Category: Sci-Fi/Fantasy

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WickedI’ve been catching up on last year’s movies. I finally saw Frozen last week, which prompted me to track down the soundtracks to both that movie and Tangled (more about that later), and listening to those prompted me to dig out the cast album for Wicked for the first time in, well, forever.

I was reminded of why I hadn’t listened to it much. Aside from a handful of songs (“Corner of the Sky” and “Colors of the Wind” come to mind immediately), something about Stephen Schwartz’s music just doesn’t stick in my head, and Wicked isn’t an exception. No matter that I like the story, that I like the characters, that I like Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth…the songs just don’t stick. Not even “Defying Gravity,” except for the title refrain.

But remember how I mentioned I was catching up on last year’s movies? I had a disc out from Netflix of Oz: The Great and Powerful, and several episodes of Once Upon a Time on the DVR…the ones introducing the Wicked Witch as the villain for this half of the season. And it was weekend of Emerald City Comicon.

It seemed appropriate to continue catching up.

For the record, so far I much prefer Zelena (OUAT) to Theodora (Oz:TGAP) as far as characterization goes (she has some), though I haven’t seen enough to decide how she stacks up against Elphaba.

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The caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland is totally a Vorlon.

He’s always asking “Who are you?”, has a short temper, speaks cryptically, and when he offers help, he won’t explain it. He relies on an alternate atmosphere supply. And in the Disney version, he even sheds his external skin and reveals himself as a winged being.

I don’t think he was ever named, but I think I should call him Kosh.

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Star Wars Toys Party on the Fisher Price Record Player.

Believe it or not, the record player is new. It turns out there’s a whole subset of the toy market for retro toys. It’s a bit different under the hood – I’ve had to fix it once already, and it’s actually chip-driven, not classic music box works. I figure it’s probably cheaper these days to make it with fewer moving parts.

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It’s bothered me for a long time that movie studios seem to think the only story worth telling about a superhero is the origin. You get a trilogy if you’re lucky, then back to another origin take. It would be like only ever running the pilot of every TV show even though they’re designed to set things up for an extended run. Or, I don’t know, remaking the prologue of Les Misérables over and over again without ever going further with Jean Valjean.

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Red Planet BluesSorry I don’t have a new article on Reading Les Misérables this week. I took a break to read Robert J. Sawyer’s latest novel, Red Planet Blues. It’s a detective noir story set on a future Martian colony where people have perfected the art of transferring human minds into robot bodies. It’s expensive, but it also makes modern fingerprint, DNA and other biometric forensics useless, forcing investigators to fall back on good old-fashioned sleuthing. The colony itself is essentially a gold rush town, only instead of gold, people have gone to Mars seeking fossils of long-extinct Martian life.

Sawyer read an excerpt from the novel during his author spotlight at Chicon 7 last summer. It sounded like great fun, and it lives up to its promise.

Unless I get totally swamped, I should be back to Victor Hugo next week…well…probably. There’s a new Julie Czerneda book out, and I’m really tempted to read that now that I know it’s out. I don’t want to lose too much momentum on Les Mis, though.

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I was kind of hoping Disney would pick Joss Whedon to direct the next Star Wars movie just to watch fans’ heads explode. But going with the guy who rebooted Star Trek? That’s what I call a close second.

J.J. Abrams Will Reportedly Direct the Next Star Wars Movie

Originally posted on Google+

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