Caddickisms

A few things that are now probably old news for some of you have come across my reader. Sorry I didn’t get to pass them on earlier. I done been busy.

So this’ll be just a quick list for the most part.

The next Family Guy: Blue Harvest special will parody Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. There will also be an upcoming Family Guy episode that features a Star Trek crew:

“In one episode, Stewie kidnaps the cast of “Star Trek: The Next Generation.” They (the original cast members) all came back, reunited to do their voices for us,” McFarland teased.

NBC’s My Own Worst Enemy has been cancelled. The 8th episode may be the last to be seen, as the show was cancelled during production of it’s 9th episode. Personally I think they should let it run through the 13 shows originally ordered, but I can understand this show not catching on. It’s no Journeyman. Given more time, though, I could see the overarching plot twisting a bit in interesting directions. Still… there’s something not quite satisfying about it. Maybe it’s that the two main characters can never actually meet, so their arguments are always indirect. Christian Slater, though, does a great job of separating the two characters.

Doctor Who: Big news here is that David Tennant is leaving the show at the end of 2009’s specials. That hurts. He’s really great. He’ll be a tough act to follow, I think… but then I thought that after Christopher Eccleston, too, and that turned out great. Other old, but disappointing news is that the rumored multiple Doctors Children-in-need special didn’t happen, but instead featured the opening clip from this year’s Christmas special “The Next Doctor”. I don’t think this is the actor who will be taking over for Tennant, but it looks interesting:

Something on Battlestar Galactica has surfaced. The trailer for the last half of the final season for the show is out. Looks good.

And remember that Star Trek trailer that was released last week? A new version of it was released with a single small but significant change. Nimoy’s Spock stops in to drop a few familiar words:

Live long, and prosper

Well, that’s it for now. Maybe next time I’ll have news on things that haven’t been reported to death already.

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I’ve fallen really behind on posting lately. Given the upcoming holiday there probably won’t be much for the next few days either. But I wanted to quickly throw a few things out there in Sci-Fi and Entertainment news.

Hobbit films (report stolen from Slice of Sci-Fi):

Director Guillermo del Toro told reporters during a Hellboy press junket that his first “The Hobbit” movie will stick strictly to J.R.R. Tolkien’s original “The Hobbit” material, however, the second film will take in a wide range of materials from the Tolkien universe inlcluding many of Tolkien’s own notes.

It will be interesting to see what happens with that second movie. Do we have a screenwriter who can take those notes and other materials and make a script that feels Tolkien-ish?

Doctor Who: Parts 1 and 2 of the season finale were extremely good. Like everyone else, I’m waiting with very little patience for the final installment (I hope the Sci-Fi channel runs it in its entirety when it’s their turn - it’s a super-sized episode at 65 commercial-free minutes). Then I intend to be very annoyed next year when we only get a few specials. I’ll do another review of the season after it’s over.

Batman Begins: Heath Ledger continues to get rave reviews on his Joker portrayal. I hope the movie lives up to the buzz.

Starship Troopers 3: Three? Really? Do we need three of these things? Wasn’t one painful enough? If you really want to see the trailer, it’s out there.

Hancock: Apparently this has a pretty short running time. And it’s getting middling reviews. Apparently the first half is pretty good, but then it falls apart. This is really driving me nuts. The more I see of clips and trailers for this, the more I want to see it, but then I find out it’s short and may not live up to expectations? I don’t know if I can throw my money and time at that. I really want to see it, though… blah.

Star Wars: Clone Wars - The new trailer is out there! It’s a bit moodier than the others. I think I liked Trailer #1 better. Still on the must see list, though.

The Prisoner: AMC is remaking 60’s TV show “The Prisoner” in a 6-part miniseries with Jim Caviezel and Ian McKellan. Top notch actors, ground-breaking original… I hope it turns out well!

Dr. Horrible’s Sing-along Blog: Joss Whedon, the creator of Buffy, Angel, and Firefly, has got himself a nice little humorous project with some familiar faces. Looks intriguing.

And finally…

Bruce Campbell, who “starred” in all three Spider-man movies and my favorite western-sci-fi TV show (The Adventures of Brisco County Jr.) - and a few well known cult classics - is coming out with a new film in which he plays himself. Sort of. Looks really good to me…

In case I’m too lazy to blog again before the weekend, have a great Independence Day (unless you happen to live in a non-US location, in which case, have a nice normal weekend.)

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The New York Times reported last week that Abdul Qadeer Khan may have sold plans for a nuclear weapon:

American and international investigators say that they have found the electronic blueprints for an advanced nuclear weapon on computers that belonged to the nuclear smuggling network run by Abdul Qadeer Khan, the rogue Pakistani nuclear scientist, but that they have not been able to determine whether they were sold to Iran or the smuggling ring’s other customers.

In related news:

Well said.

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The networks released their schedules for next year this week. No surprise: Smallville and 24 are both reappearing in the schedules. However, there has been surprising news/rumors about both shows…

24

Jack is back, and as an appeasement from the long wait since last season, we get a 2-hour movie on November 23rd:

24 is also scheduled to return full time in January of 2009. (A spoiler is below.) However, to reward fans who have not seen a new episode since May of 2007, there will be a 2-hour special on 11/23. According to Kiefer Sutherland, they are scheduled to start filming in the next few weeks in south Africa.

“Set and shot on location in Africa, Jack Bauer battles an international crisis, while here at home the nation prepares for a new president on inauguration day. Taking place just a few months before the new day dawns, this story will set the stage and raise the stakes for Season Seven.”

Day/Season 7 spoiler: Tony’s back. Wait a minute… is this a sci-fi show now?

Smallville

We already knew that Kristen Kreuk and Michael Rosenbaum were leaving the show as regulars. Apparently, that fact gave Allison Mack, who plays Chloe Sullivan, the guts to try renegotiating, since that would leave her as the only regular (other than Tom Welling) to have been on since the beginning. However, it looks like those negotiations may be going poorly, and Chloe may be on her way out.

So that would leave just Clark, Lois, and Jimmy as the only regulars. Hmm…. seems like we’re really leaving Smallville behind and just going straight to Superman. I don’t know - I really like the show, but I’m really worried that it’s going to suffer greatly without Lex. I’ve heard Lana will become recurring…. and I don’t care. She’s over, as far as I’m concerned. They ran out of good stuff to do with her character a few years ago. She only really had a couple good episodes in the last few seasons. Lex is the one that’s got to come back from time to time, if you ask me. Besides….

SPOILERS FOR SMALLVILLE SEASON 7 FINALE

… what are they going to do, leave him dead under the ice, buried in his attempt to kill Clark? Obviously Clark will be back somehow, and I really hope the season premiere resolves the whole Clark/Lex fight adequately. I kind of feel like the rug was pulled out from under me for this finale, and not in a good way. This show has had some great finales, but this one just seemed a bit anti-climactic to me. We saw almost the entire end of the show in the previews! Where was the big fight? Where was the surprise? Where was the “holy cow! Who’s gonna survive this?” moment? We know Clark’s going to survive so no drama there. Lex is going to survive somehow too (to do otherwise would really be a kick in the face to the fans). Lana healed (whoopie.) and left (Yeah!), though she’s open to come back (eh.). Jimmy and Lois were never in danger. Chloe was the candidate for cliffhanger-ness, but they gave her a totally happy ending. I guess Kara is still floating out there…

…but that leaves me with another question: what was the deal where Kara/Brainiac collapsed at the end of the previous episode after Kara’s “return”. It would have worked if Brainiac were controlling her, but if it’s really Brainiac, what’s with the weak collapse, and then all powerful for the opening of this episode?

Next season’s premiere better pull out all the stops, as I assumed this finale would.

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Usability in the Movies — Top 10 Bloopers Jakob Nielsens Alertbox

Obviously a slow day in the world of Usability. This has got to be one of those posts that Jakob had stored just in case he had nothing to say one day.

But it’s amusing, it’s movie related, and it’s a topic that geeks go on and on about amongst themselves, so I was, of course, interested to read it.

The one I can’t believe that he didn’t mention as an example of amazing interoperability is the scene in Independence Day where Jeff Goldblum negotiates a connection with and delivers a virus to an alien spaceship. Even if you get past the connection bit (and as he says, how easy is it to even get PCs and Macs to speak to each other), what are the odds that the aliens are running an operating system - or even a single application - that will be affected by a virus written for Windows or the Mac OS?

You could probably write a full book about these kinds of “bloopers”. Fun stuff, if you’re a geek.

Technorati Tags: geek fun, movies, bloopers, computers, usability, Jakob Nielsen

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Diabetes breakthrough

Before you get too excited, let me say this: from my read of the article, it’s a long time before humans could benefit, and even when they can, you’ll probably have to catch it within a certain amount of time.

In a discovery that has stunned even those behind it, scientists at a Toronto hospital say they have proof the body’s nervous system helps trigger diabetes, opening the door to a potential near-cure of the disease that affects millions of Canadians.

Diabetic mice became healthy virtually overnight after researchers injected a substance to counteract the effect of malfunctioning pain neurons in the pancreas.

The link to the nervous system is the breakthrough idea. Until this point, the auto-immune system was seen as the problem. But recently the researchers in the article tried a nerve inhibitor that actually removed the disease from infected mice.

In diabetes, the inflammation (and eventually death) of pancreatic islet cells, which produce the insulin we all need to convert sugar to energy, is the root of the problem. The researchers concentrated on the nerves surrounding these cells, and told them to stop firing “emergency” messages to the nervous system. In the mice, this caused the islet cells to recover and begin functioning normally again. In other words, they were cured.

(Note: obviously the islet cells have to be inflamed, not dead, for this to work. That’s why I said at the beginning that you’d have to catch the disease within a certain period of time.)

Obviously if this holds true for humans as well, this is an incredibly huge development, not just for Type I, but for Type II diabetes as well:

They also discovered that their treatments curbed the insulin resistance that is the hallmark of Type 2 diabetes, and that insulin resistance is a major factor in Type 1 diabetes, suggesting the two illnesses are quite similar.

While this study concentrates solely on Diabetes Type I (or Juvenile Onset Diabetes), other diseases not previously linked to the nervous system may benefit from this research as well:

They also conclude … that nerves likely play a role in other chronic inflammatory conditions, such as asthma and Crohn’s disease.

This is potentially the biggest medical breakthrough since curing polio. Here’s hoping the research proves to be true and transferable to humans!

Technorati Tags: diabetes, medical breakthroughs, medical research, nervous system

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Note: Link contains profanity - Mel Gibson clears up that mystery about whether he’s an anti-Semite. By Timothy Noah

Well, this is really disappointing on a few levels. Gibson made some unmistakably anti-Semitic remarks while being arrested for DUI. I’m sure the media and blogosphere will be covering this way more than is necessary, and anything I say will most likely be repetitive, but hey … there are only about 3 people who read this thing, and I gotta go with the assumption that they are all hermits who get all their information from me. That’s pretty much the only belief that keeps me writing this stuff.

So Gibson was “outed”. He has also apologized, but let’s face it: the genie is out of the bottle. In some ways, I’m glad it happened. Primarily because the truth got out, and I believe that’s always a good thing. On the other hand, it will inevitably reignite and (this is the unfortunate part) distort some fires that had died down significantly. I’m thinking specifically of the controversy surrounding Gibson’s movie The Passion of the Christ.

Before its release, that movie was being loudly criticized by some as anti-Semitic for its depiction of the role of Jewish leaders in the crucifixion of Jesus. Others saw it as an accurate depiction of the facts as presented in the Bible. The movie came out, some people boycotted, some continued to claim anti-Semitism, but most of the voices I heard who actually waited to see the movie before making up their mind said that while they could see how it would make some people nervous, they didn’t see the anti-Semitism themselves. And after a few months, things died down.

At the time though, much was made of Gibson’s father’s beliefs, which themselves were anti-Semitic. Gibson wisely distanced himself without completely denying that he shared his father’s views (including that the Holocost never happened). Now that it appears that he does in fact share at least some of those views, I think the controversy will reassert itself and the “anti-Semite” viewpoint will now have the added ammunition that the movie must be anti-Semitic because an anti-Semite made it. That is a complete logical fallacy, but that rarely stops people from making those kinds of statements.

Other than that argument resurfacing, we now have the question of whether Gibson can continue to work in the wake of his outburst. I’m not sure he can, in any significant way. I’m not even sure he should. I agree with Bryce Zabel’s take that he’ll probably continue to be around, but in a much diminished capacity. And that’s a shame, from an entertainment consumer’s perspective. He has created extremely memorable roles and movies over the years - some of my favorites - and has developed a very likable public persona. He is a very talented actor, and it’s a shame that his real life hatred will now cast a shadow over everything he has, or will, accomplish in the entertainment world.

It’s in some ways the exact opposite of what’s happening to J. Michael Straczynski (see previous post). While JMS’s work has gained in esteem due to the context-changing event in his life, esteem for Gibson’s work will most likely plummet in the wake of this change in context.

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