So I’m running through the entire series of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine again for old time’s sake.  It really is the best of the Trek series for my money.

The characters are so much deeper and the plotlines so much more involved.  It honestly makes TNG look like a walk in the park, full of privileged brats.

But that’s not why I’m writing.  Instead, I’m commenting on a particular episode in the second season called “Paradise.”  What?  Don’t have every Star Trek episode memorized?  I’ll sum up.

Be warned: If you haven’t seen The Village and don’t want to be spoiled, you should probably stop reading.

Basically, Sisko and O’Brien go galavanting onto some planet where they find a colony of crash-landed humans who have been living planetside for 10 years.

They haven’t left or contacted anyone for help because none of their technology works thanks to some sort of interference field that they surmise is some sort of naturally occuring phenomenon.

But then we find out that that natural occurrence is actually a technological device placed there and hidden by the leader of the colony because she abhors technology.  So she hoodwinked a few dozen people for 10 years so that she could live out her fantasy of a “better life.”

Fast Forward over 10 years later in real time, and Shymalan releases The Village to mixed reviews.  I actually liked the movie a great deal and really wish people would move past The Sixth Sense to appreciate him as a filmmaker.

But it occurred to me as I watched this episode that The Village is practically the exact same story.  Sure, the macguffin is different but the goal is the same — crazy purist seeks to destroy lives by forcing them to live a ’simpler’ life.

I’m not naive enough to think that the DS9 writers came up with this sci-fi plot device all by themselves, and I even admit that Shymalan could have gotten his inspiration from a wholly different source.

But where from?  I find it interesting how some stories are so familiar yet so new at the same time.  Both Trek and Shymalan likely pulled on some earlier source that probably also pulled from an even earlier source.

Not being well-versed in sci-fi literature and media, I open it to you.  Where did this story get its start?

On the front page of CNN today you can find this article titled “10 ways to avoid a speeding ticket.”  It’s originally from AOL Autos, but I don’t think that really matters.

No matter how you look at it, this is unacceptable garbage journalism.  If CNN wrote an article titled “How to duck the cops while running a prostitution ring out of your basement” I’m pretty sure they’d receive a little bit of flak.

Speeding is illegal.  Publishing, writing, or endorsing an article on a professional level which discusses effective ways to safely break the law is downright absurd.

Someone should seriously be fired for that.  Anyone with half a brain should know not to publish that.  Would that same person publish an article about the most effective way to dispose of a dead body?  I bet not.

I’m not trying to be a hypocrite here.  I know we all speed.  I speed, you speed, your mom speeds, and my cats would speed if they could drive — but that’s not the point.

We’re all breaking the law when we’re speeding and whatever clever contraptions we may use to try avoid getting caught doesn’t make the act any less illegal.

I especially like this tip from the article: “If it’s ok legally, get a radar dector.”

If we’re going to promote criminal behavior, I say let’s go all out.  Couldn’t they spare a few words on how to hide a radar detector from the police?

I don’t know why I even read CNN anymore.  They post sensationalist headlines that are oftentimes outright lies, and now they are promoting the breaking of laws by their readership.  The whole organization has descended into unprofessional madness.

Very occasionally a movie comes along that is something special.  It is not defined by its genre or its box office appeal, but rather its greatness.

The Dark Knight is one of those movies.  To call it a superhero movie would do it a disservice.  To call it an action movie would not capture its essence.  Perhaps the best description of it would be to call it a morality tale, but even that is mostly insufficient.

Though this is a movie about everyone’s favorite caped crusader, it is not he who the movie is about.  And even though Heath Ledger does give a ridiculously good performance as the Joker, the movie’s not really about him either.

The Dark Knight is about morality.  This movie does not have good guys and bad guys; it merely has people, all of which have to make decisions based on their own agendas.  Perhaps their agenda is what separates good from bad, but their means do not always honor the ends.

There are two things about this film that deserve true Oscar consideration.  Heath Ledger is one of them, but moreso is the script.  How anyone could sit down and write something this twisted is a mystery to me.

While Ledger may have embodied the Joker, someone had to have sat down and put keyboard to screen to birth his anarchic craziness.  Someone who can think like that has the potential to be a scary person indeed.

Teenagers think its cool to support the idea of anarchy.  The idea of getting away from parental rule may sound appealing, but the definition they use of anarchy is not a true definition of the word.

To be honest, I’m not sure I knew the true definition of the word until I saw this movie.  The Joker does everything out of pure sadistic pleasure.  His decisions aren’t made to be evil or good, but to breed pure chaos.

While every character in the movie has an agenda that they are addressing, the Joker is the scariest of all because he has none.  How do you beat someone who makes decisions in such a unpredictable and haphazard way?

That’s exactly the question that Batman must answer if he is to defeat him.  And it is exactly that question that the Joker wants to force Batman to answer; no matter how unpleasant the consequences.

Although Heath Ledger isn’t on the screen nearly as much as he deserves to be, his presence is so strong that you feel him through the entire movie.  You feel the Joker’s impending destruction every second of the film.

Every decision that Dent, Batman, and Gordon have to make is one that is overshadowed by the gravitas of what the Joker may do with their decision.  It makes for a dark, foreboding — and sometimes difficult to watch — story.

Though we may instinctively root for Batman, he is no saint.  Through the Joker’s manipulation, we see Batman making horrible decisions with dire consequences.  But never is it the Joker’s direct intervention that breeds this destruction; but rather the choices that our heroes make in response to him.

It is a beautifully crafted story; filled with moral traps that not even Batman can navigate out of.  There are no moments in the film where you’re pumping your fist because of Batman’s brilliant kickarsery.  The movie is more real than that.

Instead, you feel remorse at every act of violence the dark knight must commit.  It threatens to destroy his very fiber; it threatens to drag him into the pit of insanity that the Joker calls home.

By the end of the movie, you will feel almost as crazy as the Joker.  You will flounder through the first half of the movie, never quite sure what the Joker may do.  And then you will understand his way of thinking; and you will almost hate yourself for it.

But it is then that the Joker does something you weren’t expecting and you realize that true madness cannot be predicted.  Having no goal leads to having no path.

This script and this incarnation of the Joker are some of the finest things ever put to film.  I don’t get to vote on Oscars, and maybe the fact that it’s a superhero movie will exempt it from true consideration — but it deserves Oscars.  It is truly a masterpiece.

Verdict: A+ Tilt: A++++

Notice that’s one more + than Iron Man’s tilt.

I never thought I’d say it, but I’m getting tired of watching movies.  I’ve seen every movie in my 2008 Summer Movie List so far except The Happening.  That’s a lot of movies in less than 2 months!

This week we have the latest installment from the fantastical world of Hellboy.

I was one of the odd fans of the original Hellboy.  Though dark, gothic, and downright strange I found its world to be refreshing and unique in superhero-filled cinema.

The second movie doesn’t disappoint.  It’s more of the same, with none of the same; if that makes any sense.  It’s both predictable and unpredictable at the same time, and though a bit too long, it manages to endear Hellboy to the masses even more than before.

It’s a hard sell.  Though pop culture is moderately interested in the anti-hero these days, even the least religious among us cringe at the idea of a hero who’s a demon.  There are just some things that are better left alone, and Satan is one of them.

Two things make this movie work so well: Ron Perlman as Hellboy and director Guillermo del Toro.  The latter is so full of creativity that even when you think you’ve got it figured out, something will sprout out of nowhere.

Though the destination of this movie’s plot isn’t a secret, the path is a complete masterpiece of imagination, the likes of which I haven’t seen in a movie in quite some time.  A lot of this owes to del Toro’s vision as well as his stubborn refusal to use CG.

The characters in this film feel real in ways that we as filmgoers have forgotten.  They feel real because they are real — Hellboy is Ron Perlman in an awful lot of makeup; not some Jar Jar Binks/Gollum mock-up of Perlman.

Everything  in The Golden Army is much more fleshed out this time around.  The focus seems to be on Hellboy and Abe Sapien, his fishy friend.  The interactions between them are genuine, and both do a good job of balancing between freaks of nature and just regular joes.

I would have liked to have seen less Abe and more Liz, though.  Selma Blair plays Hellboy’s ‘hot’ girlfriend who doesn’t like his tendency to leave the house a mess.  She’s a funny character, and the play between her and Hellboy is interesting to watch.

Unfortunately, she doesn’t get as much screen time as she deserves.  Perhaps that’s because her character is only a person who can light herself on fire.  We’ve seen that before, while the odd demon fella and his fish-like friend a bit more unique.

This film also sees the addition of Johann Krauss, a gaseous entity who lives in a steampunk diver’s suit in order to retain shape and blend in with the masses.  His character challenges Hellboy’s authority at every turn; and there’s nothing funnier than a ticked off demon.

The plot is a little bit thin.  It’s clear from the beginning what the end result will be.  This flaw isn’t all bad, though, because you spend very little time wondering about the outcome and lot more time marveling at the unique world that the movie creates.

The bad guy is a little bit LotR, a little bit Men in Black, and a whole lot of bad.  An elf that has long been forgotten by humanity, he presents a very formidable foe for our heroes.  Such a formidable foe, in fact, it almost seems unbelievable that Hellboy & gang are able to conquer him.

Unlike the other superheroes out there, Hellboy has a limitless world to play in.  There are no self-imposed rules or expectations of what may exist in Hellboy’s world, and this really let’s del Toro run free.

Iron Man still hasn’t been challenged for the 2008 Movie Crown, but Hellboy runs a close second.  Though the movie gets a bit long and probably could have been edited to be a tad faster-paced, it’s really what the movie represents in theory that makes it so amazing.

The Golden Army pulled in $10 million more on its opening weekend than its predecessor.  Hellboy may have found his niche.

Verdict: A- Tilt: A

I’m not one to usually delve into politics on my blog, so linking to an article by Glenn Beck might seem a bit odd.

But this article titled “What’s right with America? Plenty” really hits home.

It’s not about politics, but rather looking at what America has going for it rather than spending time on what’s wrong, as we more commonly do these days.

An excerpt:

Our economy is almost as big as the next four largest economies on Earth (Japan, Germany, China and Great Britain) combined. The state of California alone has an economy as large as the entire country of France. Illinois has the same GDP as all of Mexico. New York matches the entire GDP of Brazil. Florida’s economy is as large as South Korea’s. Texas has a GDP roughly equal to Canada’s. Michigan’s economy is as large as the entire country of Argentina.

And that’s just about the economy. It’s a good read, and refreshing outlook on the state of affairs in the US.

Slightly worse than awesome isn’t as bad as we make it out to be.