Star Trek Beyond

I skipped the second reboot flick, I just couldn’t cope with a pasty white Khan, but I might have to see this one because…Idris Elba.

Star Trek Beyond, starring Idris Elba, Chris Pine, Simon Pegg, Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldana, John Cho, Anton Yelchin and Karl Urban, dropped late yesterday at a fan event and features the Enterprise being torn to shreds by a terrifying shroud of alien creatures.

The alien leader even dares to sit in Captain Kirk’s chair.

The film is premiering in IMAX at Comic-Con on July 20 and hits theatres two days later.

Via Towleroad. More about the movie: http://birthmoviesdeath.com/2015/12/15/its-a-clash-of-philosophies-in-star-trek-beyond and http://screenrant.com/star-trek-beyond-alien-races/.

Cool Stuff Friday

Punk Portraits in Pink, by Scott Scheidly, are simply fabulous. Many of them made me laugh in delight. I’m only going to include two here, be sure to go see the rest.

While most people find PINK funny, “I have been told to kill myself because of the Spock piece (you know how Trekkies are), the Russians said that there are people coming to get me for my Putin pieces, and one lady lost her mind in a gallery over the Pope John Paul piece.

Whhhyyyyyy? I *love* Emo Spock. Nimoy would have loved Emo Spock, it would have made him laugh. I’d buy it in a second if it weren’t sold. And Care Bear Putin? Adorable. Reagan keeps making me laugh. Only time he’s ever done that.

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Reagan Hates Me

Emo Spock

Emo Spock

Via Creators Project.

Toshiba 1400 FL Typewriter, 1940

Toshiba 1400 FL Typewriter, 1940

Today every tweet is archived, every Facebook selfie stashed and cached, every arts/tech/culture blog mirrored, and the idea of the permanence of data is taken for granted. But things like physical objects aren’t permanent. They break down, melt, or are tossed in the trash, and could potentially disappear from public consciousness forever, leaving behind but a foggy memory. Thngs, a digital database for the preservation of physical objects, wants to change that. Billing itself as “A place for everything,” this new system allows users to interact with objects old and new, whether they be a bust of Emperor Vitellius from the 1800s, or the Spice Girls-branded Polaroid Spice Cam from 1997.

Thngs co-founder Dima Dewinn comes from a background in social design and architecture, but quickly became interested in the preservation of physical items. Calling in from Moscow, Dewinn explains, “We were learning for a long time about the philosophy of the preservation of an entity. About all the things that we are surrounding ourselves with. All the things that we adore, we don’t know much about them because there’s no such thing as a Wikipedia of things.” So Dewinn set out “to make a tool that would preserve and structurize data of the material world. And we wanted to make it sexy.”

It’s an interestin’ place, have a look around. You can add to it, too.

X-23, the New Wolverine?

(Credit: Marvel)

(Credit: Marvel)

future X-Men movie could have a so-called “female Wolverine” and — for once — fans are embracing the change.

After 17 years of Hugh Jackman filling the role of Wolverine on the big screen, X-Men: Apocalypse director Bryan Singer revealed to Fandango this week that he had already spoken to Fox about instead using the character X-23 — a female Wolverine clone — for a future X-Force movie.

“I have discussed that with the studio,” Singer explained. “I actually initially pitched the X-Force and the female.”

According to the Marvel Database, scientists created Laura Kinney — or X-23 — as a clone when they were unable to salvage the Y chromosome from the original Weapon X experiment.

Unlike fans disdain for female Ghostsbusters characters, the idea of a “female Wolverine” was largely met with praise on Twitter.

There are some tweets and more at Raw Story. Many of those supportive of the change have what I feel is a bad reason – they don’t want another male actor to replace Jackman, so a female Wolverine would be easier to take. As someone who has never much cared for Jackman, I wouldn’t care about him being replaced, but I am all for X-23, bring her on!

Why the stakes are so high for the Black Panther

The first issue of Black Panther, a Marvel series written by Ta-Nehisi Coates, was released last month. Marvel Comics

The first issue of Black Panther, a Marvel series written by Ta-Nehisi Coates, was released last month. Marvel Comics.

The stakes are high for Marvel and journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates to do Black Panther well. The character appears this month in the blockbuster “Captain America: Civil War,” a prelude to the film he’ll headline in 2018. And last month, Coates released the first issue of a new Black Panther comic series.

When it was first reported last September that Coates would script a 12-issue arc of the Black Panther, some commentators suggested that he might be an “odd” fit.

The implication was that a MacArthur Genius Grant recipient and winner of the National Book Award was participating in a genre and medium beneath his talents. But they might be surprised to learn discussions of racism in superhero comics is a long – albeit often troubled – tradition. They also might not recognize the extent of Coates’ literary undertaking. He is tasked not only with appealing to comics readers but also with attracting new fans to the genre. This would be a daunting prospect, no matter the property. But the Black Panther character poses a very specific set of challenges.

[…]

A white superhero film failing has not caused studios to shy away from superhero films with white protagonists. The failure of a superhero film starring a woman or person of color, however, can set back the development of diverse superhero films for some time. Many people would probably rejoice in anything that stops the superhero franchise juggernaut. But the last few years have brought increased attention to the real struggles for women and people of color to break into the comics and film industries.

Unfortunately, when it comes to underrepresented populations, the success or failure of these texts always ends up being about more than the specific text in itself. It becomes a referendum on whether or not stories about people who are not straight, white men are valuable, and whether or not people who tell such stories should be given the resources to do so.

Full Story Here.