all the geeks making good and getting all the chicks and needs to compensate for that somehow.

I think it’s probably safe to say that Kev may have some geekish tendencies...

Courtesy of my buddy Gail of A Million Things That Bug Me.

(Technorati tags: Kevin Spacey, Christopher Walken, Han Solo, Star Wars, audition)

I’ve never gotten more mail about a single issue than I have over the last week or so about the new DVD release of the old, original, actual-unretouched Star Wars trilogy, coming in September. Hoorah, of course.

The official Star Wars site broke the news:

See the title crawl to Star Wars before it was known as Episode IV; see the pioneering, if dated, motion control model work on the attack on the Death Star; groove to Lapti Nek or the Ewok Celebration song like you did when you were a kid; and yes, see Han Solo shoot first.

This release will only be available for a limited time: from September 12th to December 31st. International release will follow on or about the same day. Each original theatrical version will feature Dolby 2.0 Surround sound, close-captioning, and subtitles in English, French and Spanish for their U.S. release. International sound and subtitling vary by territory.

"Over the years, a truly countless number of fans have told us that they would love to see and own the original version that they remember experiencing in theaters," said Jim Ward, President of LucasArts and Senior Vice President of Lucasfilm Ltd. "We returned to the Lucasfilm Archives to search exhaustively for source material that could be presented on DVD. This is something that we're very excited to be able to give to fans in response to their continuing enthusiasm for Star Wars. Topping it off with a new interactive adventure makes September 12 a red-letter day for Star Wars fans."

Geeks don't come much geekier than this: My buddy Nathaniel, proprietor of the blog Film Experience, is madly in love with Michelle Pfeiffer, and he doesn't care who knows it. In fact, he has invited bloggers all over the Web (including yours truly) to come worship at the altar of La Pfeiff, and come they have, 35 so far on the occasion of Ms. Pfeiffer's birthday tomorrow.

I hope she at least sends out some nice thank-you cards...

Holy crap, did anyone else watch last week’s episode of PBS’s Nova, “Dimming the Sun”? The premise: “New evidence that air pollution has masked the full impact of global warming suggests the world may soon face a heightened climate crisis.” The three unexpected days of clear skies after 9/11, when all aircraft were grounded, showed that the artificial clouds that are airplane contrails are having a dramatic effect on how much sunlight reaches the surface of the planet, part of the overall impact that pollution is having on the environment, and it is scary as hell. Basically, we’re fucked, and it doesn’t even require secret government conspiracies to douse us unsuspecting Americans with aerosols via airplane exhaust.

Meanwhile, deliberate willingness to discard the scientific method for religious reasons as well as the willful ignorance of a scientifically illiterate populace continue to keep issues of global climate change from the forefront.

Doctor Who is awesome, no question about it (and yes, I’ve got lots to say about the most recent episodes, which I’ll get to as soon as I possibly can), but are you missing the Stargates just a tad on Friday nights? Me too. I don’t see why we couldn’t have Stargates and Doctor Who all on the same night.

If you’re really missing, say, geek-hunk David Hewlett’s snarky-smart Dr. Rodney McKay (from Stargate Atlantis, of course), then click on over to my other site, FlickFilosopher.com, and enter to win one of three DVDs of Dave’s flick Ice Men, a Canadian indie in which he demonstrates that he’s not just a geek (you did know that he’s a Net entrepreneur and -- yup -- an enormous Doctor Who dork, too, didn’t you?), he’s also an intense actor who steals every scene he's in. But then, we Atlantis watchers already knew that.

I’ll review Ice Men and another Hewlett flick, Nothing, soon over at FlickFilosopher.com.

Oh, and yesterday was Dave’s birthday. Happy birthday, Dave!

BUMPED UP: We have a winner! Click through to see JEAN's winning caption.

In honor of the weird-stuff-from-outer-space vibe of the way-cool, way-gross Slither, which opened today (read my review here), I'm proud to announce the first-ever Geek Philosophy giveaway contest. The winner will receive a four-book set of ooky paranormal aliens-among-us “nonfiction” paperback books:

The blockbuster -- or at least budget-busting -- Lord of the Rings musical hit the boards this week, way off Broadway, way off the West End... in Toronto. Critics have been about as kind as, oh, Sauron. Charles McNulty in the L.A. Times:

Had there been no film, the audience would no doubt have found it perplexing in the extreme. Of course, had there been no book, it would have seemed borderline insane to have sunk so many millions into what seems here like a crackpot chronicle.

Whoops.

Charles Spencer in the British Telegraph:

If you find a line like "As a hobbit might say, may the hair on your toes never fall out" deliciously rib-tickling then this is undoubtedly the show for you. If, like me, you find it insufferably twee, then you are going to find the show a penance

C’mon, that line turns even my stomach, and I’m a pervy hobbit fancier.

Most of the reviews state what should be obvious: that the fanboys will come out in droves and make this a hit. Then again:

Ming writes: I attended the LOTR stage show in Toronto this afternoon, and I regret to say that the Helm's Deep scene is still error-prone. During the performance I attended, Saruman's orcs were scaling the walls of Helm's Deep when, abruptly, they all left the stage (was there some kind of signal, I wonder?) and the raised platforms on the stage descended. I sat for a moment in bewilderness (though I had a very bad feeling about it, pardon the other-movie reference) before the voice of God announced that they were experiencing some "technical difficulties" and that we should remain seated. That announcement was repeated twice before the voice of God decided to have an "unscheduled intermission".

[from TheOneRing.net]

Double whoops. Then again, Ming had already shelled out his dough, and wasn’t gonna get it back:

I asked to speak to the house manager, from whom I requested a free pass to see another performance of the second act. Unfortunately, he said he didn't have the authority to grant such a request, and gave me TicketKing's customer service e-mail address. I will be going back to New York on Saturday morning so if I don't receive a favorable response by Friday, they're going to have one very disgruntled hobbit.

Sounds like they’ve already got one.