For those of you who thought that math classes were a waste of time because you were never going to visit whichever country it is where they speak algebra, Matt Bailey has done a detailed statistical analysis of the notoriously high mortality rate of red-shirted crewmen beaming down to the planet - and he has mathematically proven that they can improve their chances of survival by a massive 84% just by getting Captain Kirk laid.

Oddly, though, I couldn’t find any mention of this in this paper on Why Humans Have Sex.  Maybe they surveyed the wrong people.

This is a response to “Why fanfic makes us poor” by Cupidsbow, made over here. I think, in the interests of civilised debate, that it’s important that I make it clear that this is a reponse, not an attack.

One of the arguments in the essay was that fanfic is deserving of more broad recognition, and the commercialisation, in some form, of fanfic may be one way to address the dearth of respect that fanfic authors get. Some of the comments, and many people more broadly within various fanfic communities, argue for the abolition or at least relaxation of intellectual property as they apply to derivative works. The arguments that have been advanced by the fanfic community in “Why fanfic makes us poor” are wrong on a fairly fundamental level, in my view.

It’s mostly the same deployment of copyright as a monolithic authority which should keep all non-commercial writing in check, with no real self-awareness that this is the same Bad Faith argument Russ addresses…

I think this needs to be addressed.

These are cool. Seriously cool. Cooler than the Fonz. Cooler even than the Fonz thought he was, which is way cool. Why aren’t these for sale in time for Xmas? Someone should track down the patent holders and get them on the shelves ASAP.

This particular example, the Official Rex Mars Planet Patrol Atomic Pistol, was a working 300-ft flashlight capable of blinding alien invaders, neighbourhood pets, and slow-moving siblings.

According to Cambridge history lecturer Dr Richard Toye, Winston Churchill borrowed phrases such as “English-speaking peoples”, “gathering storm” and “reverse employer of Labour” from science fiction works by H. G. Wells.

Toye quotes a fan letter Churchill wrote to Wells in 1902, and Churchill saying in 1931 that he could “pass an exam” on Wells’s work.

Toye compares this to “Tony Blair borrowing phrases from Star Trek or Doctor Who.” As it happens, George W. Bush referred to Brave New World in a 2001 speech condemning stem cell research, while Dick Cheney has recently admitted that people see him as “the Darth Vader of the administration” - but I have no evidence that Cheney has ever written George Lucas a fan letter, or that Bush could pass an exam on Huxley’s work.

Full story: Sydney Morning Herald.

After decades of suffering under a regime of poorly dubbed re-edits, bad prints and TV-oriented pan-and-scan claustrophobia, Toho Studio’s classic daikaiju eiga are finally being released to DVD in the West in properly tidied-up original formats — sweeping Tohoscope and with vibrant colours, clear sound and decent subtitles. Suddenly all those narky mainstream critics who dismissed them with a few snide quips seem somewhat less credible. True, many of the films are definitely not great films by any stretch of the imagination, but even the worst of them (those suffering from the mid-70s cash-strapped blues, for example) no longer look like cheapies produced by amateurs.

A recent release relevant to us at the Talking Squid is Space Amoeba (aka Yog, the Monster from Space). It features this famously cheesy creation: Gezora, a giant space-amoeba-enhanced cuttlefish/squid. Sooner or later Gezora had to turn up here to introduce himself; though he doesn’t actually talk in the film, the invading space amoeba itself does.

For a panoramic screenshot that shows just how big Gezora is, plus some evaluative comments, check out my review here.

Just recently I was lucky enough to secure an interview with Gezora himself, (more…)

The American Godzilla is in the process of being re-born, across time and media-space and against all the odds, by virtue of one fan’s enthusiasm (not to mention talent) and the wonders of the internet.

In 1998, Tri-Star released producer Dean Devlin and director Roland Emmerich’s Godzilla remake to much pre-event anticipation and even greater post-event disdain.

Whether you think Godzilla (1998) is any good or not as a generic giant monster flick, most commentors, G-fans and Japanese citizens consider it to be a travesty — taking one of the world’s great anti-nuclear monster icons and turning it into a big-animal-on-the-run non-event. The good team of Devlin and Emmerich, responsible for such ‘blockbuster’ films as Stargate, Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow, stripped Godzilla of his radiation breath, his ferocity, his ‘heroic’ ambiguity, his invulnerability and his inexorable scorn for military solutions.

With all due disrespect, Ryuhei Kitamura, director of 2005’s Godzilla Final Wars, included the American Godzilla in his ‘genuine’ Godzilla film, naming him “Zilla” — because the American movie had taken the “God” out of “Godzilla”, he said. (In an apparent act of cinematic sarcasm, Kitamura has his Godzilla annihilate Zilla — who is under alien control — in a matter of nano-seconds, along with Sydney’s Opera House.) Another common fan name for Emmerich’s monster is GINO, which stands for “Godzilla In Name Only”. These snippets of pointed humour comment on the fundamental lack of understanding of Godzilla apparent in the 1998 film.

(more…)