The Mayan Apocalypse has been averted… but who did it? Superman? The Doctor? Buffy? Chuck Norris? John Constantine? Sam and Dean Winchester? Booster Gold (yeah, right)?
Cast your vote now! We want to know who to put on speed-dial when we have a boom tomorrow. There’s always a boom tomorrow. Sooner or later– BOOM!
DAY FOUR features CHAPTER THREE- FIRST, FROST!
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| Logo by Perry Constantine |
ALL PULP REVIEWS by Ron Fortier
The popular podcast HOW STUFF WORKS moves to a new medium early in 2013 when the Science Channel launches the HSW television series. We talk to the guys behind it on how they are creating a hybrid reality show/situation comedy, plus doing an episode dedicated to comic book movies. Meanwhile, KOJACK gets closer to a reboot and DC says goodbye to THE SPIRIT.
Take us ANYWHERE! The Point Radio App is now in the iTunes App store – and it’s FREE! Just search under “pop culture The Point”. The Point Radio – 24 hours a day of pop culture fun for FREE. GO HERE and LISTEN FREE on any computer or on any other mobile device with the Tune In Radio app – and follow us on Twitter @ThePointRadio.
Using the new Doctor Who Limited Edition Gift Set, your noble author will make his way through as much of the modern series as he can before the Christmas episode,The Snowmen.
The Queen’s coronation increased sales of televisions in Britain faster than Howdy Doody did in the US. But when one store sells sets for less than could possibly be profitable, The Doctor fears they may have an ulterior motive to expose everyone to…
THE IDIOT’S LANTERN
by Mark Gatiss
Directed by Euros Lyn“Are you sitting comfortably? Good! They we’ll begin…”
The proprietor of Magpie Electricals is near bankruptcy until a strange new partner offers a way to turn his business around. With the queen’s Coronation coming up, he suddenly finds a way to make TVs available for the outrageous price of five pounds a pop. Needless to say, they’re selling like mad.
The Doctor and Rose arrive (accidentally, of course – they were aiming for Elvis’ appearance on Ed Sullivan) as sales are skyrocketing. But at the same time, people are being taken from their homes, under blankets, by people claiming to be police. Clearly seeing the proverbial Something is Going On, the pair investigate by visiting a family with one of Magpie’s tellys. The husband is a right boor, controlling the family with an iron hand, but the wife and son are distraught. Their grandmother has been transformed to a mindless, faceless shell. Apparently, it’s been happening all over town, and it’s they who the police have been collecting up.
The Doctor finds where the victims have been collected and convinces the Detective Inspector to help solve the mystery as opposed to just cover it up. And Rose confronts Mr. Magpie, only to learn that he’s under the electronic thumb of an energy being called The Wire, who has been draining people of faces and brains via the new TVs. Alas, she’s shortly in no position to impart this knowledge, as she’s promptly wiped. When the police find her and bring her in, The Doctor goes cold and scary, vowing that there’ll be no stopping him.
They break into Magpie’s shop and find a number of odd things – a portable television set some three decades ahead of its time, and trapped in the televisions in the shop, the faces, and presumably the minds, of the victims of The Wire, including Rose. The Wire plans to transfer itself to the portable set and connect up to the transmission station at Alexandra Palace, where it will be able to feed on everyone watching the Coronation. Can The Doctor stop the plan in time?
Mark Gatiss’ episodes so far have had a very personal feel – large stakes, but ultimately featuring a small cast. This one has London in the balance, but ultimately it’s about one family, and how the members of the family respond to the horrific changes around them.
The Doctor has had bad experiences on tall broadcast towers; he fell off one to his death, or at least regeneration, in Logopolis. He’s faced more than a few energy-based foes as well—the Nestene Consciousness, the formless Gelth in The Unquiet Dead, and there was this foe from the Troughton days…oo, showed up twice…can’t seem to summon up its name now, can’t imagine why…
Magpie Electricals makes many more appearances in the series— since Mr. Magpie himself came to an unfortunate end, it’s presumed someone bought the brand name and used its notoriety to turn it into a powerhouse brand for literally centuries to come. The Magpie brand shows up in all sorts of Earth-based technology up to and including the launch of Starship UK. There’s been no suggestion there’s anything untoward going with them (tho one can never be sure), it seems more like it’s become a brand like the various products of KrebStar Industries on The Adventures of Pete and Pete, or the various food and cigarette trademarks in Quentin Tarantino’s films.
Here I present Part 2 of my rankings of all the Eon-produced James Bond films. Last time we ranked and examined 23-14. This time we count down from number 13 to number 4. Next time we’ll do the top 3.
On with the rankings:
If the world doesn’t end today and I really have to write this column, the responsible thing would be to write about the horrific shootings in Newtown, Connecticut.
Here we go again.
The usual subjects are making the usual arguments. People who like guns think the killings could have been prevented if more people had guns. People who don’t like guns think the killings could have been prevented if guns were more difficult to get. People who don’t want to change the gun laws think we should concentrate on mental health services. People who don’t want to pay more in taxes for things like improved mental health services say the problem is that we took prayer out of public schools.
And everyone blames the media.
A good friend of mine, one whose values I respect, said he thought part of the problem is that first-person shooter video games are so realistic that players develop an emotional callus, so that it’s easier to make the transition and shoot a real human.
He may be right. A recent study would suggest otherwise, but I don’t think there is a single answer here. Certain kinds of mental illness may be exacerbated by the kind of stimuli contained in vividly realistic games.
It only takes one.
I don’t like violent video games, but then, I don’t much like video games at all. That said, I’m looking forward to seeing a bunch of violent movies in the near future, including Django Unchained and Zero Dark Thirty, and I’m not prepared to say my choices in violence are better just because they’re mine.
Here’s the thing. It’s not the media that is the problem, but how we deal with it. As an adult I can separate my fantasies from my realities, and I can enjoy them as such. I know that, as an adult, I can’t shoot people who annoy me, and that knowledge contributes to my enjoyment when I watch Clint Eastwood or Sam Jackson do it.
I wouldn’t let my child watch those films if I thought said child was too young to understand. I didn’t, and we had arguments about it. However, even if I was wrong about specifics, my son knew that I valued his emotional health. He might not have known that if I had just turned him loose in the cinemaplex and let him run rampant.
There’s not a single answer to the problem of shootings like the one in Connecticut. It would help if guns were more difficult to obtain, especially the kind that let the shooter fire dozens of shots at a time. It would help if we had more empathy for those suffering from various kinds of mental illness, including run-of-the-mill teenage despair.
If you want to blame the media, blame the right one: the news media. And then consider why we have so many news-worthy, real-life situations in which we glorify killing.
And consider that even after the national outrage about what happened Friday morning, the violence didn’t take a break.
Are we stuck? Is this the human condition? Is it just dirty rotten hippies like myself who believe we can do better? Isn’t there an evolutionary imperative for the strong to dominate the weak?
No, according to some recent archeological discoveries. The evidence suggests that humans are designed to take care of each other, no matter what our individual shortcomings.
If the world hasn’t ended, and you want to help keep it that way, you still have time to make a difference, either with money or service.
Here’s to more light in the days ahead.
SATURDAY: Marc Alan Fishman
Here’s hoping we all wake up tomorrow with a better rebooted continuity.
Columns / Glenn Hauman / News
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