If you follow me on twitter then I’m hoping that about 3/4 of Event Horizon will be old news to you. Because I’m trying to get better about tweeting this stuff as I come across it. But I will also probably save one or two fun things for the post itself, to give you a reason to read it. Also, I find half these things on Friday anyway because it’s the sort of thing I often do last minute….
Picture of the week:
John Carter premiere! Why this happened an entire week before the movie actually opens I’m not sure. Possibly to try to build good word of mouth for a great movie with horrible marketing. At least we continue to hope it’s a great movie with horrible marketing. Because the reverse would be sad and I kind of like Andrew Stanton after all the interviews I’ve read (including this one about how he came to the director’s chair) and hope John Carter succeeds. Also, Taylor Kitsch! He needs to work more.
Article of the week:
Abraham Lincoln – Super Hero: It sounds like some sort of lame attempt to force history into a modern super-hero-obsessed sensibility. But it actually has some really salient points about psychology and how Lincoln’s life mirrors a lot of the structure of hero origin stories and then if you start to think about it, Lincoln does have a rather unique reputation as a President. There’s probably a reason for that enduring image that sets him apart for almost all other Presidents, and not just because he may or may not have hunted vampires.
TV of the week:
Awake. The thing that’s great about this show, aside from the performances and production and writing, is the concept. Not because it’s entirely innovative or especially compelling (though it is a great deal of both and here‘s a great article that touches on what I’m about to say). It’s because it isn’t constrained by reality. It isn’t caught up in the physics of how this is possible or trying to explain what’s going on. It says, ‘this is what’s happening to this guy. now let’s watch how it plays out.’
So often as fans of sci-fi and fantasy we expect content creators to justify our plausible suspension of disbelief. Wormholes are ok as long as the physics is true though slightly exaggerated. Super powers are no problem as long as there is some sort of justified origin story. We’ll even buy radioactive spiders, but I want to see the spiders and I want to know why we’re radiating them in the first place.
But to take something as basically human as grief and construct a framework to explore it is brilliant. I don’t want them to try to make sense of why this guy is living two lives. I just want to experience it – for his emotions and his reactions to be honest and in that to explore this faucet of humanity more deeply than sometimes reality will allow.
That’s the license of story – to do things we can’t explain.
I wish more tv shows stepped outside convention and plausibility to tell compelling stories, maybe especially if they aren’t sci-fi.
Hashtag of the week?
It’s not surprising at all that fans are trying to save a show using twitter. It’s actually rather inevitable. But #Fringe fans are being particularly smart about it. And I secretly hope that Fringe can be saved by a hashtag not because I feverishly love Fringe (though I do like it pretty well). But because it’s fitting that a dark, quirky show would have an innovative and unique save-our-show campaign.
until all other shows start trying to do the same thing….
Video of the week:
Comic Con the movie. In case you can’t buy tickets this weekend