"A moustache can tell you a lot about a man."

A moustache can tell you a lot about a man. When properly administered, it can say, “this man has commanded spacecraft”, “this man escorted Soviet bombers out of Canadian airspace”, or “this man lived in a research vessel at the bottom of the ocean.” These can be tall orders to live up to – having a moustache is a big responsibility.

www.chrishadfield.ca

A happy 56th birthday to retired astronaut Colonel Chris Hadfield, the best thing to happen to space exploration since Neil Armstrong took one small step.

And, of course, a happy birthday to your moustache too, sir.

- Sid

Olive drab for SG-1, please.

I was recently invited out by my friend Chris for a celebratory birthday dinner and drinks. Now, should this information cause any of you to start composing a short note expressing your regrets at having somehow missed my birthday, let me reassure you that your calendar hasn't betrayed you - my birthday is still at the end of September.

Then why the premature celebration?  Well, in a way, it wasn't so much a celebration of my birthday as it was of Chris' present - or rather presents, to be accurate.

When I opened the package, it contained an impressive summary of the last fifty years worth of science fiction iconography from film and television* in badge form, gathered over time with some degree of effort and dedication on Chris' part.  Flushed with success, Chris couldn't wait for the delayed gratification of September, and so, an early dinner invitation to give me my gift. 

Once I got over being impressed, I admit to having a bit of bafflement as to how to best make use of my bounty.  After all, even the most dedicated fan can only put so many patches on a jacket before becoming self-conscious about it.  Then I realized that this was the perfect opportunity to create some custom geek baseball hats, albeit with a bit of stitching** on someone's part.  In fact, not very long ago I spent some time searching for a Nostromo crew hat without any success.

And, as my girlfriend pointed out, there's a convenient tie-in for a birthday gift from someone else:  eleven baseball caps.

- Sid

* On one hand, you could make a case for a Battlestar Galactica patch.  On the other hand, I'm willing to bet that there are damn few people reading this who recognize the provenance of the patch in the lower right without the aid of Google™.

** They're iron-on patches, but unless state of the art in hot fabric glue has changed since my previous experiences, I'd rather go with thread.

"Hi, I'm Scott."

"Did he just say, 'Hi, I'm Scott?"

Hope van Dyne, Ant-Man

Karli's away with her sisters for a Father-Daughter weekend, what to do, what to do*... how about a movie? Well, I'm not going to waste my time on the Fantastic Four movie, enough other people have made that mistake to keep me from following suit...

Wait, is Ant-Man still in circulation?

As it turns out, yes, Marvel's second foray into the B-List of superheroes is still in commercial release.  I had heard positive reviews when it first hit the streets, but I've been busy enough that seeing it didn't seem to be a priority.

I may do Ant-Man a bit of an injustice in referring to the character as a B-List hero.  In the comics, he's a founding member of the original 1963 Avengers, and Ultron, the cybernetic nemesis who appeared in the second Avengers film, is originally a product of Ant-Man's genius rather than Tony Stark's.

Regardless, the character has never quite achieved the prominence that Iron Man, the Hulk or Thor have in the Marvel Comics Universe, and as such he's an interesting choice as an addition to the MCU movie lineup.

Oddly enough, Ant-Man doesn't in the least play like a superhero movie, at least not a superhero movie like the Avengers or Captain America films.  Ant-Man is Marvel Comic's take on one of the standard Hollywood plotlines - the underdog who makes good.

Paul Rudd takes the role of Scott Lang, thief with a conscience, who is determined to go straight now that he's paid his debt to society for his moralistic crime against an oppressive corporate villain. His ex-wife has an intimidating new boyfriend who happens to be a cop, and without a steady job Lang can't handle the child support payments he needs to make in order to see his beloved daughter.  Having been turned down for work by even Baskin-Robbins, he succumbs to the temptation of just one more burglary to get the money he needs.

The crime in question involves cracking a mysterious safe at the home of Dr. Henry Pym, but to Lang's intense disappointment, the safe contains only a strange suit and helmet.  When he tries on his unusual loot, he discovers to his shock and dismay that it gives him the ability to shrink to the size of, well, an ant.**

It turns out that Pym has staged the entire crime in order to recruit Lang to wear the suit and help prevent his shrinking technology from falling into the wrong hands.  Lang reluctantly agrees, and the plot instantly becomes every underdog story you've ever seen.

Pym is the curmudgeonly mentor with a heart of gold and a secret heart-breaking backstory, his daughter is the love interest who is initially disdainful of Lang but soon grows to appreciate him, and Lang goes from bumbling student to successful hero as soon as he seizes on his need to see his daughter as the happy thought that will allow him to communicate with his ant allies.

Of course, the bad guy is Pym's scientific protegé gone bad, Lang has three comedy-relief criminal associates that might as well have been drawn by Disney animators, and the final battle between hero and villain is to save Lang's daughter, not the world - in fact, the world may still be in peril at the end of the movie.

Don't get me wrong - I enjoyed Ant-Man quite a bit.  It was an unexpectedly well-scripted and clever take on the whole superhero meme, and all the actors do good work with their characters - Paul Rudd deserves particular recognition for his portrayal of reluctant heroism. The effects are wonderful, the scaled shots of the world from an ant's perspective work beautifully, but ultimately, Scott Lang could have been training to race stock cars and the movie's plot would have been very similar.

All that aside, I do have one strong criticism.  It's made clear from the onset that Pym's suit functions by shrinking the gaps between molecules, which means that Lang maintains his full-sized weight when miniaturized.  This allows him to hit the bad guys like a 180-pound bullet - so how is he able to ride a flying ant?

- Sid

* Other than blogging - I don't normally explain gaps in my blogging schedule here, this is a hobby not a job, but this DOES offer a convenient opportunity to catch up on a lot of backlog - or backblog, perhaps.

** I'm reasonably confident that this isn't a spoiler - I think that the movie's title sort of gives this one away going in.

Fail.

I recently had the dubious pleasure of watching Lavalantula, a film which combines giant lava-spitting spiders with a partial reunion of the Police Academy cast.  Lavalantula, like Sharknado or Megashark versus Crocosaurus, is one of those Syfy™ movies that we're not intended to take seriously, which supposedly fall into the category of "so bad that they're good."

What a bizarre concept for the entertainment industry to have developed, and how sad that they've chosen to apply it to science fiction.* 

I own several thousand science fiction novels, and, to be brutally honest, they're not all perfect.  There are books from the early days of the genre** that are poorly written, books that are stilted and cumbersome, books that are light years (pun intended) away from the artistry and craft of more talented authors who would follow in their footsteps.

But those books were written in earnest - they represent an author's best attempt to express a concept or an idea that captured their imagination, something that they desperately wanted to show to the world.  None of them chose to do work that was deliberately shoddy, they did the best they could with the tools that they had, and the results, although flawed in some cases, introduced concepts and ideas that helped to build the foundations of the science fiction genre.

I admire these authors for their creativity, eagerness, and enthusiasm, and forgive them their clumsiness - their intentions were all for the best.

Lavalantula and its companion films, on the other hand, represent a decision that I can't admire.  People, if you're going to decide that deliberately cliche-ridden dialogue, stupid, shoddy plotlines and poor acting*** are your actual goal, you need to take a long look at what you're doing with your lives.  Maybe you should set your sights higher - why not aim for the stars?

- Sid

* It embarrasses me to call these travesties science fiction, but unfortunately, the shoe fits.

** And a few that are a lot more recent, to be fair.

*** Credit where credit is due:  there's a young actor named Noah Hunt in Lavalantula who really does do his best with what he's been given.