Saw a couple of movies recently that I thought were worth mentioning:

Star Trek Beyond: Easily the best of the series so far. Don't get me wrong: I like the 2009 Star Trek*—it has its flaws, but overall it is a good, fun movie. Beyond, however, is where the series has hit its stride. It is the closest in feel, in character, in story, and in theme to the Star Trek that I grew up with. The main actors' portrayals of their characters have matured, with all of them getting a good amount of screen time and all of them fully inhabiting their roles. For the first time, I felt like I was watching Kirk, not Chris Pine playing Kirk; Spock, not Zachary Quinto playing Spock; McCoy, not Karl Urban playing McCoy; etc. Their portrayals are still different from those of their predecessors, but I don't get the sense that they're trying to be "as good as" anymore—they just let themselves be their characters, and it works!

Story-wise, it also feels very right. It's a Star Trek story, not an origin story (like the first movie) or a twisted, corrupted retelling (like Into Darkness). Simon Pegg and Doug Jung did a fantastic job with the script, and the director (Justin Lin), cinematographer (Stephen F. Windon), and editors (D'Auria, Highsmith, Matsumoto, and Sprung) did a fantastic job of bringing the script to life.

My Score: ****1/2 (out of 5 stars) — Dinged a half-star because I saw one of the major plot points coming long before it arrived, but then that happens sometimes.

Suicide Squad: Rotten Tomatoes can blow me. So can Rolling Stone, Metacritic, The Altantic, and The Hollywood Reporter. Suicide Squad is a fun movie! No, it's not a cinematic masterpiece. Yeah, it's slow in spots. Yes, it tries to milk pathos from a couple of characters who don't really have any. But despite all of that, it is a totally fun movie to watch. And sorry Rolling Stone, but Suicide Squad does NOT "mess up Harley Quinn". Okay, she's a little darker in places, and a little sillier in others, than the source material is. But to my mind, it's still Harley, and a damn fine Harley at that. (Also, what the movie adds to her origin story is both chilling and perfect.) Jared Leto's Joker is also very much the Joker, despite the visual differences. Of all the live-action Jokers there have been so far**, I actually like him best***.

But the absolute best performance in the entire movie is Will Smith's Deadshot. I can't comment on the performance without giving stuff away about the plot, but trust me: Will Smith nails it!

My Score: *** (out of 5 stars) — because the plot is kinda thin, some of the characters aren't sufficiently developed, and other minor flaws.

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*Star Trek Into Darkness, on the other hand, I do not like very much at all—it's too dark for Star Trek, ignoring the message of hope that Trek had always embodied.

**But none of the live-action Jokers can compare to Mark Hamill's animated Joker. Seriously, movie guys, just cast Hamill as the Joker already!

**For those who are interested, my ranking of the four live-action Jokers in major media are 1) Jared Leto, 2) Cesar Romero, 3) Heath Ledger, and 4) Jack Nicholson. The gaps between 2, 3, and 4 are much smaller than the gap between 1 and 2.

Today is the 55th anniversary of Vostok-1, the first human space flight, on which Yuri Gagarin of the USSR became the first human being in space. It is also the 35th anniversary of STS-1, the first space shuttle launch, specifically of Space Shuttle Columbia.

So celebrate space flight today! Maybe go watch some videos over at SciShow Space, or watch a good space movie like 2001: a Space Odyssey or The Right Stuff. Or Star Trek.

My friend Keith R.A. deCandido (yes, that Keith R.A. deCandido, aka kradical) recently had a bit of a financial snafu that required him to create a GiveForward campaign asking for help to meet expenses. That campaign was a success in substantially less than 24 hours. I myself contributed a small amount—had the campaign lasted until today (pay day) it would have been more.

However, an ongoing problem still exists: writing revenue is often wildly and unpredictably variable. So to help him avoid this situation in the future, I thought I'd help spread the word about how awesome an author he is so as to garner him new fans who will then continue to buy his stuff. With enough of an overall increase in revenue, Keith will be more easily able to keep an emergency fund to cover the lean times.

(Of course, he could also significantly reduce his expenses by, say, moving across the Hudson River‐but I suspect he'd sock me in the jaw for even suggesting such a thing. New Yorkers. Sometimes there's no reasoning with 'em...)

Many of his books are available by directly ordering them from him: the list of titles and instructions for ordering are here.

Of those on that list, I've read A Time for War, a Time for Peace, The Klingon Art of War, and Q&A—they are all awesome. (I've also read a lot of his other Star Trek fiction and a couple of his Cassie Zukov short stories, all of which are excellent, too.)

Q&A is one of my particular favorites, because ( MILD SPOILER ALERTCollapse )

The Klingon Art of War is also a lot of fun, being both an in-depth explanation and analysis of the Klingon psyche and a really effective pastiche* of Sun Tzu. It's more expensive than the others, but in my opinion it's worth it. Believe it or not, but I was actually able to apply some of the philosophy in The Klingon Art of War to my own life. THAT'S how good it is.

Of course you don't have to order straight from him, although doing so means he gets the money right away instead of months or years down the line. But wherever you buy his fiction from, by doing so you make him more valuable to his publishers, which means more contracts with bigger advances and larger royalties, which means fewer incidents of being unable to make rent**.

Thanks, and happy reading to you!

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* "Pastiche" is not the same as "parody". A parody is almost always done for comic effect, whereas a pastiche is usually simply intended to evoke a strong sense of the source material. For example: Bored of the Rings is a parody; The Phoenix Guards is a pastiche.

**Yeah, I also found it hard to believe that an author as prolific and well-loved as Keith would ever be in dire financial straits, but it turns out that this is true for most authors, even ones who are world-famous. It's only the really, really huge-name authors—the ones whose work is almost automatically made into movies or TV shows (Crichton, Rowling, Moore, S... S... Ssss... that fucker in Toronto)—who are celebrity-rich. Most authors' incomes are pretty solidly working-class in scope.

IF the USS Voyager was transported 70,000 light years away when it was sent to the Delta Quadrant, and

IF said voyage home would take 70 years at maximum warp (stated in the series to be 9.75),

THEN the USS Voyager can travel 1,000 light years in one Solar year,

WHICH EQUALS 2.74 light years per Solar day,

WHICH MEANS that it would take the USS Voyager, traveling at maximum warp from Earth:

• ALMOST TWO DAYS to reach Alpha Centauri;


• SIX DAYS to reach Vulcan (40 Eridani A);


• TWELVE AND A HALF DAYS to reach the Romulan Neutral Zone;


• THIRTY-THREE AND A HALF DAYS (over a full month) to reach Bajor;


• FORTY-FOUR AND A QUARTER DAYS to reach Qo'noS;


• and THREE FULL MONTHS to reach Ceti Alpha (where Khan was stranded).

(Historian’s Note: This scene takes place immediately after the conclusion of the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Up the Long Ladder”.)

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Once again, I seem to have been neglecting posting new videos here. So here are all the videos I've posted to my YouTube channel since June:

( under the cutCollapse )

UPDATE 2013-AUG-07 08:47 PDT
I've changed the order of some of the lyrics and changed one spot that I think needed it.

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I normally don't listen to Daft Punk that much, but their song "Get Lucky" has been on the radio a lot recently, and ... well, you know how it goes.

Getting Geeky, music by Daft Punk, lyrics by Eben Brooks

Here's a woman dressed like Phoenix; she builds gadgets like the Batman
Superheroes, electronics; geek culture's where it's at, man. Uh-huh!

We've come too far to give up who we are
We're each our own star, and this place is all ours

He's up all night playing cards
She's up all night with the bards
They're up all night for the stars
We're up all night getting geeky

He's up all night D&D
She's up all night to party
They're up all night to be free
We're up all night getting geeky

We're up all night getting geeky (x4)

( rest under the cutCollapse )

In addition to that amazing video I posted about yesterday, it seems that Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield also made news for a different reason yesterday when he received a call from William Shatner.

As I said yesterday in another forum, I'd be insanely jealous if I wasn't already too busy being super-impressed.

Sisko, without a doubt. Don't get me wrong, I like all of them, but Sisko had a presence that none of the others had. As Allison put it, when he got worked up, he "channels the spirit of every African-American grandmother who ever thwacked her grandkids upside the head with a Bible." While I wouldn't ever want to be on the receiving end of said temper, it was a wonder to behold.

I now have a third LOL that made it to the front page of Set Phasers to LOL. And, yet again, it's a Star Trek LOL:


see more Set Phasers To Lol

Three out of three with James Kirk (although he's a secondary character in this one). I see a pattern emerging...