Universal has won a four-studio bidding war to pick up the film rights to the classic Atari video game "Asteroids." Matthew Lopez will write the script for the feature adaptation, which will be produced by Lorenzo di Bonaventura.
In "Asteroids," initially released as an arcade game in 1979, a player controlled a triangular space ship in an asteroid field. The object was to shoot and destroy the hulking masses of rock and the occasional flying saucer while avoiding smashing into both.
As opposed to today's games, there is no story line or fancy world-building mythology, so the studio would be creating a plot from scratch. Universal, however, is used to that development process, as it's in the middle of doing just that for several of the Hasbro board game properties it is translating to the big screen, such as "Battleship" and "Candyland."
The saddest part is not even just that "Asteroids" is being made into a freaking movie. The saddest part is that there was a four-studio bidding war over the idea.
Actually, ants are about the only insect I don't like, and I make no attempt to carefully return them to the outdoors like I do with spiders, moths, and even wasps, but please don't tell them:
A single mega-colony of ants has colonised much of the world, scientists have discovered.
Argentine ants living in vast numbers across Europe, the US and Japan belong to the same inter-related colony, and will refuse to fight one another.
The colony may be the largest of its type ever known for any insect species, and could rival humans in the scale of its world domination.
...While ants are usually highly territorial, those living within each super-colony are tolerant of one another, even if they live tens or hundreds of kilometres apart. Each super-colony, however, was thought to be quite distinct.
But it now appears that billions of Argentine ants around the world all actually belong to one single global mega-colony.
..."The enormous extent of this population is paralleled only by human society," the researchers write in the journal Insect Sociaux, in which they report their findings.
However, the irony is that it is us who likely created the ant mega-colony by initially transporting the insects around the world, and by continually introducing ants from the three continents to each other, ensuring the mega-colony continues to mingle.
"Humans created this great non-aggressive ant population," the researchers write.
Argentine ants, huh? Insert your own Mark Sanford joke here.
Cranky McDipshit is at it again, with an oh so witty swipe at Al Franken:
"I'll tell you what a lot of people are thinking, and that is it looks like things are going to be over and we are going to get the clown from Minnesota,'' he said. [...]
"I didn't mean to be disrespectful. I don't know the guy, but … for a living he is a clown,'' the senator said.
You have it all wrong, Inhofe. Franken is a comedian and writer. Rep Michele Bachmann, on the other hand, is a full-fledged clown. In fact, you had your own classic comedy moment when you tried to block that Live Earth concert and it went on anyway. I laughed. my. ass. off.
Oh, and please keep in mind that when I called you Cranky McDipshit, I didn't mean to be disrespectful.
Not news, of course, but occasionally I feel obliged to reiterate that if I live to have one-tenth of her integrity, tenacity, and perspicacity, I will consider my life a success.
Here's Helen, jumping in to assist CBS' Chip Reid, going after White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs over the hypocrisy of the "open and transparent" Obama administration engaging in staged press events and tightly-controlled town halls. And Helen is about the only, if not the only, person in that press room who earned the right to ask these questions without a snarky comment demanding to know where she was during the Bush administration—because she was right there, doing the same thing, back then, in her usual fearless, tough, uncompromising, principled way. Love her.
[Full transcript below.]
On the one hand, I understand the administration's desire to orchestrate certain events during important political fights; the last thing they want is healthcare reform derailed because some Joe the Plumber wannabe asks some idiotic question and gets turned into a national icon by the opposition, too stupid to know he's a corporate stooge. On the other hand, promising "openness and transparency" and then having highly-controlled events makes them look like idiots. If you don't want to have a legitimate town hall, but some half-assed approximation of a town hall with the mere illusion of being unscripted, maybe just don't have one at all, you know? Maybe just have a "Q&A with America" or wev.
The administration's attitude about being questioned on this stuff is ridiculous, btw. I can't believe they have the temerity to act surprised and offended that the press is challenging them on media control when they didn't challenge the Bush administration. Well, yeah—the media should have challenged the Bush administration, but here's the thing: You promised to be different, remember? When you coast into office on the promise of change, and then act exactly the same as the last guys, you're going to get grilled on it—and deservedly so. Duh.
Chip Reid: —university, I mean, invited by this community college, as it was explained to us.
Gibbs: Well, if the university is –
Reid: It just feels very tightly controlled. It feels – I mean, the concept of a town hall, I think, is to have an open public forum, and this sounds like a very tightly controlled audience and a list of questions. Why, why do it that why? Why not open it up to the public?
Gibbs: How about we do this – how about you can ask me that question tomorrow based on what questions were asked rather than pre-selecting your question based on something that may or may not come through.
Reid: But why pre-select? Why not just open it up to people and allow any question to come in?
Gibbs: Well, Chip, I think if you get on your computer from your e-mail address –
Reid: I have. I have.
Gibbs: Have you sent in your question?
Reid: I think that would be inappropriate. This is for the public.
Gibbs: I'm sorry, I'm confused – are you not a member of the public?
Reid: Well, I think if you were going to allow questions from the press, you'd have us in a prominent position over there and allow us to ask questions – you haven't done that.
Gibbs: Let's not get into the notion of where you'd be sitting [laughter] if I let you ask a question, but –
Reid: Well out of shouting range.
Gibbs: Well, but you could e-mail.
Reid: Would you put my question in there? I don't think so!
Gibbs: Maybe. Have you e-mailed?
Reid: I mean, this is a town hall.
Gibbs: It's a little – if you haven't e-mailed.
Reid: This is an open forum for the public to ask questions, but it's not really open.
Gibbs: I couldn't agree more.
Reid: But it's not open.
Gibbs: Based on what?
Reid: Based on the information that your staff gave us on how the audience and the questions are being selected.
Gibbs: The questions are being selected by people that e-mail on Facebook and Twitter.
Reid: Well, they're not deciding what questions actually get in.
Gibbs: Well, Chip, I appreciate, again –
Reid: It just feels totally controlled –
Gibbs: I appreciate, again –
Reid: – in a way unlike his town meetings all through the campaign and –
Gibbs: I appreciate the pre-selected question on your part.
Female reporter off-screen: Will there be dissenting views, I think that's an issue –
Reid: Yes, how about that?
Gibbs: I think that's a very safe bet. But, again, let's – how about we do this? I promise we will interrupt the AP's tradition of asking the first question. I'll let you ask me a question tomorrow as to whether you thought the questions at the town hall meeting that the President conducted at Annandale –
Reid: I'm perfectly happy to –
Helen Thomas: That's not his point. The point is the control –
Reid: Exactly.
Thomas: – we have never had that in the White House. And we have had some, but not –
REID: This White House.
Gibbs: Yes, I was going to say; I'll let you amend her question.
Thomas: – and I'm amazed – I'm amazed at you people who call for openness and transparency and –
Gibbs: Helen, you haven't even heard the questions.
Reid: It doesn't matter. It's the process.
[Gibbs giggles]
Thomas: You have left open –
Reid: Even if there's a tough question, it's a question coming from somebody who was invited or was screened, or the question was screened.
Thomas: It's shocking. It's really shocking.
Gibbs: Chip, Chip, let's have this discussion at the conclusion of the town hall meeting. How about that?
Reid: Okay.
Gibbs: I think –
Thomas: No, no, no, we're having it now, because –
Gibbs: Well, I'd be happy to have it now.
Thomas: It's a pattern.
Gibbs: Which question did you object to at the town hall meeting, Helen?
Thomas: It's a pattern. It isn't the questions –
Gibbs: What's a pattern?
Thomas: It's a pattern of controlling the press.
Gibbs: How so?! Is there any evidence currently going on that I'm controlling the press? [laughter] Poorly, I might add. [Gibbs giggles]
Thomas: Your formal engagements are pre-packaged.
Gibbs: How so?
Reid: Well, and controlling the public –
Thomas: How so? By calling reporters the night before to tell them they're going to be called on? That is shocking.
Gibbs: We had this discussion ad nauseam and –
Thomas: Of course you would, because you don't have any answers.
Gibbs: Well, because I didn't know you were going to ask a question, Helen. Go ahead.
Thomas: Well, you should have.
Reid: Thank you for your support, Helen.
Male reporter off-screen: I'm just going to wait for Helen –
Gibbs: That's good. Have you e-mailed your question today?
Thomas: I don't have to e-mail it. I can tell you right now what I want to ask. [laughter]
Gibbs: I don't doubt that at all, Helen. I don't doubt that at all.
Reid: Actually, could you pass along a question to the President from all of us; is he going to support a tax increase on the middle class?
Gibbs: I will – if you get on your computer, you can, you can, you can ask him that yourself.
Reid: I think you're a more direct pipeline than –
Gibbs: I don't know. I was just told that you guys have a pretty good – go ahead.
A U.S. soldier missing from his base in eastern Afghanistan since Tuesday is believed to have been captured by Taliban militants, the military said Thursday.
In a statement issued from U.S. military headquarters in Kabul, officials said "we are exhausting all available resources to ascertain his whereabouts and provide for his safe return."
...Agence-France Press reported that a commander of the Taliban's hard-line Haqqani faction claimed Thursday that his militia had captured the soldier in the Yousuf Khail district of Paktika province. The area is along the porous border with Pakistan. That report could not be independently confirmed.
"Our leaders have not decided on the fate of this soldier." the AFP quoted the Haqqani commander, identified only as Bahram, as saying. "They will decide on his fate and soon we will present video tapes of the coalition soldier and our demand to media."
My thoughts, in order: Dear Maude, I hope he's all right. I hope he's not taken into Pakistan, would could escalate an already tense situation there. I hope he is treated better than we treated our detainees—and this, this, is why even those who (inconceivably) have no ethical objection to torture shouldn't support it, anyway.
Following up on a story I wrote about Monday, the Delhi High Court has ruled to decriminalize consensual gay sex, noting that the "crime is a violation of fundamental rights protected by India's constitution." The ruling applies only to the capitol city of New Delhi, but it's a start. Homomentum, as they say.
"I'm so excited, and I haven't been able to process the news yet," Anjali Gopalan, the executive director of the Naz Foundation Trust, a sexual health organization, told reporters. "We've finally entered the 21st century."
"This legal remnant of British colonialism has been used to deprive people of their basic rights for too long," Scott Long, director of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) Rights Program at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement. "This long-awaited decision testifies to the reach of democracy and rights in India."
What the hell is with that perm? What the hell is with "ponytail"?? What the hell is with that disembodied foot in the foreground??? What the hell????
(If you've a ridiculous and/or embarrassing photo of yourself from your youth, please send it to shakerwhatthehell_at_yahoo_dot_com. I'll post them up as part of our series called What The Hell? so everyone can laugh at with you.)
Governor, I've been there. Go be with your Scotsman Argentine lady. Everyone will be happier in the long run. And, if you're as lucky as I am, everyone involved will, improbably, even stay friends.
Mollie Sugden, best known as "Mrs. Slocombe" on the long-running British sitcom Are You Being Served?has died at age 86.
One of a select bunch of British performers to achieve national treasure status, Sugden was renowned for her portrayal of fearsome battleaxes. The first of such roles to achieve acclaim was as Mrs Hutchinson in The Liver Birds, a series so popular it was revived in the late 90s using the original cast.
She was the star of many other comedies, including Come Back Mrs Noah, That's My Boy and My Husband And I, which she made with her husband.
But it was as the bossy sales lady Betty Slocombe in Are You Being Served? that she was best known. The long-running, innuendo-laden television comedy was such a hit that a feature film was made based on the series, and it was successfully exported to America. Every episode Sugden sported a different hair colour and continually harped on about her "pussy".
Also: That the linked piece was not published by The Onion.
For the record, and since the author contends, "Keep in mind that if you want to disagree with this analysis, you'll have to explain why the historical parallel doesn't apply," here is my brief explanation:
1. Because the pederasty practiced by men in the upper classes of ancient Rome is not the same thing as what we generally refer to today as "homosexuality," i.e. consensual sex between adults.
2. Homoeroticism is, indeed, "to a large degree, socially constructed." Or, another way of putting it: The lack of homoeroticism is, to a large degree, socially constructed. Are straight women more likely to view themselves along a sexual spectrum and less inclined to limit their sexual experiences to men because women's bodies are so ubiquitously sexually objectified throughout our culture that we've socially constructed their homoeroticism; or are straight men less likely to view themselves along a sexual spectrum and more inclined to limit their sexual experiences to women because men are socialized against and bullied into denying any feminine/non-hetero aspect? I would suggest a combination of both, personally—but the reason is really beside the point. We already exist in a culture in which one sex is more disposed than the other toward fluid sexuality. Despite that reality allegedly putting "feminism and homosexuality … on a collision course," feminists are the most likely of straight women to be found arguing for more gender, sex, and sexuality fluidity, not less.
3. Our society is far less dependent than previous generations may have been on maintaining the institution of marriage to ensure all its members are cared for. Modern American women have greater control over their reproduction and more opportunity than their ancient Roman counterparts. Modern American children have more rights than their ancient Roman counterparts. Etc.
I could go on all day, but you get the point. Suffice it say, I don't think "tomorrow's women" have anything to worry about with regard to same-sex marriage.
Karl Malden was super-badass as Mitch in A Streetcar Named Desire and even more badass in "The Streets of San Francisco" and I saw him nearly every day growing up when he was shilling for AmEx on the TV (see below). He also kicked ass in Fear Strikes Out, On the Waterfront and much later Fatal Vision. He probably should have been in 12 Angry Men, but his presence probably would have caused a black hole of awesomeness that would have engulfed the universe.
We have this table at work, sort of a book exhcange thing. (Not "sort of," it actually is.) People bring in books and leave them and take something, blah blah blah, and it's mostly crap like romance novels or Patricia Cornwell shit. But today I walked by and there was a copy of Ferrets for Dummies. Ha!
A 14-year-old girl is the only survivor of yesterday's Yemeni plane crash, rescued from the Indian Ocean after clinging to floating wreckage for hours:
Yesterday's reports of a five-year-old survivor appear to have been incorrect: It seems that they were referring to Bahia Bakari, a Marseilles resident who was traveling with her mother to visit relatives in Comoros. ... According to Bakari's father, she was thrown from the plane during the crash, and heard the voices of other passengers calling out in the night. But those voices eventually stopped.
The Telegraphreports that Bakari was "suffering from extreme tiredness and hypothermia, had cuts to her face and a fractured collar-bone" and "was so exhausted that, at first, she was unable to get into [emergency services'] rescue boat" after her perilous night at sea.
Waves crashed over her constantly and, as well as corpses, and she was surrounded by floating clothes, suitcases, and passports and photographs of her fellow passengers, now believed to be dead.
She had climbed on to a portion of wreckage "believed to be part of the plane's cabin" but kept slipping back into the sea while clinging on to part of it with her hands.
The horrific circumstances would have led many to have given up long before being rescued, especially with powerful currents constantly pulling downwards.
But somehow the teenager kept going, trying to put the injuries she had suffered in the impact of the crash out of her head as her energy sapped away.
By the time a boat's torch picked her out in the depths, she could hardly move.
"We tried to throw her a life buoy to hang on to, but she wouldn't take the buoy," said one of the rescuers.
"I had to jump in to rescue her. She was trembling, trembling. We put four sheets around her, and gave her hot water and sugar."
It is quite obviously because I'm a hysterical, humorless bitch that I don't see the comedy genius of Sacha Baron Cohen's Brüno [spoiler warning]:
In the current cut of the film, Bruno (Cohen) and his ditched, lovesick assistant Lutz (Gustaf Hammerstan) reunite in the movie's third act centerpiece: an Arkansas cage match where the two begin to make out inside the cage while an angry audience mob reacts with disbelief and, eventually, makeshift hurled weapons. In the film's epilogue, the reconnected couple embrace domesticity with their adopted baby, and Bruno sings us into the credits with the help of an star-studded, satirical gay rights anthem.
However, when Baron Cohen and director Larry Charles screened the film back in February for a select industry audience, the result of that cage match wasn't nearly as rosy.
Writer-director Richard Day (Arrested Development, Ellen) was among the industry figures at the screening. In that version, Day tells Movieline, "The cage-match kiss resulted in a violent attack on the couple. They then cut to a press event where they are announcing their marriage or plans to, I forget which. But the boyfriend is now drooling, seemingly brain-damaged, and in a wheelchair, played for laughs."
If only I had a sense of humor, I'm sure I would understand why revealing the victim of a brutal gay-bashing to be permanently disabled is hilarious. Because I don't have a sense of humor, I'm not sure at all—but I imagine it has something to do with how hilarious disabled people are, too, to people with senses of humor.
Day notes that he and actor Jack Plotnick were the only gay people invited to the screening, and that after the film ended, the other industry figures gave the film a thumbs-up. "Then I started in and Jack joined with his thoughts. By the time I got to the bashing, the audience started defending the movie. They were annoyed with us for ruining the party."
It sounds like Richard Day and Jack Plotnick don't have senses of humor, either. I wonder if they'd totes be my new BFFs?
At Moveline, Kyle introduces this information with the note that Brüno "has already prompted extensive debate about whether it's well-intended satire or a joke that's poised to blow up in the face of the gay community." The fact that anyone can seriously suggest that a movie made by a straight dude with the ostensible purpose of critiquing homophobia would "blow up in the face of the gay community" seems to quite pointedly underline the problem with this movie—it targets gays at least as much (ahem) as it allegedly targets their oppressors.
Shaker Phira just emailed me this story about Defense Secretary Robert Gates saying he's looking at ways to make the US military's "Don't Ask Don't Tell" policy "more humane," including possibly changing the rule to allow "letting people serve who may have been outed due to vengeance or a jilted lover."
Phira writes (which I'm posting with her permission):
There's just so much wrong with this. DADT is based in hatred, cruelty, fear, and discrimination; to make it "more humane" would require it to become humane. And to become humane would mean, at least to me, that DADT would be thrown out. And I doubt that's Gates' goal right now. Or Obama's.
And being selective about which LGBT people are allowed to stay in the army is just further discrimination. "Oh, you're gay? You're out of the army. Oh, but we know about it because your ex-girlfriend got angry and told us? Then I GUESS you can stay," vs. "Oh, you're gay? You're out of the army. Oh, but we know about it because you had the courage to stand up for yourself and be up-front about your sexuality? Then get out. I don't care if you're our last Arabic translator."
I don't have much to add, aside from this: The stated rationale for forcing soldiers into the closet is troop cohesion (or some wacky variation thereof)—which has long been debunked, anyway—but I can't imagine how the military expects to continue trying to justify the policy on that basis if they let some openly gay soldiers serve, with, inevitably, no discernible effect on morale.
And if one gay soldier is already out in a unit, what possible reason could be given to require other gay soldiers in the same unit to stay closeted?
I never underestimate homophobes' capacity for cognitive dissonance—see: still making arguments that same-sex marriage will undermine the sanctity of opposite-sex marriage even after Massachusetts legalized same-sex marriage and retained the lowest divorce rate among opposite-sex married couples in the nation—but, realistically, this move would leave them with no rationale (even the crappy one they've got now) to support the policy.
It's time to '86 the policy altogether. End of story.
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Helen Thomas
Mollie Sugden, best known as "Mrs. Slocombe" on the long-running British sitcom Are You Being Served? 
