Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

Into the Spider-Verse is well-deserving of its good reviews and as animated superhero movies of 2018 go, it's  better thought-out than The Incredibles 2.

It's a little slow getting started, but once it starts it moves pretty quickly to a very exciting climax.

A new Spider-Man (barely a teenager) teams up with a bunch of alternate universe Spider-Men and women to defeat the Kingpin's plan to possibly destroy all the universes.

The film closes with a subtle tribute to Stan Lee that might get you a little teary.

But I'm not here to review the film, I want to discuss the whole alternate universe thing.

This whole concept was introduced to the world of comic books by Gardner Fox in DC Comics way back in the early '60s. This became an incredibly popular idea that inspired the annual JLA-JSA team-up, sometimes the best selling comics of each year.

Gardner Fox and Julius Schwartz laid the groundwork for decades of logical and fun story developments

And everything was great.

Until the mid-80s, when the editors at DC thought "y'know, the whole multiverse concept is really popular with our readers ... let's piss on it!"

So they had the Crisis on Infinite Earths, the muddled, not-terribly-thought-out miniseries to discontinue the whole multiverse conceit.

Later they introduced Elseworld stories. These books had alternate versions of our favorite characters but the stories weren't canon, otherwise a reader might get emotionally invested in a character or storyline. The last thing you'd want is for a reader to get emotionally involved in a story.

It's as if the editors had long meetings debating how to further disenfranchise readers.

They since then had reboots to fix all the mistakes, then more reboots to fix mistakes they made while fixing those mistakes, brought the multiverse back again and again with countless reboots, each time pissing on it just a little more.

Meanwhile, at Marvel, they simply picked up the ball and ran with it.

How exciting: A legion of alternate universe Spider-Men. And it's canon! It counts. It's not a hoax or an imaginary story. At the end they gave credit to Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, but y'know, they probably should have given a little credit to Gardner Fox.

This is why DC has such a hard time trying to duplicate the success of the Marvel Universe films. Deep down they really don't respect their characters or readers.

Behind the scenes: The voice audition for "Fairly Oddparents."

Director: Give us the most annoying voice you have ... no no... your *most* annoying voice. Mmm, I see, well thank you, we'll keep looking."

Overdue Star Trek review: Whom Gods Destroy

Kirk and Spock are held captive on a penal colony planet when the inmates take over the asylum. Adding to the drama is the main inmate is a shape-shifter.

This episode has two problems, one minor, one major. The minor problem is the show did this plot already. Serious? They have the entire galaxy to explore, not to mention countless allegory plots about the human condition, and they were running out of ideas by the third season?

The major problem is everything the writers knew about mental illness was learned from watching "Arsenic and Old Lace." The difference is Star Trek had the decency to play mental illness as a drama instead of "Arsenic" which played mental illness as a laugh-riot!

I'm talking about the whole delusions of grandeur trope. Shorthand for mental illness in pre-70s was to put a Napolean hat on someone. Instant crazy! "Arsenic" did this by making a character think he was Theodore Roosevelt, "Whom Gods Destroy" did it by making Garth think he was Lord commander of the universe.

The other disturbing thing was the other inmates passing time by doing wheelbarrow races. It's as if the writers were thinking that the insane extras had to do something, hmm, what do the mentally ill do, yeah! they do wheelbarrow races! This of course comes off as awful, insensitive and really amateurish.

We really don't portray mental illness like this anymore.

This is a pity, if the writers had done actual research, a real story about real mental illness could have been made. The viewers could have actually learned something. Star Trek classic took on the Vietnam war, it could have taken on mental illness.

Some good points. I never tire of two William Shatners wrestling each other. Star Trek 6 would steal this 25 years later for a hilarious moment.  Yvonne Craig was beautiful and sexy and back in the 60s always got saddled with the girlfriend-of-the-week roles, though she deserved better. On the other hand what's not to like about her as an Orion slave girl? And speaking of Orion slave girls, the episode used a bunch of formerly introduced alien races; this might have been a cost-saving maneuver, but it perhaps unintentionally brought some uniformity to the ST universe.

One technical point: The Star Trek classic reruns shown now are the special-effects enhanced episodes where, for the most part, all the model starships have been replaced by CGI ships. That being said, the scene where the Enterprise is firing photon torpedoes at the Klingon ship should be awesome. It's not. It's only slightly better than the original effect. Further, they missed an opportunity to CGI the scenes where Garth is shapeshifting instead of leaving in the cheesy '60s effect. Speaking of Star Trek VI, the shapeshifter in that film changed form while talking, how cool is that?

Oklahoma!, perhaps not OK

I saw a production of "Oklahoma!" yesterday, which made me think: Is Oklahoma! a problem play? A problem play is pretty much any play that has aged badly, or contains really outdated concepts.

We have the A plot and the B plot. The B plot is a lot of fun. It's a love triangle between a dim-witted cowboy, his girlfriend who unapologetically enjoys sleeping around and the traveling salesman who wants to get out of the triangle, but keeps getting pulled back in.

The A plot starts out light-hearted, with a Beatrice and Benedict set-up of a boy and girl (Curly and Laurie) who love one another but are too proud to admit it, so they have to pretend they don't. This takes an ugly turn when the girl hooks up with Jud, a psycho killer.

Curly's solution to this is to go to the psycho killer's house and convince him to commit suicide.

What!?

Meanwhile, Laurie  has a dream  where the psycho killer kills Curly, but in real life, they finally get rid of the psycho killer when Curly stabs him to death (but accidental-like, because Curly is a good  guy.).

Then the ensemble sings a song about how wonderful things will be when Oklahoma becomes a state.

What!?

This is crazy!

Let's explore the B plot first. This should arguably have been the A plot if only because the great characters. Had Broadway ever had a heroine who enjoyed sleeping around who's not punished for it? TV wouldn't have characters like this until Sue Ann Nivens in "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," all Broadway heroines were virtuous. Ado Annie came along, and she had no problem sleeping with different men. She thought it was kind of funny.

Now, the problematic A plot. Why would Laurie agree to take Jud to the big social if she's deathly afraid of him? Are there only two men in the whole county? So the only way to get rid of him is to murder him? And everyone's OK with it? We have stalking laws now, but in 1943 stalking was just a nuisance that could only be solved by a knife fight where the hero accidentally kills the villain?

A competitor for Laurie's affection who was sane would have ratcheted the drama down a little but would have been more compatible with the light-hearted B plot.

Think of "Cheers" where Sam and Diane loved one another, but didn't want to admit it, then the erudite Frasier comes along and everyone has to step up their game. It was hilarious and it worked. Now picture Frasier being a psycho killer who just wants to rape Diane, but fortunately Sam accidentally kills him with his car. Wow, that doesn't work at all.

Another problem with this play is more logistical. The script requires that at the end, the lovers ride off in a surrey with the fringe on top. This is nothing you can pick up at a costume-and-prop store. When my high school did Oklahoma! we had borrowed a surry from a nearby high school who had just done Oklahoma, and we in turn gave it to another high school who was about to do Oklahoma! I think there's one surrey in the whole country that just keeps getting passed around.

One more note, "Friends" would later steal the gag of the beautiful woman with the terrible laugh with Chandler's on and off girlfriend Janice.

I was right (Star Wars edition)

Back in this post in January, I said I suspected that Lucasfilm didn't kill off Princess Leia in the last Star Wars movie because they were sitting on footage of the late Carrie Fisher they could use for the next Star Wars movie.

Lucasfilm though said, no, there's no more footage.

I didn't believe them.

I was right.

They just announced the casting for the next movie and they said they would use footage of Carrie Fisher.

It just didn't make sense for me that they'd keep the character alive unless more footage existed.

Whether or not they'll be able to incorporate the footage into the film so it makes sense is a whole other thing. The big continuity disconnect between the last and most recent films though make me think I shouldn't expect the best.

Book review: Just the Funny Parts by Nell Scovell

Tina Fey's "Bossy Pants"created a new literary genre of women writers recounting show business successes and horror stories. The fact TV vet Nell Scovell co-wrote Sheryl Sandberg's "Lean In" made her a natural for her own book.

The book is an expansion of her Vanity Fair article about how Late Night comedy shows ... as a rule .... rarely, if ever, hire women, and how the women interns on these shows are treated as sex toys for the executives and stars.

Apparently, things aren't much better for women working for prime time shows either.

Though her writing is funny, the horror stories are still horror stories: (An early introduction to sexual harassment on the 1980s revival of "The Smothers Brothers" show will make you think differently about a lovable 1970s folk singer; and you can't watch  "24" the same way after learning the show hired a woman writer once, but it didn't work out, so they wouldn't hire another.)

"The Larry Sanders Show" touched on one point and she reiterates it, but I'm always shocked at stories of how the stars of shows want as little contact with their writers as possible. She wrote for "Newhart," but didn't speak to him until the last day of shooting, and that was an accidental bump in a doorway. The writers would only see Letterman walk down the hall past their offices. Maybe I'm being naive but I would think TV stars, especially talk show hosts would want to somehow participate in the writing process, and not give them the same regard as the crew from accounting.

(I read somewhere though that Leno was the exception, having the writers come to his house every night to work on the next day's show.)

The book has some frustrating passages. She talks about career dry spells, but she also walked away from some clearly lucrative gigs. It's understandable why she bailed on the toxic Letterman show, but I'm still wondering why she quit "Sabrina the Teenage Witch," after the first season. It was a show she created, was an executive for, was a hit, and likely would have a healthy run. She was in charge! She later complains how her replacements wrote the characters.

I also don't understand her job timeline at the end of the book. Instead of writing, "I wrote dozens of unproduced scripts," she lists them all by title. The titles really don't mean much.

Ultimately, things haven't changed much since the Vanity Fair article. On Letterman's new Netflix series, "My Next Guest Needs No Introduction," he's at a loss to explain to Tina Fey why he didn't hire more women writers. In an interview pushing the book, Scovell points out that Letterman seems contrite, but of the five executive producers for "My Next Guest ..." none of them are women.

Review: Ready Player One

What a terrible movie!

It substitutes plot and character development with pop culture and video game references.

Throw in the plot of "Tron," steal "Willie Wonka's" ending, and that's it.

The sight of old video game characters is supposed to  impress me?


Didn't "Pixels" just do this? Didn't "Wreck-It Ralph" just do this?

And how many 'teen rebels vs. dystopian society' movies have been made so far? A dozen?

The low point is "We're not gonna' take it" playing over the scene where the people rise up against the evil corporation. This song has been used in Clearasil commercials.

There is nothing new in this movie.

The "Guardians of the Galaxy" films also had pop culture references, but take them away and you still have two really good movies. Take the pop culture references from this film and you'd have nothing!


This is clearly Spielberg's worst film. There is nothing new or inventive. You'd be better off getting Life magazine's special '80s issue and flipping through the pictures. You'd get the same effect.


I never liked the holodeck episodes of "Star Trek: The Next Generation" because it was never real. It was like reading a book about a guy reading a book. How is that interesting? ST:TNG holodeck episodes were watching imaginary characters experiencing an imaginary adventure. Who cares? This movie is the same thing.

Appreciation: "City on the Edge of Forever"

Just caught this Star Trek gem on one of the antenna stations. I had't seen it in years, and I knew it was good (probably the best episode of any Star Trek ever), I just forgot how nearly perfect it is.

Economy of words: There is not an ounce of fat in this episode. Every line, every scene moves the story forward. They don't waste  a second. Watch the sequence where Spock sees a guy working with intricate tools, he cracks a safe and steals them, Edith Keeler confronts Kirk and Spock about the theft. This all happens in the space of two minutes.

McCoy's recovery scene: We learn more about McCoy in this tiny, well-written exchange with Keeler than we will in the whole series. He's not just a cranky Spock antagonist. He's realizing he's somehow on earth in 1930 and instead of freaking out, he sees it as another day working for Starfleet.  When Keeler sympathetically says, "We've all drank from the wrong bottle at one point." He just laughs at the analogy. "Not like the bottle I drank from." Then he offers to help out. The viewer imagines he's going to make the best of things by practicing medicine just in a  different time.

McCoy's back alley scene: What a great monologue, "people sewn like garments!" He's mad, but he's right. In the future, we won't be sewing people like garments, and it's barbaric to him even in his demented state.

Kirk/Spock interplay: "Sometimes I expect too much of you." Spock has a genius intellect yet Kirk is still able to play him. This answers the question, if Spock is so smart, why isn't he the captain? Because Kirk knows all the angles you'd never read in a book (previously this was done with Kirk routinely beating Spock in chess).

Heartbreaking ending: It's all wrapped up in a minute, there's no epilogue to explain everything, there's no moment where they're back on the bridge for a laugh/freeze frame. Just heartbreak.

It's like a two hour episode packed into 60 minutes. If it were made today the story would have been spread out over the whole season. Not too crazy an idea. Think about Kirk telling the Red Shirts (who *don't* die!) to follow him into the time portal if they think he'd been gone too long. Imagine what those subplots could be had they listened to him.

My only question is why they didn't use the Guardian of Forever again? They used different means to time travel, it might have been better if they stuck with this one.

Harlan Ellison wrote a book about the making of this episode, and it includes the original script. It also recounts some shady maneuvering from Shatner and Roddenberry. If you can find it get it.

Great stuff

Overdue film review: Star Wars Last of the Jedi (spoilers)

The word sequel in Hollywood is used mostly when they mean to say 'remake."

"Home Alone 2" wasn't the further adventures of Kevin McCallister, it was the exact same adventures of Kevin McCallister from the first "Home Alone."

"The Force Awakens" and "The Last Jedi" on the other hand aren't sequels to the Star Wars films, they're the exact same adventures but experienced by different characters.

The space battles, the long speeches about the Force, the captures and escapes, we've seen it all before. Sure they're entertaining and fun to watch, but ultimately the series ran out of plot five movies ago. The new characters are  just doing what the old characters did.

The only reason Luke refuses to aid in the rebellion is because otherwise, there'd be nothing for him to do. And really, he throws the light saber over his shoulder? Would you do that with a gun?

The Carrie Fisher scenes are curious, they could have easily killed her early on in the first explosion, but once she floats in space to the spaceship you start thinking, "she was dead when this scene was CGI'd in. Then she spends the middle third in a coma, and you have to wonder what she was supposed to be doing in the middle third had she lived. It's a pleasant surprise to see her return for the final third. I suspect they're sitting on more footage of her that will turn up in the third film.

It also seemed they set up mysteries in the first movie to totally forget about them for this film. Snoke? What's his backstory? Umm, I guess we'll never know. Rey? They spent a lot of time convincing us her backstory is a big deal and then they just sweep it off. C3-PO's red arm, I think they totally forgot about that. George Lucas spent years just making it up as he went on, not really concerning himself with continuity or logic. I was hoping Disney would try to be a little more consistent.