I've seen Superman is a Dick before, but I hadn't noticed this particular example of superhero japery.

Admit it, if you could fly wouldn't you be tempted to fake throwing yourself off a tall building in front of the love of your life at least once? Just for yuks.

[Via Wis[s]e Words]

[I know, I know. Posting about the last of the prequels is so last week. But I saw the film on Saturday night and have only had the chance to post about it now, and if I don't weigh in with an opinion then I'll be stripped of my geek credentials once and for all.]

From a certain point of view, George Lucas had an easy job in bringing his saga back to the point where we came in (more or less) some 28 years ago. After all, at least this time round he knew exactly where his characters would end up and roughly how he had to get them there. As long as he gave us a few key moments – the rise of Emperor Palpatine, a certain princess-turned-senator giving birth to twins, a kick-ass lightsabre duel between master and pupil, the first appearance of an iconic black helmet, the dismemberment of Jar-Jar Binks (I can dream, can't I?) – pretty much any minor misstep could be forgiven.

The trouble is, it wasn't that simple in practice. Since Lucas returned to his most famous work he's demonstrated again and again that either he'd lost his touch or else his collaborators some twenty years ago deserved more credit than they got for making his story come to life on screen. Could the man who gave us Jar-Jar Binks really do justice to the seduction of Anakin Skywalker by Emperor Palpatine?

Happily, the answer is "Yes." Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith is much the best of the prequel trilogy, and while Lucas' dialogue leaves a lot to be desired the actors mostly make it work this time round. If you're still willing to go where George Lucas wants to take you, you'll more than get your money's-worth. If anything, the problem with this film is that it tries to pack too much plot into 140 minutes: it might have been better to devote a lot less time to wandering around finding little Anakin in Episode I and get to the meat of the storyline that much sooner.

In the end, the good news is that – with the notable but entirely predictable exception of the dialogue – pretty much every element of Revenge of the Sith is between 20% and 50% better than the other two prequels. The special effects technology is used to paint some truly striking cityscapes and spacecraft that flew right off the cover of a 50s SF novel. The action sequences are mostly very good indeed, particularly the ones involving Yoda – the scenes where he avoids an ambush, and another when he faces off with Darth Sidious, are marvelous. There's still the occasional misuse of CGI to depict humans leaping around turning somersaults in slightly unnatural ways, but that seems to be a trap just about every large-scale SF or fantasy film falls into nowadays. (OK, strictly speaking that's Jedi and Sith leaping around, but my general point still stands, just as it did for a certain elf in another major trilogy I could name.) Oh yes, and Yoda gets one of his very best lines in the entire trilogy:

"If so powerful you are…"
[Twirls lightsabre, lights up]
"…why leave?"

Gary Farber has found a copy of the Revenge of the Sith script online and made a series of posts discussing some of the passages which were edited down or skipped completely in the final release. As Gary notes, it's a shame that Jimmy Smits got so little to do yet again – he got more lines this time round, but I for one wanted to see more of the man who worked with Amidala in the Senate to resist Palpatine's rise and who would end up as Leia's adoptive father. I'll be interested to see how much omitted material ends up on the DVD release.

Just a very quick post from a BT internet kiosk to say that I won't be posting again until Monday evening at the earliest.

Look at this aerial image of the US Department of Defense's biggest bomb factory, which is located in McAlester, Oklahoma.

All those little white dots on the first image are "igloos" which are used to house finished munitions, which of course are spaced well apart for obvious reasons. This 2002 Fast Company article illustrates just how important it is to keep modern munitions isolated:

Two-thousand-pound bombs lie on their sides, two bombs to a metal rack, stacked four racks high, 36 rows deep. In a room about the size of a McDonald's, there are 313 bombs, each weighing a ton. In 1985, a car hit a truck carrying such bombs on Interstate 40, north of McAlester. The truck carried no fuses or detonators, but in the fire after the accident, three of the bombs partially exploded and burned. The crater they left in I-40 was 40 feet wide and 25 feet deep.

Imagine how big the crater would have been if they'd all gone off. (I realise that's a hugely unlikely scenario, since in practice with that many bombs in close proximity some would have been shredded by their neighbours' blast rather than detonating properly themselves, but still…)

I haven't seen much in the way of teasers for Wallace and Gromit's big-screen debut up to now. A new trailer is up at AOL, and it looks very much like the mixture as before: a bunch of Heath Robinson gadgets, a very British sense of humour and a classic double act front and centre.

Sure to be one of the highlights of the year – though it's a bit of a rum do when the Americans (not to mention the Australians, Italians, French, Germans, Dutch and Swiss) get to see it before we do!

[Via Moviebox.net]

The latest news on X-Men 3 is a tad perplexing. Marvel Studios boss Avi Arad has not only confirmed that Vinnie Jones is playing Juggernaut, but added that Henry McCoy Ph.D is to be played by Kelsey Grammer.

I would imagine that Jones will spend most of his time masked by his armour and the latter will probably be all blue and hairy for much of the film, but my initial reaction is that I just can't imagine either of those actors playing those characters.

But then, Hugh Jackman is way too tall and skinny to be playing Wolverine and that worked out OK. I should probably just sit tight and wait to be pleasantly surprised next summer.

[Via Do You Feel Loved?]

The results of the All About Romance Cover Contest for 2004 are online, and as usual the Worst Covers category is where the action is.

I think the cover for Rumor Has It deserved to win for depicting a sexual position which looks to be just about anatomically impossible: unless the woman is an Olympic standard gymnast or has freakishly long arms, I just can't see how her legs can be up there while her right hand is down around the guy's back. Though one reader did come up with an alternative explanation:

Shelly: "[...] So the cover tells me this is about a ménage a trois in a spaceship designed by aliens with Earth auto fetishes, in which the lightning propelled buttocks of one man thrust him with such vigor into the woman she kicks a hole in the ceiling, causing an air leak into space that they must figure out how to stop before they die. Let's hope that other guy is MacGyver. Did I get it right?"

If that isn't the right explanation, it definitely should be.

[Via Anita's LOL]

Fittingly, The Darth Side: Memoirs of a Monster has come to a very satisfying end with today's entry. The site's author, Matthew Hemming, is interviewed here.

Your humor is dark, but satirical, what do you use as inspiration for the posts?
As has been remarked elsewhere in the Blogosphere, the entries are best enjoyed if read with James Earl Jones' inimitable delivery in mind. If you put just about anything mundune in that voice, it's already halfway funny.

I've drawn heavily on the spirit of Douglas Adams, which I think is appropriate given his stature as a founding father of space-farce, as well as aspects of Harry Harrison's tone in The Stainless Steel Rat series. Much of the specific romantic phraseology comes from George Lucas himself, of course.

There's some Joseph Heller in there too, and maybe a pinch of Kurt Vonnegut.

References from Isaac Asimov inevitably crop up since, from a certain point of view, the Star Wars Saga is really just "Foundation" For Kids, with the complex and subtle themes remixed in cartoon proportions. The First Foundation is the Jedi Order and the Second Foundation is the Sith — the rest follows naturally.

The entries you write have a huge amount of background material from the movies. How often have you watched the Star Wars trilogies?
I'd rather not quantity that sort of thing for risk of flushing the reputation of my critical faculties entirely down the toilet. Suffice to say I am very familiar with all five of the movies released to date.

I've spent the last hour or two upgrading to WordPress 1.5.1, so things are looking a bit different around here. The look of the site and the contents of the sidebar will probably change quite a bit over the next 48 hours as I replace or upgrade various plugins and tweak (or replace) the current theme.

In the meantime, if you find any oddities in the appearance or functionality of the site, either add a comment to this post or (particularly if the problem is that comments won't work) email me.

Normal posting should resume tomorrow night, unless I find myself too engrossed in CSS tweaking or uploading just one more neat plugin to actually visit any sites to post about…

When George Lucas re-released Star Wars in 1978 he commissioned a new poster. Somehow I've gone the quarter century or so since without running into it once as far as I can remember: I think this means I have to hand in my geek credentials.

My first reaction was that I preferred the classic poster from the initial release, but on further reflection I can see what makes the 1978 'Circus' poster one of George Lucas' favourites. It reflects the film's pulp SF roots very nicely.

[Via Posterwire]

Chris Anderson reports that the Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner turns out to be a dual-use device:

We have a Roomba Discovery, which we love. It does an amazingly good job of cleaning the children's playroom, but perhaps not in exactly the way its inventors at iRobot intended.

Although it's fine at sucking up dirt, finding its way around the room and returning to its charging station, its real achievement is in not only getting the children to clean up their toys first but also tiring them out before bed. [...]

When I was a lad we had to make do with family pets and we had to clean up after them. Now they're cleaning up after us and putting us to bed…

From the archives of rec.humor.funny, a (probably apocryphal) story about The Funny Things Kids Say:

A number of Primary Schools were doing a project on "The Sea." Kids were asked to draw pictures or write about their experiences. Teachers got together to compare the results and put together some of the comments that were funny and some that were sad. Here are some of them. The kids were all aged between 5 and 8 years:

This is a picture of an octopus. It has eight testicles. (Kelly age 6)

Whales are animals, not fish. If they don't get air they can drown, like my brother did last summer. (David age 7)

[...]

I think sharks are ugly and mean, and have big teeth, just like Emily Richardson. She's not my friend no more. (Kylie age 6)

[...]

Some fish are dangerous. Jelly fish can sting. Electric eels can give you a shock. They have to live in caves under the sea where I think they have to plug themselves into chargers. (Christopher age 7)

[...]

On holiday my Mom went water skiing. She fell off when she was going very fast. She says she won't do it again because water shot up her fanny. (Julie age 7)

The Register reveals an unfortunate drawback to biometrics-based security systems: suddenly, a thief who wants to steal your car might need to take more than just your car keys.

[Via Risks Digest]

God's Total Quality Management Questionnaire:

1. How did you find out about God?
___ Newspaper
___ Bible
___ Torah
___ Book of Mormon
___ Koran
___ Other Book
___ Television
___ Divine Inspiration
___ Word of mouth
___ Dead Sea scrolls
___ Near Death Experience
___ Near-life experience
___ National Public Radio
___ Tabloid
___ Burning Shrubbery
___ Other (specify): _____________

Good stuff.

[Via Bifurcated Rivets]

Tetris shelving is a wonderful idea. I particularly like the way that the units are sold as individual blocks, so you can design your own layout and even add to it over time.

[Via Do You Feel Loved?]

Does your computer's screen need cleaning? Try this.

[Via plasticbag.org]

Sprol is a "planetary sightseeing" weblog with a mission:

Visit some of the worst places in the world via satellite imagery. Our mission is to use the powers of space imaging to show people the visual macroscopic effects of our decisions and behavior. Since previous generations have not had the advantage of this viewpoint it is our responsibility to use it wisely.

[Via Yoz Grahame]

Rejected 'Love Is…' comics. Read 'em before the lawsuit arrives.

[Via Bifurcated Rivets]

Since Hunter S Thompson's death we've heard from all sorts of people who worked and played with the man. This essay by Robert Love may be a bit late to the party, but it's worth a look. How many people had the experience of editing Hunter S Thompson's work?

Gonzo Fact-checking: "If you want to call someone a thieving pig fucker, you'd better be prepared to produce the pig." — Hunter S. Thompson

Fact-checking Hunter Thompson was one of the sketchiest occupations ever created in the publishing world. For the first-timer, it was a trip through a journalistic fun house, where you didn't know what was real and what wasn't. You knew you had better learn enough about the subject at hand to know when the riff began and reality ended. Hunter was a stickler for numbers, for details like gross weight and model numbers, for lyrics and caliber, and there was no faking it.

In 1982, Hunter was on assignment to cover the Palm Beach divorce trial of Roxanne and Pete Pulitzer, and he decided early on he wanted to call the piece "A Dog Took My Place." When I phoned the magazine's libel attorney, Victor Kovner, to tell him, I heard only a sharp intake of breath, and then Victor's sonorous $300-an-hour-best-legal-advice basso profundo voice. "Great title. Too bad you can't use it."

Victor rightly pointed out the actionable consequences of even hinting at alleged bestiality among named members of the Palm Beach set. When I relayed this to Hunter, he went apoplectic, screaming obscenities about lawyers and editors and threatening to pull the piece. While he had rarely arisen early enough to make it on time to the trial, he had examined all the evidence, which included Roxanne's infamous trumpet, sex toys, and some of the couple's Christmas pornography, which mentioned bestiality. Hunter had sniffed something foul in the fetid Florida air and was sure he was on to something big. "If a woman with $40 million wants to swim naked in a pool with her billy goat at four in the morning, it's nobody's business but hers," he wrote. Victor reminded Jann of the unlimited financial resources available to the Pulitzer family and that Roxanne's attorney had successfully sued Time magazine over a misrepresentation in the Palm Beach divorce trial of Mary Alice Firestone. Finally, a decision was made: the piece could not possibly run with that title. It was left to me to deliver the news.

[Via Blog of a Bookslut]

Brazilian artist Icaro Doria has used some flags to create infographics about issues like drug trafficking in Colombia and the distribution of wealth in Brazil. Very nicely done.

[Via Tin Ear]