JMS is slated to write the screenplay for a remake – or maybe a sequel (I mean, another sequel, in addition to the original sequel) to the 1956 film Forbidden Planet. The original film is famous for a) being based on Shakespeare’s Tempest with a dash of Freud added; b) inspiring the look and some of the plots of Star Trek; c) introducing the later oft-cameoed Robby the Robot; and d) featuring Leslie Nielsen back when he played it straight. (Plus leading lady Anne Francis is not uncute.)
JMS reportedly plans to keep the retro look of the original film. (Hopefully he won’t keep the retro dialogue in the romantic scenes; why do male-female interactions from 1950s movies seem so much more antiquated and, well, alien than those from 1930s movies?)
Incidentally, JMS is a longtime Planet fan (as might be suggested by the pics below) and says he’s been “chasing this one assignment for over a decade.”
Here at last (in PDF format – HTML versions to follow in futuro) are two broadly left-libertarian articles I wrote in the 90s that I’ve been promising for some time to post here. (The second one is broken into two parts because I can’t upload files greater than 5 MB.)
I’m more pleased than not with the results of yesterday’s election (meaning pleased that Obama won out over McCain, not pleased that we got ourselves yet another president). Sure, Obama is a corporate liberal whose policies are not really any less fascistic or imperialistic than McCain’s, but a) he at least seems less trigger-happy than McCain; b) culturally, his election is a satisfying slap in the face to racism and parochialism (it’s great to see a black person at last in the nation’s highest-profile and most influential job – I just wish the nation’s highest-profile and most influential job weren’t the goddamn presidency); and c) hell, if I have to listen to some guy’s speeches for the next four to eight years, just from an aesthetic standpoint it’ll be a relief to have them coming from someone who’s charismatic and articulate rather than from an irritating doofus. (Mind you, the argument could be made that from an anarchist standpoint it’s better to have an irritating doofus in the White House rather than someone charismatic and articulate – but I’m skeptical; we’ve had plenty of irritating doofuses in the White House over the last two centuries without any noticeable positive effect.)