War of the Worlds

No, not red vs blue, think bigger! In 1898 HG Wells, one of the founding fathers of the Sci-Fi genre “gifted” us with some incredibly imaginative thinking about an alien invasion, bringing a whole new (ahem) alien concept into sharp focus and leaving us howling at whatever planet suited our fancy.

It took the genius of Orson Wells to turn that story into a radio drama in 1939, when his troop of players, the Mercury Theater, performed a live version of it on the air. This time, it was far more realistic. Using cutting edge tech – radio broadcast – and cutting edge techniques – sound effects, live orchestra, inspired performances – he simulated an invasion of Earth by wicked, up-to-no-good Martian invaders, whose advanced weaponry promptly flattened our puny defenses, dispatching with great swaths of humanity, as on-scene reporters, bystanders and military brass helplessly intoned the bad news in real time. 

One of the coolest concepts that gave the show a more believable bent was to use a small live orchestra, whose job was to play insipid dance music, simulating a normal evening radio broadcast, only to be repeatedly interrupted with breathless reports uttering “We interrupt this broadcast to bring you this special bulletin” or even more convincing: “We now return to our program of evening music…” at which point the (really awful) dance music midst would be cut back into.

The effect was electrifying, so much so that it caused actual panic in the streets, with people spilling out of their homes, armed with guns and pitchforks. Heady stuff.

Now comes the latest iteration of the show (which was redone as  2005 Spielberg feature with Tom Cruise), a War of the Worlds OPERA (!) staged by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, based on the Mercury Theater broadcast, based on the book. The company has gone so far as to schedule not only the premier performance at Disney Hall in downtown LA, but a simulcast at three additional yet-to-be-announced outdoor public spaces, where a live actor will take to a makeshift stage and perform along with the live show. This will be done via loudspeakers mounted on poles built to hold the original 50-year old air raid sirens that were installed back in the days of the Red Scare. Quaint!

Just bought tickets (including the $14 per ticket convenience charge) and can’t wait to go next week. Stay tuned for broadcast interruptions.

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Film Commentary: Logan and Bladerunner -- Bleak vs Bleak

 OK, we all know that the future is loaded with tons and tons of dark, somber grays and blacks and midnight blues with smoke and fog and haze wafting through, to cover the sheer devastation of a shiny future turned dystopic because, well, it’s inevitable, right? Right – so let us entertain you! 

Two films exemplify dissimilar shades of that bleak spectrum: “Logan” and “Blade Runner". United in their agreement on the coming Bleakness, they diverge immediately in execution. But first, their similarities. 

Both films present beat-down protagonists, exhausted from their physical and mental battles, questioning their worth, their effectiveness and the meaning of their pathetic lives. Logan, the exhausted X-Man, must summon the strength to triumph over a seemingly endless variety of bad-to-the-bone dudes. And Bladerunner’s “K” must risk the enmity of his superiors in wrestling his conscience into doing what’s right, outside of party lines. 

 Both men find themselves in thoroughly unpleasant surroundings. The Blade Runner earthscape is particularly onerous, given to its barrenness in the face of a complete sociological collapse, with the seemingly same hapless city-droids from the original feature lurching past those urban noodle parlors, 35 years later.  And Logan’s world staggers from stinking desert hideaways to murderous highway stretches filled with soulless mercenaries and endless carnage. 

The glue that holds both stories together? Kids. Innocent children, lord love ‘em. Without them, live is a meaningless miasma of murder and mayhem. Save the children by all that’s holy! 

The difference, however, is stark. One film is just plain violent and the other is artistically, exquisitely cold. Director Denis Villeneuve and DP Richard Deakins present a stunning depiction of a serenely coiffed Bladescape that beckons via a series of details and shadows that are museum quality photos of the pride and privilege of a near future ruling class. Cold, cunning, exasperating, beautiful. Each setup is an airbrushed magazine ad for a $500 perfume. Logan’s setting is low-budget Mad Max. Sputtering killers, heads rolling in the sand, road kill. While somehow, Bladerunner couples its murderous violence with design and lighting brilliance. 

The result is a paradox of pleasure derived from the pain of a depicted world, delicious in its arched grind towards conflict and hopeful resolution. And if this is my choice to make, I’ll take the grace of a skyway filled with screaming air cars banking in formation along ruby skies, kissing the sunset with madly disruptive serenity. If the future is gonna be horrifying, let’s do it in style.

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Another Kind of Immortality

There's ample evidence and research indicating that it's just a matter of time before virtual entertainment becomes virtual living. How far out are we from being able to step into a world that is so perfectly generated, it becomes real to us and as it does, more and more compelling?

We're already bored with the early mind-blowing attempts that brought this unfolding tech to the forefront. Occulus Rift seems a lightyear ago, with Augmented Reality such a compelling second step. But the case for Fully Virtual is incredibly alluring.

To be able to step into a world designed for your personal use, edification, advancement and pleasure isn't just attractive, it's being madly developed in tech centers from San Francisco to Tel Aviv. And as it moves towards a functional reality, another parallel track will follow. Perhaps sometime later, but with utter certainty. Virtual Life. And with it, virtual immortality.

In Richard Morgan's barn-storming scifi detective novel "Altered Carbon" a central conceit features the ability of its characters -- living somewhere around 500 years in the future -- to store their living brain functions in a tiny implantable capsule that can preserve the essence of someone too sick to live or who has actually died.

Think about it: the sum total of your life experience in a tiny chip that is stored in a super facility, then implanted into another body for you to then be revived and alived all over again. Morgan refers to this process as slipping in to a new sleeve. And if you're determined and wealthy enough, you can pick and choose the kind of body you want -- including changing sex -- and do it repeatedly, netting you lifetimes of hundreds of years, as you wake up inside another casing and figure out what you look like and how it feels to be someone entirely new.

Nuts? Nu-uh. It's logical, possible, predictable and simply a matter of time. Gives the term "be seein' ya" a whole new connotation, eh?

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On Auto

So I'm cruising along at 350, enjoying some big puffy cumulous formations and breathing some sweet pistachio synth air, when Boom, the dash starts flashing bright enough to wake you out of a chem dream, the car screams to a mid-air halt and a blue'n'white floats over with a sour-faced cop in the window.

 "Sir, may I see your bios and lightband?"

"Uh, sure, officer, what seems to be the trouble?"

"Sir, were you aware that you were altering your cloud course through that last bank?"

"Alter... Officer, I was just admiring the view when..."

"We have a heat impression of both your hands ON the steering stick."

"Well, I was just resting them for a moment, I mean, it's a beautiful day and..."

"Sir, when was the last time you texted during this flight?"

"Tex... I, I was just in touch with my friend about the party on Rexus9, and HE was saying..."

"Your transmit log indicates that conversation was over 5 minutes ago. Any sub-orbital texts you can produce in the ensuing time frame?"

"Well, I was about to send..."

"May I see your record of cute animal viewing for this period, please."

"Oh! I just finished that one with the kittens running across the meadow with the ducks!"

"Which played on your screen 26 hours ago?"

"Wait, I mean the puppies! The puppies rolling over each other and then falling out of the dresser drawer!"

"Earlier this morning."

"The... the parakeet -- with the Pitbull!"

"Sir, you haven't texted or participated in any form of social media for the past 34 minutes and appear to have been steering your vehicle in a random manner for the past twelve, prior to my pulling you over."

"But I... wait, look! I found these babies eating strained peaches. (laughing) Look at that, they're getting it all over their bibs and faces, isn't that a riot, don'tcha just love watching them carry on, OMG that's so..."

"Sir, please step out of the vehicle and place your hands behind your back."

"But they're... Wait: You want me to step OUT -- we're 150 feet up!"

"On to the jet-plat, sir, let's not make this any more difficult, OK?"

"Officer, I NEVER steer, I was just day-dreaming and, and staring..."

"At nothing. Step out of the vehicle please. Central, this is 34F6, requesting backup..."

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Wonder Woman and SciFi Mythology

Finally got around to seeing Wonder Woman, the movie. Well, actually, hung with Wonder Woman herself, as well, but read on. 

First, on the way back from a trip overseas, the film was available on demand to watch from my seat on the plane and I began it there, only to realize that for something this big and this good, dealing with a low res print on an 8” screen with the engine noise a constant component of the soundtrack wasn’t going to work, so I switched to a Bollywood musical instead (which was pretty cool!). 

Day after arriving home, we got an invitation to a press screening for awards consideration – nice timing, which featured a Q&A with the director and several members of the cast, including Gal Gadot – who could resist that? 

If you haven’t seen it, no spoilers, I promise. Instead, these thoughts about effect, focus and our current culture. 

First, it’s about as good as a superhero film gets. Which begs the question: why? And that’s where mythology comes in. My problem with most superhero films is the absurd leap of faith you have to take to accept some kind of agreement that invulnerability et al, is the given and impossibility is the norm. Which I find difficult to impossible to accept most of the time. From super-villains, bent on destroying the world with their atomic weapons to superheroes getting slammed through buildings and emerging unscratched, eh, how’d they do that? 

There’s an alternate supposition for WW. She comes from a mythical island fashioned by the gods and blessed with god-enhanced magic, which in the skilled hands of director Patty Jenkins, seems utterly plausible. 

And Diana isn’t neurotic or a misfit. She’s simply naive. Having lived on this island all her life, she’s been 100% sheltered from all things earthly, let alone an actual man. So what comes across is a hero focused on a single goal: setting things right – to the exclusion of anything else, gifted with powers that serve to intensify her resolve. 

That makes for an alt conceit that is uniquely entertaining in how forgiving and fresh her take on a situation plays out. Of course, there are all the usual bad guys and insane situations, but the cast is remarkable in its warmth and cohesiveness – kudos to Patty for that and the result is a picture that stands as one of the very best of its genre. Amazing! 

And afterwards, I managed to get into a great conversation with Gal, a gorgeous in-the-flesh Amazon herself and got away with a few dim-lit selfies I get to share. 

Look for Wonder Woman on upcoming best picture lists. It belongs on them.

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Wake me When We Get There

There was a fascinating article somewhere (that’s the problem these days –there’s so much info everywhere, it blurs together) about the realities of long-term space travel. Which means what?

Look, the thing is, for the foreseeable future, we’re going to get to places like Mars or Titan (Saturn’s most promising life-possibility moon) in the coming generation or two and by scifi standards, it’s gonna take forever-ish. Seven months each way to Mars, years and years to Titan. Wanna go? Think of what a hero you’d be on Earth. If you made it. Or didn’t. Or actually managed to get there and return in say, 40 years. Who knows, if you travelled fast enough, you might even come back younger! And wouldn’t that be a great thing to mull over with all that free time in space?

So to the practical. As of the latest science, you can’t simply seal yourself up in a pod and chemically induce some kind of suspended animation and wake up refreshed and ready to go 7 years later, as the ship’s AI calmly informs you we’re now in low orbit over our destination planet and how was your rest?

No. But not totally no. You CAN sleep big gulps of it off. You just have to be awakened every 3 weeks or so. Why? Body has to be reanimated, pumped with fresh good stuff, moved around, cleaned out – all the things we do on a daily basis, which, it appears to turn out, you cannot simply ignore for years of sleep at a time without dying. Might happen someday way in the future, but by then we’ll be folding time and travelling across galaxies just like Seth McFarlane does every Thursday now.

So sleep three weeks, wakie-wakie, eggs n bac-ie walk around, catch up on instagram, watch a movie, tighten a bolt on the holo-deck and then back to bed for another three weeks. Which means around ten cycles like that to get to Mars. Boring? How could that be boring!? Now, to Saturn and cycling oh, a hundred, 150 times, hmmmmm… Where’d we leave off on that Parcheesi game last time? And aren’t we intrepid…

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Where was the future in the year 1700?

From all the info I can gather, science fiction got its more or less official start in the early 1800’s with the appearance of one Dr. Frankenstein. Written by Mary Shelly in 1811, it basically crowned her the Mother of Science Fiction. Try smoking that one, guys…

But prior to that, we have a distinct lack of evidence of anything quite so fanciful and a big part of the reason is, in my mind at least, for lack of things electric. Oh, there were drawings from Galileo – fantastical ones – and a great TV series based on his life as well. But story telling? Not so much. You need to have some basic understanding of possibility in order to dream in scifi and without having any clear concept of propulsion, for instance, how are you gonna get there?

It looks like it may have taken the industrial revolution to get the wheels turning, from laying powerful railroad systems around the world, to great migrations into the cities, factories, efficiency, suffering and overcrowding – the kinds of concepts that might have been quite different in the 1700’s, when the world was still tilted towards agrarian. 

What did your average peasant think about space travel, robotics, reanimation and ray guns? I think religion must have had a huge impact on the way we ALL thought about things in the 1600’s. Religion was the answer for questions unanswered, the purview of the wisest and most powerful figures and a convenient way of explaining unexplainable phenomena.

And strict interpretation and god-fearing belief was undoubtedly the most acceptable, politically correct and life-affirming path to take. You want to take a stroll down that corridor to the suite of rooms we keep for trouble-makers downstairs, do ya? I didn’t think so. Any more questions, my son?

Given the baseline of info we own, it’s easy to teleport into the next galaxy for a 10-year old. Were kids thinking about star-hoping in the middle ages? I’d love to be able to ask ‘em.

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