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Good-Bye Khan
January 14th, 2009Ricardo Montalban died today. He was 88.
Now let me tell you.
He has done a variety of roles but the one I’ll remember him best in is my introduction to him, where he wore a a set of fake breasts yet still convinced all that he was stronger than sin.
Of course, I’ll never think it was a bright move to introduce Kahn as a “superman” and then have Kirk beat him to unconsciousness with a PVC pipe.
I wish I could write a better obituary, but honestly I don’t care to do too much research so I can toast the man for things I have never seen. That is a sort of half-hearted tribute.
So Mr. Montalban did well, entertaining in Spy Kids 2. It was hard to ignore his performance on Kim Possible.
Any performance of Ricardo Montalban is difficult to ignore.
love triangle would make Star Wars more interesting
August 27th, 2008I saw Star Wars The Clone War opening week and overall I enjoyed the movie, but I’ll make my thoughts known in a post later in the next seven days. It needs being said that what I did not like enjoy about the movie is far easier to articulate and is much more interesting.
What the AP has written about Anakin’s new sidekick being a more interesting romantic component than the ever-dry and stand-offish love interest he already had bears reading. Of course, this sort of statutory pursuit is definite Dark Side.
My favorite part?
From there, she exhibits enough battle pluck and witty repartee to win over her brooding mentor – he warms quickly to the idea of having a young assistant (who Mark Rahner of the Seattle Times describes as “a tiny girl with huge eyes and a tube-top who looks like a slutty Disney character.” Fair enough).
Ultimately one wonders what Anakin will say when he, as Darth Vader, hacks this child to tiny Lolita pieces. Would something that is inappropriate to the general themes of the franchise (as tattered as they all may have been left by the morally-vacuous prequels and the mongrel Expanded Universe) be ultimately beneficial to the combined narrative? That is not relevant as even Darth Vader will not engage in romantic action with a child character. Is the Padawan intended to be a child character?
Those Three Kings of America Are….
August 20th, 2008Military historian Victor Davis Hanson was watching Three Kings (starring George Clooney) recently.
Three Kings, by my reckoning was made in the nineties, but more relevantly the movie was made before the 9/11 terrorist attacks and reflects a different ethos that popular culture had towards Iraq and our country’s prior invasion and occupation. Nowadays the idea is that we did too much by deposing Saddam Hussein from power. President George Walker Bush, Bush 43, is wrong. Three Kings presents everything as if President George Herbert Walker Bush, Bush 41, was/is wrong.
The idea is clearly presented that we did too little by leaving Saddam Hussein in power.The only common denominator between not doing enough in Three Kings and doing too much in Redacted, Syriana, Rendition, etc. …seems to have been that whatever the U.S. did was always wrong — whether too little or too much.
I think it is a fair question whether Dr. Hanson is onto something or not.
The better question I want to ask is whether Three Kings was persuasive.
Bud Day the movie??
August 20th, 2008The Truth Product does a very rough overview of John McCain’s time in, around, and for the Vietnam conflict. My favorite part is the encounter of Bud Day.
McCain shared a cell with Medal of Honor winner Col. Bud Day, a man who escaped the Viet Cong with a sprang knee, lived in the jungle on berries and uncooked frogs, swam across a river with an arm that was broken in three places and was captured AGAIN by the Viet Cong… where he met none other than John McCain (why is this not a movie?)
Indeed why is it not a movie? It sounds like a very epic story to me, however dark and even sad at times. Very few see the life and experiences of prisoners of war as adventures, let alone really exciting stories. I am among those. With very few exceptions I find the accounts depressing rather than greatly entertaining.
If John McCain was not a Presidential candidate, and at this point a politician among politicians, his young life as a soldier and hero is a good story.
MInd you, Bud Day’s is more exciting.
warping space for travel may be possible
August 20th, 2008Warp drive in Star Trek essentially works by harnessing massive amounts of energy through matter/anti-matter reactions regulated by Dilithium crystals and using that energy to create a “warp bubble” around the starship allowing the vessel’s mass to remain constant or even decrease instead of decrease allowing the ship to travel as superluminal speeds without the accompanying increase of mass which is what makes faster-than-light travel prohibitive in the real world. Obviously in the fiction that is not all there is to it, but I figured awhile ago that said “Warp Drive” did not involve literally warping space. The result, of course, is the same however you define the technobabble, treknobabble, or describe it at all: the Starship Enterprise manages to travel from one Adventure Planet to another.
In some stories space battles are even viable events between the relatively static settings.
In real life a deliberate purposeful control of an object’s physical mass is a less viable option. As far as I know, and I am not a scientist, it is impossible.
Scientists actually declare that “Star Trek warp drive” is a possibility, according to the UK Telegaph. By which those scientists mean that the effects are the same. They obviously do not mean that their warp bubble is an element or tool for mass-shifting effects and there is no method with the prerequisite of synthesizing or discovering anti-matter elements in substantially massive quantities. This is fortunate. Fortunately the idea of warp drive involves literally warping space, and relying upon past scientific discoveries and ideas. In other words the science fiction idea reminds me of what used to be science fictional concepts which were just variations, deviations, and expansions of existing technologies. Unfortunately the use of string theory concepts in technology is not as far along as I would like it, but who can complain. The theories and ideas are dark energy, responsible for the expansion of the universe, and the 10th dimension involved in string theory.
Now Dr Gerald Cleaver, associate professor of physics at Baylor, and Richard Obousy have come up with a new twist on an existing idea to produce a warp drive that they believe can travel faster than the speed of light, without breaking the laws of physics.In their scheme, in the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, a starship could “warp” space so that it shrinks ahead of the vessel and expands behind it.
By pushing the departure point many light years backwards while simultaneously bringing distant stars and other destinations closer, the warp drive effectively transports the starship from place to place at faster-than-light speeds.
The theories of the speed of light are only effective speed limits at “unwarped ‘flat’ space.” Space itself has no speed limit and if a “spaceship can sit “at rest in its small [warp] bubble of space” it can skim and coast along the flow of space as the universe expands.
In the scheme outlined by Dr Cleaver dark energy would be used to create the bubble: if dark energy can be made negative in front of the ship, then that patch of space would contract in response.
I’m oversimplifying but the scheme cannot be put in practice yet anyway. I might also be muddling whether the ship is in the bubble or on the bubble. The bubble is a metaphor anyway. As it is the key to warping space in this manner is putting stuff that was in front of the ship behind the ship; it is changing the size of spatial dimension 10 that alters the energy that would “propel the ship faster than the speed of light.” Does anyone have an engine or mechanism to alter the 10th spatial dimension described in string theory?
Isaac Hayes dies
August 11th, 2008Most know Isaac Hayes as a singer, or as the creator of the Shaft theme. Probably slightly more will know him as Chef until Scientology finally invaded the humor centers of his mind.
I recall him from Truck Turner and as a fan of and character in Stargate SG-1.
Issac Hayes died yesterday, quite young, and I shall miss him.
Bernie Mac passed away
August 10th, 2008Bernie Mac, the least annoying actor in Transformers and Charlie’s Angels, and more importantly, and on a serious note, the actor and stand-up comedian who starred in Ocean’s 11, Ocean’s 13, and in his own television sitcom, passed away August 9th from complications of pneumonia.
My father passed away from similar illness.
My proper obituary will be forthcoming in a few weeks.
Kistler Invades Your Television
February 15th, 2008Tuesday the 19th at 10 PM is the premiere of a new mini-series “TEN GREAT REASONS” on FUSE TV (a cable music network). The mini-series is done in the vein of “I Love the 70s”, with each episode covering a specific topic such as “Hair Metal”, “Rap Moguls” and “Boy Bands.” I have been interviewed for this mini-series as a “comic book expert” and have been told I will be appearing in every episode. I don’t know if that’s necessarily true (you know how editing is these days), but be sure to catch the series, which will air weekly until some time in April, and watch me compare Justin Timberlake to Nightwing and Pink to Harley Quinn.
“Superman: Doomsday” (2007) – Not That Bad
February 6th, 2008I made a trip up to New York City over the weekend and swung by the Virgin Megastore to kill some time. They were having a decent sale on their digital media so I picked up “Doctor Zhivago” and “Superman: Doomsday” for prices lower than any I’ve seen elsewhere. I also feel like the two ginormously-different titles speak much about my personality.
I wondered if I would regret purchasing the “Superman: Doomsday” DVD due to some negative reviews I’d read about it. I’m pleased to say that, indeed, I am content with the chance I took.
*possible minor spoilers ahead, and one major one which I’ll give another spoiler-warning for*
History of Thor
February 1st, 2008For anyone interested, I’ve just created Part 1 of my History of Thor.
Enjoy. Feel free to leave comments.
http://alankistler.squarespace.com/journal/2008/1/31/alan-kistlers-history-of-thor-part-1.html
November 12th, 2007
http://www.captionbox.net/eeb/2005_10_01_archive.html#112922792672934137
http://www.cracked.com/article_15654_7-most-terrifying-celebrity-transformations.html
http://www.cracked.com/article_15655_5-awesome-sci-fi-inventions-that-would-actually-suck.html
http://www.cracked.com/article_15660_ultimate-war-simulation-game.html
Michael Caine Speaks
September 25th, 2007Recently, Michael Caine spoke about Heath Ledger’s performance in THE DARK KNIGHT. He mentioned a minor spoiler. I have removed that spoiler from the quote right here for those who don’t want too much given away. If you want to read the original quote, minor spoiler and all, click on this link that will take you to IGN.
On Heath Ledger, Michael Caine said this:
“He’s gone in a completely different direction to [Jack Nicholson]. Jack was like a clown figure, benign but wicked, maybe a killer old uncle. He could be funny and make you laugh. Heath is like a really scary psychopath … I didn’t see him for rehearsal and when he came out … he was so incredible I forgot my lines. He frightened the life out of me. … I’d never met him before. He’s a lovely guy and his Joker is going to be a hell of a revelation in this picture.”
Alan Kistler’s History of the Joker in comics and media.
Yet a THIRD film wants Kistler! Sweet! :-D
August 29th, 2007Just some fun personal news I thought I’d share.
So LevaFilmWorks (who’ve done wonderful documentaries and that really hilarious mockumentary “R2-D2: BENEATH THE DOME”) is doing a documentary on certain DC Comics characters and they want me to be in it as a comic book historian.
Good times! Let’s hope I sound like I know what I’m talking about and don’t come off as just a huge trivia freak. 
And seriously, thank you to all the Monitor Duty bloggers and readers. Because of you, this site is here and this site is talked about and if that were not the case, these people would never have heard of me. So thank you all.
Todd McFarlane Producing Wizard of Oz ACTION FILM!
August 28th, 2007Yeah. Imagine a remake of THE WIZARD OF OZ with Dorothy as an ass-kicking, hard-edged heroine.
Oh, dear lord.
The full story is HERE.
Hackers Take Out Estonia
August 23rd, 2007The country of Estonia, which is south of Finland and borders Russia and Latvia, suffered a heavy onslaught via rogue hackers. It had a lot of significance in that it brought up several issues to light concerning a country’s security and what the proper protocol was in dealing with such a situation.
The full story looking back on this event is on WIRED.
Movies That Were Never Made
August 14th, 2007Ever wonder about those projects that could’ve been but were never filmed?
Don’t be stupid, of course you do.
Follow this link then to a list of awesome ideas that were never actually made.
More Marvel Vs DC
August 13th, 2007
Voltron Movie Is GO!
August 10th, 2007It’s been green-lit. According to VARIETY, they are definitely doing a live action VOLTRON movie for the big screen from NEW REGENCY (I guess they realized a movie that resembles TRANSFORMERS is a better bet than their upcoming movie of Alvin and the Chipmunks).
The full story can be found HERE.
Kistler’s Transformers Music Video
August 9th, 2007Some of you may know I’m a freelance video editor.
I was bored last week in between doing two new profiles that are coming up soon and so decided to spend the next few hours editing together a Transformers music video using footage from the new movie and the cartoon series. The music is the opening theme from the animated movie.
Enjoy. Feel free to comment.
DC Movie Trailers
August 8th, 2007Based on Darwyn Cooke’s wonderful story in which the he explores the JLA if they’re adventures occurred closer to “real time” and explores how the 50s and 60s America would have TRULY reacted to people with powers. Here is the trailer for the upcoming NEW FRONTIER DVD.
And click on this link for a preview to the upcoming DEATH OF SUPERMAN DVD.
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