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I watched the trailer again. Did anyone else feel like they changed to entire premise of the movie to be some sort of pro-environmental bullshit? WTF?

In the original Klaatu says, “It is no concern of ours how you run your own planet,” because he doesn’t care about humans or Earth. His concern is that an adolescent warlike race is about to leave the confines of their own world and threaten the safety of the galactic community. I realize the cold war is over, but this message still holds true and doesn’t need updating to have an impact.

If Klaatu comes to Earth to convince me to drive a hybrid I’m gonna be pissed.

Nerd rage!!!

So, I saw the trailer for “The Day the Earth Stood Still” remake with Keanu Reeves this weekend before Hancock (watch it here) and I gotta say I’m more than a little worried about this movie. In fairness I need to point out that I’m biased because the original 1951 “The Day the Earth Stood Still” is my favorite movie. Not like, “oh hey, this year I like Iron Man,” but a lifetime favorite that I first saw when I was 6.

My biggest problem with the trailer isn’t Keanu Reeves, surprisingly. It’s that it depicts Klaatu (or Gort?) destroying a sports stadium and a semi truck. Basically he’s killing people.

The original Klaatu was a peaceful messenger who shutdown all machinery (mechanical and electronic) on earth but spared things like hospitals and airplanes in-flight to avoid hurting anyone. He uses this as a warning to the people of Earth that our inclination towards violence and movement towards space exploration have been noticed by other space faring worlds and will not be tolerated.

For me, this is a more profound statement in its subtly. Were they worried that people today wouldn’t “get it” so they had to show that he and his alien buddies can destroy an arena? Pfft, I can destroy an arena too with enough explosives but I can’t change the rules of physics and stop machines from working on an entire planet. This shows substantially more power than simply “blowing some shit up, bro.” In fact, it shows that we’re still cavemen waving around a big club (the atomic bomb) in comparison to them.

This movie really didn’t need to be remade but has been. Hopefully I’m misunderstanding what I’m seeing in the the trailer, but I doubt it.

Anyway, if you haven’t seen the original here’s the Wikipedia page on it and I highly recommend seeing it. You can get it from Netflix, Amazon, etc.

Stay tuned, I’m sure I’ll have a ton more to say about this movie in the future…

PS - The Quantum of Solace trailer, on the other hand, was freakin awesome.

The ‘Million Dollar Question’: what should you be doing now when you’re young to make sure you can live in style when you stop working?

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From Slashdot:

“Hope this one isn’t true! An early negative review calls the upcoming “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” movie predictable, lacking in tension, and a fan’s worst nightmare. SFFMedia believes this new Indiana Jones movie could create a similar reaction a lot of people experienced after watching the first of the last three Star Wars movies, ‘The Phantom Menace’: you wait for years and years, the anticipation building, and then it’s so awful it taints your view of the original movies. Of course George Lucas was involved with Star Wars too.”

There are the books you read, and then there are the books that change your life. We can all look back on the books that have shaped our perspective on politics, religion, money and love. Some will even become a source of inspiration for the rest of your life. From a seemingly infinite list of books of anecdotal or literal merit, we have narrowed..

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“Fedora 9 is a significant upgrade and packs in a number of new features. Perhaps the best part of Fedora 9 is the new live USB options. After playing with the release candidate for a week or so I’m happy to report that Fedora 9 has made some significant strides and gives Ubuntu a serious run for its money when it comes to user-friendliness.”

I always preferred Fedora anyway.

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I’m about 80% through the game and love it. Yahtzee is right about a lot of what he says here, but the game is still awesome. Right now I’d give it 4.5 out of 5, but I’ll write a real review when I finish it.

Mass Effect is still my favorite game on the 360 though.

Penny Arcade, brilliant as usual…

I have hundreds more of my shoulder, spine and head but haven’t figured out the software yet.

Between the pain, the pain killers and being 1 armed this is the best I can do for now.

Five real people whose insanely resourceful actions in a life or death situation would have made the bemulleted-one himself beam with pride.

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