Robocop out?

Lee and I went to see the new Robocop film.  I liked the first film.  I think Paul Verhoeven did a great job, especially skewering the corporate side of things.  I thought Peter Weller's performance was great.  Add to that it was one of the few films that dealt with robotics that remembered to deal with Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics.

If you read science fiction, as I have, then you are familiar with Asimov's Laws.  If not, please be aware there have been a set of programming laws since the 1940's that would prevent movies like The Terminator, The Matrix, or any other computer/robot goes evil and tries to take over the world.  The Laws are simply:

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

These rules cover about 99.9% of all robotic interaction.  Isaac Asimov wrote a series of stories dealing with how robots might interprete  those laws and seem to fall outside of normal robotic interaction.  The film I, Robot covers this subject, but it does get lost in the action just a bit.  But it was used very well in the original Robocop (though modified just a bit).

So if the above are reasons you liked the original Robocop, then the new Robocop might leave you feeling a bit empty inside.  There are some good things about it. Alex Murphy is still a good man trying to be a good cop and a family man, even after most of his body is destroyed.  The film leaves no doubt as to the amount of damage done to Murphy, showing the loss of almost everything below the neck except the heart and lungs.  Gary Oldman is great as the man who rebuilds Murphy, but then when isn't Gary Oldman great?  And the film has Samuel L. Jackson.  But Jackson's role, while a brilliant send up of Bill O'Reilly, looks like it was tacked onto the film after everything else was shot.  The only interaction Jackson has with anyone in the film is a short interview with the CEO of OCP, played by Michael Keaton.  That interaction does nothing to move the story, only to provide a soupcon of satire found in the original film.

There is action in the film, lots of action.  Jackie Earle Haley is great as a secondary villain who runs OCP's mercenary arm.  The action while plentiful, does look more than a bit robotic, in fact, it looks like it would be in a video game.

Overall, if you are desperate for the taste of movie popcorn, then go see Robocop.  If you are looking for a fairly smart, fun film, rent the original.

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Slavery and Shirley Temple

This weekend seems strange right now.  Simply put, Lee and I went to the Gaslamp to celebrate Chinese New Year in San Diego.  It is a small, but fun event and last year Lee won a prize in the raffle (we gave it away, but winning was nice).  Sunday, during the day, we went to see 12 Years a Slave.   Then today the news that Shirley Temple Black passed away.  How do you fit all this together?  Well, settle in and I will try to guide you through this.  Bear with me, this is not a well mapped road.

Let's start with 12 Years a Slave.  This was a powerful film, but very difficult to watch.  The last film I saw that was this hard to watch was Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ`.  The performances were excellent, but almost overwhelmed by the power of the story itself.  12 Years a Slave is the film that makes you want to see Django Unchained.  You need a good revenge fantasy after seeing all the evil that occurred without any justice being meted out.

If you are not familiar with the film, 12 Years a Slave is based on the true story of Solomon Northrup, a free man from Saratoga, New York in 1841 who is tricked into coming south to Washington, D.C. and is chained and sold as a slave.  This occurs within sight of the Capitol dome.  From the moment chains are placed upon Solomon Northrup, he is stripped of all he expects, the respect he has earned as a musician, common courtesy, his clothes and even his name.  Alone, bereft of his family, beaten regularly and even forced to play the violin as the other slaves are forced to dance after a hard day of picking cotton.  When a female slave begs him to kill her rather than allow her to continue to be raped and beaten by their master, you urge him to consider it.  Even though Northrup regains his freedom, the people who are responsible for his situation are never brought to justice.  Even though his book was on the best seller list for over eight months, nothing that happens in his life could restore the belief that other people are generally good and the world is benign.  In his life, every twig snapping must instantly become the sound of a whip cracking, and in a world where carriages use whips, there would be no escaping the sounds of a nightmare made real.

After watching 12 Years a Slave, I could not help but reconsider the exhibits I saw in the small museums in San Diego relating to Chinese immigrants in San Diego.  Comments made in journals regarding casual discrimination suddenly seemed more than just isolated instances, but rather exactly the same behavior occurring just a few years earlier in the eastern states with African Americans.

Then on Monday morning, hearing that Shirley Temple Black had passed away, it made me think.  Shirley Temple had done a film, The Littlest General, about a little girl in the south who warmed heart of the old Confederate grandfather she was living with.  In this film, she dances with Bill Robinson.  Now Ms. Temple-Black was never a bigot and certainly neither was Mr. Robinson.  However, the scene of them dancing together could easily have been edited into 12 Years a Slave and not have changed the tone of the film at all.  If anything, it would have included Shirley Temple's character in with the evil slave owners and shown Mr. Robinson dancing only for the entertainment of a white child who must be  obeyed. 

With Ms. Temple-Black's passing, perhaps it is time to put away the cute images of slavery, as shown in The Littlest General.  Better to pay attention to 12 Years a Slave, or if you cannot bear to watch the horror depicted there, at least watch a series on Youtube called “Ask a Slave”.  The young lady in the series, Azie Dungey, works as a historical character at Mount Vernon.  The series is simply a compilation of the clueless questions she gets asked during work.  She approaches the subject in a humorous fashion, staying in character throughout.  Sadly, people provide her with a great deal of material for her series by displaying a level of ignorance that barely recognizes slavery as a bad thing.  Perhaps they have not moved beyond Shirley Temple yet. 

There's Bad Blood between Jonathan Maberry and me!

I have been reading Jonathan Maberry's work for a while now.  I was wandering around Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore in San Diego and one of the staff asked what I was looking for.  I told them something new and good.  They asked what I liked and made a recommendation, Patient Zero, the first of the Joe Ledger novels.  With this novel, I was taken hostage.  I read Dragon Factory.  I then read the Pine Deep Trilogy.  And then I read his comics.

Well now Jonathan Maberry has come out with Bad Blood, a five issue series dealing with vampires.  Trick, a stage 4 cancer patient, is attacked by a vampire.  It is only the chemo he has been taking that saves his life.  However, the audacity of having bad blood, blood that would poison a vampire, begins a blood feud between Trick and the unnamed vampire.  The vampire tears apart Trick's link to the world of the living, his friend, Kyle.  The only person fighting to keep Trick alive.  Trick also loses Jared, a former teammate from Trick's healthier days.  This is all part of the vampire's plotted revenge forcing Trick to watch as his world is torn apart around him, literally.

In the second issue, Trick encounters Lolly, his passport into the world of vampire clubs and even darker goth sex clubs.  Lolly is a part-time stripper who wants to become a vampire, but it willing to help Trick find Kyle and Jared's murderer.  She does not believe it would be a vampire who murdered Kyle and Jared, but her faith is shaky, due to what seems to be her experiences with evil at the hands of people in a position of trust in her life.  Trick is exposed to new experiences, but grows no wiser.  Lolly is a sucker (hey, you were expecting that one!) who will have to wise up quickly as she has her own encounter with a vampire, one of the minions of the vampire who attacked Trick.

The artwork by Tyler Cook, whose work has been seen in Dark Horse's B.P.R.D., is shadowy and largely monochromatic lending itself to the vampire-noir vibe of the story.  I expect we will travel from dark underworld to an even darker underworld within the next three issues leaving nightclubs and heading underground into sewers and lost sections of the city inhabited by vampires and the Goddess of Blood.  Bad Blood is sold at all the better comic shops, including Comic Quest, 23811 Bridger Rd. #100, Lake Forest California 92630.