Laser Orgy

Re: Lollipop Chainsaw – An Open Letter to James Gunn

Maddy Myers — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 19:16:00 GMT

You know, James Gunn, for a man who writes for the horror genre, you sure don't seem to know much about your target demographic. Did you know that more women buy tickets to horror movies than men? So, when you say, "who doesn't want to have a beautiful, young, 18-year-old cheerleader with lots of up-skirt shots in the middle of zombie carnage?", I feel compelled to answer you. But, actually, I think you might be able to answer the question yourself! Think about it. Who doesn't want that?

I'll give you a hint: remember when I told you about people who like horror? Oh, right! Women! Including straight women. Oh, and remember gay men? Also, any number of other people who, for whatever reason, don't think that barely-legal crotches are super fun to look at? Those people like zombies, too. So weird, right? I'm sure it's hard to remember, as a straight man, that not everybody else is a straight man. Sometimes I forget that I'm not a straight man, too. All of the video games that I play seem to be telling me that I am one, so it can be really difficult to remember sometimes.

I do understand your concerns about making your game seem original. After all, zombie stories have saturated the market in the past few years, particularly in video games. It's hard to make oneself stand out from a pack that includes franchises like Left 4 Dead, Resident Evil, and Dead Space. But luckily, James Gunn, you have really come up with something completely new and different here. I'm talking about your lead character Juliet, a young lady whom you call "unique."

"Unique" means one of a kind. We've never seen a tall, blonde, blue-eyed, barely-18-year-old, busty cheerleader before. We've certainly never seen a highly sexualized bastion of performative femininity appear in a video game before, with fighting moves accompanied by sparkly girl stuff. And we've never seen a blonde cheerleader who kicks supernatural butt before. Indeed, the entire concept of a school girl who wears a uniform of some kind that includes a short, pleated skirt, who fights supernatural baddies, who flashes some up-skirt during high kicks, all while being barely-of-legal age (or younger!) and having "an innocence about her" (read: don't worry, fellas, she's a virgin) ... has never been done.

I'm sorry for all that sarcasm, Mr. Gunn. You must be feeling so embarrassed! Not only did you completely forget to market to all of the zombie-obsessed people who aren't straight men, you also forgot about the trope of the panty-flashing, high-kicking, monster-fighting school girl.

It's okay, though. Don't worry! It's not too late for you to make your game subversive and original.

I know you already came up with all those animations of Juliet flashing her panties. And now you've launched a contest with IGN to find a woman to portray Juliet in promotional videos. So you already have a pretty firm idea of what Juliet will look like in this game. Here's the thing, though: I'm worried that despite all of your talk of Juliet being "interesting" and "unique," she might come across as ... not those things. Especially given that your stated first requirement for playing her would be a "stunningly beautiful" appearance, as opposed to, y'know, acting chops. Makes me wonder whether this character has much emotional heft to her at all.

Now, it's been a little while since Buffy came out, and I don't necessarily expect you to understand what I mean when I say that Juliet would be a lot more "interesting" and "unique" if she subverted our expectations of what a cheerleader can and can't do. So I'll lay out the specifics for you.

The game opens during cheerleading practice. Use this section of the game as the beginning of training us gamers how to play. You can show us how Juliet moves around and picks things up by having her perform cheer-leading steps, picking up batons and pom-poms and so on. Her fellow cheerleaders seem befuddled and intimidated by her, but we don't know why ... yet.

Then, Juliet goes home to her work-out room finish her exercise for the day, thus completing the training mode of the game. In her basement, she has an arsenal of weapons, not to mention punching bags, a weight bench with all the accoutrements, and motivational posters of all the greats: Jill Valentine, Purna, Buffy, and so on. She's got shelves full of zombie flicks and video games.

The girl is Prepared with a capitol P for the zombie apocalypse. We soon learn that her family has trained her to live this life. She doesn't have a boyfriend. She doesn't have friends, either. Even though she's gorgeous, her Amazonian strength and height intimidate everyone, and her gleeful obsession with the zombie apocalypse freaks people out; this explains why she doesn't realize how attractive she is. Zombies are the only thing she cares about -- although, in spite of this apocalypse obsession, she also maintains an almost childish, over-the-top interest in performative femininity and an affinity for pigtails, sparkles and the color pink. No one understands her, and her unusual interests make her a target for mockery at school. But she'll be the only one who survives when the undead burst from the ground. And by the time they do, both Juliet and the gamer controlling her will be fully prepared to kick all manner of ass.

The juxtaposition of performative femininity with hardcore violence has been done before in Buffy and Bayonetta, and in the right hands, Lollipop Chainsaw could be a feminist critique of gender roles and how we define "toughness" and "hardcoreness" in video games, the horror genre, and American society at large. The very title Lollipop Chainsaw suggests a study in seeming contradictions.

Unfortunately, most of the game's promotional videos emphasize the sexualization of Juliet rather than what makes her a subversive character. The "interesting" part of her character -- her joyous, bouncy embrace of both rainbows and wanton destruction -- gets overshadowed by up-skirt shots. The video game looks less like gender critique and more like a zombie-themed porn. Not that there's anything wrong with porn or sexualized images of barely-legal cheerleaders -- but all of that stuff is certainly not "unique" or "interesting," now is it?

Why be lazy? Why be cliche? If you wanted to, Mr. Gunn, you could create a subversive, mind-bending game that really makes gamers think about their own expectations for what a blonde female cheerleader can do. Perhaps the panty shots are just to lure in and fool gamers into watching a clever, feminist take-down of traditional gender roles. One can only hope.

In the meantime, good luck finding a "stunningly beautiful" actress to portray Juliet in your internet promotional videos. If you want a feminist to help you write the sketches, you know where to find me. One last thing, though: I don't like the sound of IGN's Greg Miller saying that he will be "bugging the hell out of each of these women." You should probably tell him to tone it down a little bit.

Secrets of Skyrim: Pairs

Alex Jarvis — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 18:11:00 GMT

I've opened so many doors since I picked up this game.

Iron doors. Wooden doors. Locked doors that led to locked chests, doors opened by pictograph riddles and lever manipulation. Doors to cities and dungeons. Doors made out of rocks. Doors guarded by robots.

Nothing prepared me for this door, though. No, nothing prepared me for the shoes.

I bought Skyrim feverishly. Payday and an evening listening to hype forced my hand. This has happened before. I'm only so strong a person - I can only hear so many good reviews before I have to blow 60 dollars or so on some sequel to some game series I either have not played or have actively disliked. (I rented Oblivion a few months after its initial release; after escaping to the overworld from my near execution, I wandered into a city, opened the wooden door to a house, and accidentally stole a plate. This action threw me in jail. I removed the disc and promptly rented some manner of Star Wars game.)

But by God, Skyrim was something else. I decided to roll Bosmer and became immediately engrossed. I imagined myself as an orphan who'd spent his life grifting on the street, caught trying to immigrate to Skyrim. Though initially bewildered by the lack of a class system, I found that if I stopped trying to "game" it and just started making decisions that made sense, the game would unfold before me. I wasn't trying to figure out how to make my Rogue character more magick-y; I was leveling up in the skills that I actually used, the ones that came up naturally in my gameplay. It's the memory-foam-mattress approach versus something like the sleep-number system; the former moves around my natural motion, whereas the latter makes me choose ahead of time with some imagined vision of what I want to be.

So there I was, traveling somewhere in the southwest, completely ignoring the main questline. More than that, I had no idea what the main questline was, because I was just doing the quests that made sense to me, instead of feeling pressured by the whims of the world. Yes, I knew the Winged Death known as Alduin threatened to end the realm at any given moment, but that wasn't important to me. I was the dragon born, and I had to fuck up some beehives (or something, or something). Always in the mood for a new Dragon shout, I ventured down the nearest dungeon, hoping that the winged linguists had a way to translate hate into yelling.

The first few rooms were innocuous enough. Nothing unusual, save for the fact that the Conjurers had already been run through. No big - the mobs are dead. Still lootable? Still lootable.

I didn't notice the cages. A false floor almost killed me. Switches in every hallway threw out traps that threaten to take my last bit of health (or, they would, if I hadn't had my sneak-spec high enough so as to avoid triggering them, natch). I pulled one chain. A fire came out of the ground and into a cage, charring an already-charred corpse inside. Cute accoutrements, I'm sure, to make me feel like I was in a bad, mean place.

But I shouldn't have opened that door.

The room that made my 24 level Rogue-ish mage Bosmir stand still. More a closet than a room. A closet filled, to the brim, with shoes. Different shoes. Iron shoes, elvish shoes, hide boots. Commoner shoes of three different styles. There were easily thirty pairs here, unceremoniously thrown into this room, presumably pried off the feet of the poor souls who wandered here before.

According to the save timestamp, I stood there pondering exactly how horrifying this was for five actual minutes. Then, I saved, put down the controller, and called my mom. You know. Just to hear her voice.

Let me be clear: there is nothing inherently terrifying about the room of shoes. You have to go a level deeper. Somewhere at Bethesda Softworks, there is a human. This person brought up this idea in a meeting. "Let me fill a room with shoes." I wonder if the shoes came first, or if the dungeon did. At any rate, this idea got approved. A team presumably approved this. A room full of shoes to frighten a 23 year old man and a 24 year old Wood Elf. This was just a thing they decided. The room, full of shoes. Behind a door. In a dungeon. In the gorgeous, expansive world of Skyrim, full of dozens of dungeons, each with their own doors, each with their own potential for hundreds of shoes. A group of people crafted each one, down to the detail, down to the room full of nondescript footwear, for our entertainment.

These people exist in real life.

May God help us all.

Alex Jarvis is a typist. He has written for Wired's Geekdad, Profhacker, himself, and most recently, his own Comic Book review website, Spandexless. Yes, he does want to hear from you, but not right now. He's busy.

[POST-MORTEM] In praise of Horror Hound: What keeps us coming back for more blood, guts, and Jason Voorhees sugar cookies

Michael Neel — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 15:46:00 GMT

Dear HorrorHound Weekend:

Thanks for another amazing horror convention. I only get to see you twice a year, but you always make it worth my while. You are truly one of the best horror cons on any planet, Earth or otherwise (I know a few saucer men who claim that Mars has a great convention scene, but everyone I know who has been there has been vaporized).

This was my fourth HHW, and I'd just like to take a few minutes and thank you for all you have given me.

1. Thank you for the once-in-a lifetime celebrity encounters.

At past HHWs I have talked with Brett Wagner (a deranged killer from The Crazies), hung out with Chris Carnel (Harry Warden, the killer miner from My Bloody Valentine), and met tons of other cool genre vets too. This year I got to chat with David Kagen from Friday the 13^th Part 6, Andrew Hubatsek and Brad Greenquist from Pet Semetary, and Robin Shelby, who played Slimer in Ghostbusters! Good times all around.

And the fun didn't stop there. On Friday night I was in the hotel elevator, crammed shoulder-to-shoulder with other horror fans, each one of us wearing some sort of cool, nerdy T-shirt from flicks such as The Video Dead and Hobo with a Shotgun (my T-shirt was from The Thing). I noticed someone wearing a truly radical t-shirt for Wyld Stallyns, Bill and Ted's band from their Great Adventure and Bogus Journey.

"Cool shirt," I said. The Wyld Stallyns T-shirt guy smiled. From my left, I heard someone say "Yeah, they're OK." I turn to my left...hmmm, this dude looks familiar.

Holy crap, it's Bill S Preston, Esquire -- AKA Alex Winter, as he's known when he's not playing air guitar with Ted (Keanu Reeves).

I give him a sly smile, playing it cool: "I like their early stuff the best." He gave me a wink.

2. So long and thanks for all the fish ... cookies

Conventions make me hungry. All that standing around, autograph-hunting, and buying amazing artwork like Lydia Burris's ridiculously cool paintings is hard work, and, unfortunately, the food at these cons usually falls somewhere between decent and vomit-inducing (the latter is appropriate given the circumstances, I suppose). Fortunately, two vendors at HHW helped me curb my rumbling stomach: Sinister Sweets and Slash & Dine.

Sinister Sweets specializes in such horror-themed delicacies as Cinn-o-bites (like Hellraiser's Pinhead, only tastier) and Clockwork Orange Pops (mmm, ultra-violent). Meanwhile, food blog Slash & Dine reviews cult films, and pairs them with a meal -- say, like Escape from New York Strip Steak served with (what else) a Manhattan. They brought some of their fiendish gastronomy with them to HHW -- how can you turn down cookies from the creators of red velvet zombie cake and Birdemic beer-can chicken?

3. Thank you for bringing together so many passionate horror fans

The swag, autographs, Halloween 3 bottle openers, and other cool stuff are all great reasons to go to a horror con. But one of the best things is the other film nuts and the wonderful nerdy conversations that ensue. At a sports bar, you might argue about which quarterback is more frustrating: Jay Cutler or Tony Romo? At a horror con, the discussion goes more like this:

"Which is better? This kill from Friday the 13^th Part 8: Jason Takes Manhattan?"

"... Or this one from Jason X, where Jason goes to outer space?"

"And does this mean that Part 8 is a better movie because of that one kill scene, despite the fact that there is no nudity, most of the movie takes place on a boat, and they obviously filmed in Birtish Columbia and not the Big Apple? Or is Jason in space better because it has the requisite kills, a coherent plot, and tons of T&A -- even though the idea is ludicrous and screams of Jumping the Shark? Or do they both pale in comparison to this kill from Part 6: Jason Lives?" (Skip to 1:40 and judge for yourself.)

This is the important stuff, people.

4. Thank you for supporting non-blockbuster horror films

Sure, the casual moviegoer knows horror flicks like Saw, Paranormal Activity, and Transformers 2 (now there's truly terrifying movie you can never unsee) ... but what about Dark Night of the Scarecrow, D4, or The Puppet Monster Massacre? These low-budget films - and thousands of other ones -- don't have the advertising assault of a big-time Hollywood horror flick, so their respective filmmakers bought vendor booths at HHW to talk directly to their fans and make sales. If fans like a movie, they'll spread the word, until hopefully the film takes on a life of its own. Judging from the positive feedback I heard about Dark Night of the Scarecrow, D4, and The Puppet Monster Massacre, this tactic is working.

Dark Night of the Scarecrow is one of the best examples of using grassroots marketing and horror cons for promotion. It was made for TV in 1981, and was very well-received by fans and such genre celebrities as Ray Bradbury, Stuart Gordon (director of Re-Animator), and Vincent Price. The film has a fairy-tale tone to it, half Frankenstein and half Tales From the Crypt. It's a creepy, atmospheric movie that was probably helped by the limitations of television: since it couldn't show blood and gore, it relies on tension and well-conceived stalking scenes (there is a particularly effective one involving a hay baler). Larry Drake (Benny from L.A. Law, the titular role in Dr. Giggles, and the villain in Darkman) gives a wonderful performance as a mentally handicapped man who is wrongly executed for a crime he didn't commit. DNotS writer J.D. Feigelson fought tirelessly to get the OK from CBS for a new transfer and DVD release - a difficult and tedious process - and since it hit DVD and Blu-Ray in 2010 the fan base continues to grow. I've seen Feigelson's booth at numerous conventions, where he talks with fans about his passion project and sells Dark Night merch. Feigelson is a passionate filmmaker, and I get the sense that he's going to keep spreading the word about his film until every last horror fan on the planet has seen it.

OK, so now that I've gotten all serious and meaningful on you guys, I think I need to end things on a lighter note. So here's a quick question: What happens when you add Jason, Alice Cooper, and heaping helpings of b-movie cheese? You get this:

Michael Neel is the co-creator of anthology-horror-film Drive-In Horrorshow and animated web series Infinite Santa 8000. He can be reached at: mike@grimfilms.com

READ MORE: "Summer Camp for Horror Nerds: HorrorHound Weekend," by Michael Neel

READ MORE: "Fear and Loathing in HorrorHound Cincinnati (but mostly fear)," by Michael Neel

A Very Phoenix Halloween: 5 Scary Movies for Halloween You've Probably Never Heard Of

Michael Neel — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 20:28:00 GMT

So you're looking for scary a movie to watch on Halloween. Maybe you're not a huge horror buff, so you Google "Scary Halloween Movies," and you get a thousand lists of the best horror movies ever. They're all the same: The Exorcist, Friday the 13th, Psycho, Halloween, Silence of the Lambs, and so on. Borrrr-ing. You already knows these movies are scary - everyone does - and these lists are a pointless waste of your valuable terror time.

Don't worry, I'm here to help. As a horror maniac, I feel it is my duty to pry your eyes open with a pair of rusty fishhooks and show you some fright fests you've probably never heard of. Don't even try to blink.

The Burning (1981)
The Burning tells the story of Cropsy, a nasty, drunk summer camp caretaker who is accidentally burned beyond recognition and returns five years later to exact his revenge on a bunch of horny teenagers. You've seen this film before - it's called Friday the 13th. But what makes The Burning special is the amazing FX work by Tom Savini (Dawn of the Dead and Friday the 13th), some great scares, lots of nudity featuring people that haven't had any plastic surgery, and Seinfeld's Jason Alexander in his film debut (he's supposed to be 15-ish, and looks about 25). It's cheesy and uneven at times, but that only adds to the fun - and when it delivers, it really delivers. Get some friends, some beer, dim the lights, and prepare for the bloodbath.

Ils (Them) (2007)
If you want a film that will scare the crap out of you, then Ils is perfect. It's a simple home invasion story told in long, drawn-out scenes with unbearable amounts of tension. Minimal sound effects and music and gorgeous, eerie cinematography draw you in and intensify the suspense. The most impressive element of Ils is that it creates such exquisite terror with no gore at all. Who needs it when you're already shitting your pants?

Brain Damage (1988)
Aylmer is one of the most unique characters in horror: a charismatic drug dealer that gives people the best high imaginable and then manipulates his mindless, tripping customers to bring him juicy plump brains. Oh, and did I mention that Aylmer is a slimy three-foot tall disembodied brain creature with an overly cute Disney-esque face, an immensely charming smile, and a beautiful singing voice? This ultra-low budget movie is just as creative and unique as he is. Fun, sleaze, tragedy, and utterly disgusting gore - this movie has it all! Just make sure to finish eating before you press play.

Night of the Creeps (1986)
Aliens, brain-slugs, zombies, shotguns, flamethrowers, murderous corpses, co-eds, Rusty from European Vacation - do I have your attention yet? Night of the Creeps blends all of this and much more in an immensely entertaining b-movie that takes the very best from numerous sub-genres of horror and sci-fi. A lesser film would collapse under so many different genre elements, but Night of the Creeps keeps all of its influences in perfect balance. It's hysterical, tense, gory, and even moving - and I haven't even mentioned Tom Atkins, who plays an larger-than-life hero with some of the coolest one-liners you'll see in a horror film.

In the Mouth of Madness (1994)

Since you already know Halloween (and have probably seen it) you might have heard of John Carpenter, the film's legendary director. Perhaps you've even seen a few of his other movies: The Thing (the original one), Escape from New York, or Big Trouble in Little China. But I'd bet a machete to the back of my head that you've never seen Carpenter's In the Mouth of Madness, one of the most mind-bending horror flicks around. The film is about a horror writer named Sutter Cane (*cough* Stephen King *cough*) whose writing makes people go, well, apeshit axe-happy crazy. The narrative twists and turns back in on itself like a mobius strip, and it's an exhilarating trip.

I hope I've been able to help you. If you need me again, don't hesitate to call. I'll be lurking in the shadows on your back porch.

READ: Gore tours, haunted houses, and burlesque babes -- the complete Boston Phoenix guide to winning at Halloween

Michael Neel is the co-creator of anthology-horror-film Drive-In Horrorshow and animated web series Infinite Santa 8000. He can be reached at mike@grimfilms.com.

Rock and Shock recap 2011: A weekend of music, mayhem, and bodily fluids

Michael Neel — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 18:37:00 GMT

Click here for more photos from Rock & Shock 2011.

Rock and Shock is a one-of-a-kind event: equal parts horror convention, heavy-metal show, and awesomeness. At this year's R&S, on October 16th through the 18th, splatter freaks slashed through the DCU Center, filling their bloody burlap sacks with frightful T-shirts, posters for Chopping Mall and Twitch of the Death Nerve, and autographs of Robert Englund (Freddy Krueger), Ace Frehley (KISS frontman), Rowdy Roddy Piper (ex-wrestler), and Gary Busey (maniac). Then they shuffled next door to the Palladium, craving not juicy brains but dark, macabre music by bands such as Mushroomhead, Earth Crisis, and Insane Clown Posse. Yes, Insane Clown Posse.

And the madness didn't stop there. Read on...if you dare! Bwah hah hah hah hah! *crash of thunder*

Frightful Acts

Halloween will be here before you know it, and if you don't believe me then maybe this will convince you (good luck getting it out of your head):

Unless you are completely lame, you'll need some sort of costume. Something scary. Just not this kind of scary:

Something that's guaranteed to scare the crap out of any faint-hearted trick-or-treaters. How about this mask from Frightful Acts?

When you wear this mask, only the bravest costumed children will dare to take candy from your plastic jack-o-lantern, if they haven't already soiled their Harry Potter cape and run screaming from your front lawn. Frightful Acts also sells seven other creepy and cool masks, although none quite as nightmare-inducing as this one. Each is custom-made to fit your magnificent dome, and cost between $300 and $500. They can be ordered at www.frightfulacts.com.

Gene Simmons Monster Mini Golf
Ace Frehley was signing autographs, although there was no mention of KISS anywhere on the program. Instead, he was identified as "Legendary Guitarist". Huh? Why can't The Spaceman use the name of his own band? This reeks of Gene Simmons's treachery. Simmons is a notoriously shrewd businessman - I wouldn't be surprised if he owns the KISS name and won't let Ace use it unless Rock and Shock meets his demands:

-1/3 of each attendee's soul
-666 red m&ms autographed by Satan
-Ace must spend the entire weekend in a giant vat of Cherry Dr. Pepper

On Saturday, I spied Simmons from across the room. At last, my chance to find out if he's the mastermind behind this madness! But as I approached I discovered that it wasn't him at all. It was a Gene impersonator (Genepersonator? Gene-alike?) and he wasn't there to keep an eye on Ace (or at least that's what he told me). He was promoting the grand opening of Monster Mini Golf's newest course in Las Vegas (opening date unknown), where KISS will perform to kick off the festivities. I don't know if Monster Mini Golf means that you play mini golf against monsters, or turn into a werewolf while you putt, or forgo the ball and hit Dracula's severed head down the hill of astro-grass, through a windmill, and into the cup. Whatever it is, I'm in. And I'm keeping my eye out for Gene, in case he shows up and demands a pound of flesh for each par that I make. You may be tough Mr. Simmons, but I have a putter and I know how to use it.

Chillerama
Chillerama is an over-the-top horror/comedy film that appeals to genre fans, especially those who have a fondness for the fun drive-in flicks of the 60s through the 80s.

The film features four shorts from Joe Lynch (Wrong Turn 2), Adam Rifkin (Detroit Rock City), Tim Sullivan (2001 Maniacs), and Adam Green (Hatchet 1 and 2, Frozen).

Chillerama is one big love letter to subversive, offensive, disgusting, fun B-movies, and the audience ate it up . . . and then had to hold it down and try not to barf in their "I Spit on Your Grave" lunchboxes. Because Chillerama is extremely, unapologetically gross: genital mutilation, buckets of blood and gore, heaping handfuls of shit, and mega-loads of semen . . . lots and lots of semen. The coup-de-grace is a monster sperm - aptly named Wadzilla - that grows to the size of Larry Flynt's corporate headquarters and terrorizes New York. I've always wondered what would happen if you put a condom on the Statue of Liberty, and, thanks to Chillerama, I finally have my answer (protip: trickier than it looks).

Given the film's niche audience, Chillerama won't be coming to your local multiplex anytime soon. Fortunately, the crazy film nuts at Outside the Cinema podcast brought Chillerama to Rock and Shock - a perfect place for a throwback horror flick. If you missed the screening, don't despair -- keep your eyes peeled: most recently, Outside the Cinema screened an encore Chillerama at the Hollywood Hits Theater in Danvers, MA. And when you do see this film, bring a raincoat - it's gonna get sticky.

Before the Mask
Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon, released in 2006, is a clever, low-budget horror mocumentary about Leslie Vernon, a charming, intelligent man who is determined to become the next great serial killer. His lives in a world where Freddy, Jason, and Michael Myers are real, and he wants to join their ranks as the new slasher icon. The film has gained a dedicated cult following in the horror community, so naturally director Scott Glosserman wrote a sequel: Before the Mask: The Return of Leslie Vernon.

However, despite the legions of rabid fans, Glosserman and his team have been unable to secure funds for Before the Mask. This sort of problem has caused major roadblocks for countless low-budget horror flims, but Glosserman has thought of a creative new way of getting his film made. Nathan Baesel - Leslie Vernon himself - was signing autographs at Rock and Shock, and he filled me in their fundraising strategy.

PHX: Tell me about your efforts with the sequel.
NB: The Facebook page that we have set up right now for Before The Mask is a way that we're keeping the film sequel in the hands of the fans, just like the first film has had its lifeblood given by the fans. So on the facebook page you can commit to donating a certain amount of money, [and] you get something in return: DVD, Blu-Ray, poster. It goes all the way up to [where] we fly you out to the set, we put you up in the hotel with the cast and crew, you party with us, and we kill you off in a scene. So it's pretty sweet.
Also, if you get a DVD or Blu-Ray it's a special edition, separate from the ones that are being mass produced, and the filmic portions of the sequel will get, when it's all said and done, cut up into individual frames. So if you are, say, the fiftieth person to donate you get frame fifty.
PHX: Wow.
NB: Yeah, it's pretty sweet.
PHX: I think it's wonderful, you're really putting it in the hands of the fans to show their support. I think it's great.
NB: That's why we're still alive and kicking...if we can demonstrate, like it feels we've been able to do so far, to potential backers that, look, we've already got a community that's not just interested but really committing to, with money, demonstrating their interest in a sequel that says so much more than whatever profits we made the first time around.

Bitchin'! A large portion of Nathan's autograph money at Rock and Shock went to the fundraising effort, and two other companies stepped up to the plate to help bring Before the Mask to the big screen. Horror T-shirt company Fright Rags is selling Leslie Vernon t-shirts and hoodies - I got a t-shirt at Rock and Shock and it kicks ass.

DeConte Figures & Collectibles is launching an exclusive line of Leslie Vernon action figures, Leslie's slasher mask, and Leslie's weapon of choice - a sharp sickle. The masks and sickles will be replicas of the real thing, so you'll have all you need to dress like Leslie and chase your younger brother around the living room. A portion of the money made from the Fright Rags and DeConte merch will go to the fundraising campaign. To make your contribution, click here.

If you're on the fence about contributing, consider this: some of our most beloved horror series started as low budget movies. The original A Nightmare on Elm St, Saw, Friday the 13th, and Halloween - these movies were made for small bucks and went on to spawn huge mega-franchises that are beloved worldwide. They made household names of Freddy, Jigsaw, Jason, and Michael Myers. So do your part to help us add Leslie to the list - trust me, he belongs there. Horror fiends at Rock and Shock, myself included, spent the weekend buying scary horror stuff and meeting our terrifying heroes. Let's take it a step further and help be a part of horror history.

Because if Nathan Baesel is promoting Behind the Mask 12 : Leslie in Space at Rock and Shock 2023, then we'll have ourselves to thank.

READ MORE: For complete coverage of this year's Halloween mayhem, check out thephoenix.com/halloween.

Michael Neel is the co-creator of anthology-horror-film Drive-In Horrorshow and animated web series Infinite Santa 8000. He can be reached at mike@grimfilms.com.

On Gears of War 3’s women warriors

Maddy Myers — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 17:11:00 GMT

The Gears of War franchise and I have a history, punctuated by a blog post I made a year and a half ago about the rumor that Gears 3 would be including a female character. I also wrote about the franchise's inclusion of rape camps in its extended canon.

Jilane's "breeding farms" almost feel like a dirty little secret, considering how few people have sought out the Gears collection of art books, comics, and novels. If you only play the video games, you might miss a few things. I've seen a lot of comments asking where all of Gears 3's new characters came from. Why are there suddenly women with guns? The COG allows women to fight? Since when?

Women have fought for the COG since before Gears began, according to the extended canon. Anya's mother, Helena Stroud, served in the army, and she even trained Marcus and Dom for combat. The COG developed "breeding farms" in response to the Locust epidemic, deciding that women's wombs were better tools than their trigger fingers.

The complete lack of women in the first Gears of War game didn't seem peculiar to most gamers. Shooters about epic battles tend to feature men and just men. The numerous comments on my original posts about Gears's female characters explained to me that women shouldn't become soldiers, you see, because they are physically weaker. Sure, whatever, but when there are monsters popping out of the ground and 99% of humanity has been slaughtered, you start handing weapons to everyone who's smart enough to understand what "point and shoot" means. I'm talking about the women and children, people.

Leave it to the constantly blundering COG government to think that forcing women to become womb slaves makes sense in light of the Locust situation. The planet Sera doesn't have eighteen years to wait for offspring to grow into soldiers. Every single day that humanity continues to survive at all is a victory. Time is of the essence. Rape camps are deplorable and horrifying on their own, but in this case, they're also a huge tactical misstep, to the point of unrealism.

The COG has collapsed in Gears 3, and the women finally have guns. These two facts seem to be related, although the game never calls attention to it; no mention is made of Jilane's camps. The women carry the same guns as the men. They have the same number of hit points. They don't look as muscular, but they still look capable of curb-stomping Locust heads. And they do, with their voice actresses screaming bloody murder whenever the scene calls for it.

But even though the stats behind the female characters render them equal to their male counterparts - whether that makes sense or not, since all the men appear to be on steroids and the women do not - the dialogue does not offer them the same consideration. An unpleasant scene about Sam potentially being traded as a sex slave in exchange for food made it into my review of the game, and a similar incident happens with Anya Stroud as well, later on in the story. Both Anya and Sam, being in the army, have doubtless had to deal with intense sexual harassment, or worse, for their entire careers. Sam tends to react to situations by making jokes or side-stepping the problem; Anya tends to be up front and serious. I didn't like seeing Anya and Sam get harassed, but these incidents do allow us a glimpse into their constant struggle, as women in a man's world.

I've long seen the slow inclusion of female characters in games as an unintentional metaphor for the inclusion of women gamers in gaming cliques, forums, arcades, and LAN parties across the globe. Yes, in the physical realm, women statistically tend to be physically weaker. There are some simple facts about muscle formation and metabolisms that no one's going to deny, here. But in the video game world? In the fantasy world of Locusts and chainsaw-guns and revival systems? We should all be equal, theoretically. It's something that fighting games have figured out: could Sonya Blade really kick Johnny Cage's ass in real life? Probably not, but in the video game, the answer to that question relies on how good the minds behind the controllers are, not on the size of Sonya's muscles. It's about the game, and it's about the players playing that game.

And women play Gears of War. We always have, since the first title, and we still do now. It comes as a surprise to many, especially since Gears is considered one of the most masculine shooters of them all, but it's one of my favorites and it probably always will be. I can't possibly be the only woman who feels that way. And now, Gears 3 can go down in history as a shooter that actually incorporates playable female fighters - more than one, with different personalities, who all survive to the end of the game, and who deserve and demand respect. They didn't even have to trick their way into the game with sex appeal, as Samus Aran did in her early red-bikini days.

I'm not able to forget about the "breeding farms" sub-plot. It lingers in the back of my mind every time I re-play the Gears campaigns. Of course, this isn't the first sci-fi story to include that plot device (see: Dune, Battlestar Galactica, Mass Effect 2 ... the list goes on). The very idea of a breeding farm disgusts me on every level. We are meant to assume that it is the COG that is too misogynistic to realize the fighting power that they're wasting, not the game writers and creators. I think most people who play this game understand that distinction. But it's also important to remember that the misogynists who play this game don't see the COG's breeding camps as both villainous and tactically idiotic. I've read an awful lot of comments from people who agree with the COG on this one. Because women can't have guns, damn it - that's so unrealistic. Women are supposed to make babies, whether they want to or not, and they need to get the fuck out of our shooting area. That's the reaction I saw, over and over, as gamers reacted to the news of the game's inclusion of women fighters.

What this sentiment really means, in the context of gaming, is that women can't play shooters. It may not seem like it's that simple, but it is. Women don't like competitive games, you see - we like games about feelings, and farms, and sparkly fairies! Or maybe that's just what we all have to tell ourselves, to keep from admitting the scary truth that feminine gender roles are just as performance-based as Marcus Fenix's glares and comically large muscles. It's not real. It's a fantasy, and it's one we all partake in, to varying degrees. Some women fit the mold of what's "expected", and some don't, and that's all fine. In reality, most of us do not conform to the stereotypes that come along with our genders, and instead we pick and choose which gender norms we'd like to follow and hope no one bothers us too much about it. And those of us who'd prefer to wield a chainsaw-mounted Lancer rather than a healing staff are playing Gears of War - not that there's anything wrong with healing staffs, mind you, whether those staffs are wielded by men or women or people who reject the gender binary entirely.

But those femme-presenting among us who do venture into hyper-masculine spheres get treated very similarly to the way Anya Stroud and Sam Byrne are treated in this game. We get reduced to being Women, or wombs, and shouldn't we be off making babies or sandwiches or something, somewhere else, not here, because we're muddying up this masculine game with our femininity. We get looks of surprise and alarm and shock - you play this? This game? We get half-propositioned, half-mocked in ways that are meant to be "jokes," sort of, except it's not really a joke at all, is it. We could try to downplay our femininity, or play along with misogynist jokes ‘til we half-believe them, in an effort to fit in - but that never really does the trick, because at the end of the day, you're still The Other. Even if you don't try to rock the boat, you're already causing an upset just by being there. So you may as well rock harder.

I've seen some complaints about the female characters in Gears of War 3. Tom Chick's hilarious send-up of Gears's ham-fisted narrative made me laugh, but I took issue with his claim that the women in this game are not "actual" women. What does that even mean? What are "actual" women supposed to be like?

I'm an "actual" woman - although I'm not sure I'd meet Tom Chick's expectations for one - and quite frankly, the women in this game are a far better reflection of me than any other game I've seen this year. But the women in Gears of War 3 aren't representative of all women. To even suggest that would be to say that women are interchangeable. That there is some fundamental thing about women everywhere that must be incorporated into all female characters in order to make them "actual" women.

I reject that claim. What makes a female character good, to me, is the same thing that makes a male character - any character - good. Do they seem real? Do they seem like a real person, who has had real experiences that have shaped them into who they are? Do their actions make sense to me? Can I imagine what it would be like, to be them?

Gears is full of cartoonish archetypes, but the women of Gears 3 seem quite "actual" to me, considering. Sam's jokes feel like a coping mechanism, not unlike her squad leader Cole's ridiculous "Cole Train" persona - it's a face you put on in a stressful situation to hide your fear, and it's surprisingly humanizing. Meanwhile, the dissonance between Anya's patient, soft voice while strategizing and her gritty warrior screams in battle serve to remind us how much she's been through and how well she's managed it. They are video game characters, participating in a mostly-nonsense video game story that focuses far more on battle sequences than character development, so the bar is low for what qualifies as "good". But I can't think of many ways that the game could have done these women better, other than that I wish I could have spent more time with them. Sure, the sexual harassment moments made me cringe - but I have to admit, those scenes do feel realistic, and that's why they disturb me.

The male soldiers treat their new female comrades with about as much respect as you'd think. A few strained jokes and a couple awkward conversations did happen, but overall, the soldiers respected each other. It was the kind of respect that means well, but could really use practice - perhaps they'd have all done better if the women had shown up sooner.

In one of the game's final scenes, Baird does try to make it up to Sam - he says he hopes she'll be okay, and it's obvious he means it. Even though Sam and Baird aren't friends, they're still both soldiers, and that means something. They share something. They can establish a connection on that alone, and respect what that connection means. It sure won't be easy, and Baird probably bit off more than he could chew with that sex-in-exchange-for-bacon joke, but he's slowly but surely becoming self-aware enough to realize that.

And if that's not a realistic portrayal of where gamers are at on gender right now, I'm not sure what is.

6 Parts of the Human Brain Robots Will Need to Simulate Before They Can Enslave Us All (In Order of Most to Least Intuitive)

Kelly Dickinson — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 20:54:00 GMT

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bgY8lQMFy4

There are plenty of ways robots can kill us. A computer could malfunction and send nukes to every nation in the world, or an errant Roomba could get fed up with this cat. But the scariest robot takeovers are the ones in which a man-made AI robot revolts. There is something terrible and poetic about a creation turning on its master, and becoming the silicon overlord to all carbon-based life-forms. From Skynet to Cylons, from the Machines of the Matrix to the Geth of Mass Effect, robots betray their creators all the time in fictional worlds. But how imminent is this singularity? How smart do robots need to be in order to hunt down a rebel human menace?

To crush and/or manipulate us, the robots would need to be able to think like us. But the human brain is a complicated thing, and for them to succeed, there are many brain regions and/or functions they would need to be able to replicate to be able to adequately interact with the world, let alone conquer us.

1. Frontal Lobe- For Making Snap Decisions
Suppose Scouter Drone H-4687 has been sent on a mission to collect data on small groups of pesky human rebels, among them a group that has taken refuge in a local Baskin-Robbins. The bot sits inconspicuously in the corner, under a pile of wreckage, watching and recording.

But on day 3 of the expedition, Scouter Drone H-4687 is spotted! In an instant, it must make a choice about what to do next. It can attempt to fight and escape, but that will be difficult, as its weapons systems are inadequate. It can self-destruct, aborting the mission. Or it can remain in captivity, holding onto the information in hopes of a future escape. The robot will need a system to weigh the pros and cons of each hypothetical decision to arrive at a logical conclusion.

In humans, this system is called the frontal lobe. This region is located, appropriately, at the front of the brain. This is the part of us that makes decisions, maps out consequences and make educated judgments. Robots would need some similar method for analysis, which is something that most fictional robots can do well. That robots should be logic-machines is standard in most fictional universes.

2. Hippocampus- For... What Were We Talking About?
Scouter Drone H-4687, with his superior processing system, recognizes the advantages of letting himself be taken prisoner in hopes of future escape. He is placed in a holding cell which, due to human negligence, is faulty. When one of his guards is not paying attention, he escapes.

At this point, a human would do their best to escape from the Baskin-Robbins unscathed. They would act on the recently-acquired memories of capture, and adjust their goals. But an automatic machine that performs strictly by program would likely find another corner of the room to sit in and continue recording. The Drone, therefore, would need some way to learn from recent experiences and adjust for optimum function, putting off the objective for now.

A structure called the hippocampus is what makes that learning possible in mammals. At its most basic level, it helps humans adjust behavior patterns to promote survival; it also creates rich, vivid memories, updating and allowing new information to be sorted every minute. A human with hippocampal damage wouldn’t remember anything since the time of injury. Without a system similar to the hippocampus, Scouter Drone H-4687 would return to its hiding spot in the corner, only to be discovered and destroyed.

3. Top-Down and Bottom-Up Visual Processing- For Looking and Sorting
Scouter Drone escapes the Baskin-Robbins, fleeing into the streets. There it encounters two humans returning to base. Obviously, a robot would need a visual field capable of seeing the humans, sensing their motion, and interpreting them as enemies.

But equally important is the ability to sort and group visual information, and also ignore unimportant stimuli. Suppose the humans are in Scouter Drone’s right visual field, but to the left is a flock of brightly-colored, fast-moving, heat-releasing butterflies, quickly moving towards it. They are more visually complex than the humans, and the constant process of loading and reloading their images with every flutter of every wing would be time-consuming.

Humans are capable of grouping visual stimuli into a whole, and saving time by not noticing quick changes in one moving item (which is why we see a blur instead of a fast-moving object). If a robot did not have this ability, it would constantly be reprocessing the image. This would be time-consuming, and also attention-consuming. The robot would become “obsessed” with the butterflies in a way, missing the humans altogether. It would need a visual attention system like humans have, both top-down and bottom up, to decide which visual information is most relevant.

4. Periacqueductal Grey Area- For Feeling Like Crap All the Time
The Scouter Drone’s weapons are advanced enough to fight these small humans, and so it does. It is partially damaged in a firefight, but escapes at the last minute, and the humans do not pursue. The damage is enough that it is risky to go all the way back to base, but there are some stations where it could get repairs on the way. The robot would need a system to know that it needs repairs, so as not to jeopardize the whole mission with injury that could easily be fixed.

In humans, we call this notification system “pain.” Pain is crippling, and might be seen as a sign of human weakness. But pain is what lets us know when we need a tune-up. The wrenching nature of it ensures that we pay attention to it. It is either severe or light, depending on how badly repairs are needed. A robot would need a similarly-intrusive mechanism, and it would need a pain “scale,” connected to its robotic “frontal lobe” so it would be able to decide whether the pain is bad enough to delay the mission and seek immediate medical attention.

5. Amygdaloid Nuclei- For Feeling Terrified and Traumatized
Remember the importance of memory? Scouter Drone would need a way to remember the encounter at Baskin-Robbins, but also would need to remember it as important. Above all the human nests it found, the Baskin-Robbins humans are the real deal. It would need to report this to its superiors immediately, so this fact would need to stand out in its memory banks. The memories of these humans would need to be robust and detailed, so they stand out.

Humans are capable of remembering deeply emotional events, more so than emotionally neutral ones. An almond-shaped region deep in our brain called the amygdala allows us to do this. The amygdala is what makes us feel fear, and it also washes the memory system with norepenephrine, a chemical that helps retrieve that fear when the event is remembered. In humans with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, these “fear memories” are especially bad. But fear and emotion are critical to memory storage, and critical to helping the Robot Governors decide which nest of humans to wipe out first. Scouter Drone would need to recall the events at Baskin-Robbins as relevant; tn short, the little robot would need to be traumatized.

6. Empathy- For Intrusive, Obsessive Guilt Complexes
For any of this to happen, though, Scouter Drone would need to care about its objective. As we have shown, we cannot simply rely on the robot “doing what it is programmed to do,” because in many situations the robot would need to defy its program in the immediate to achieve the objective later on. It would need to experience some deep, internal compulsion towards its objective. It should also understand its usefulness in future missions towards a larger objective, so it should care about itself. And it should, when necessary, understand that its fellow-bot is critical towards the objective, and care about others as well.

In other words, Scouter Drone H-4687 would need to experience a very human kind of empathy.

Maybe it can be a mainframe, some massive wireless network into which they are all plugged.
But robots need to be able to not only see the pain of its fellows, but feel it. Only then can they learn from the mistakes of other members and become a more “well-oiled machine.”

There’s a debate about the locus of empathy in the brain. Our thinking, judging frontal lobe plays a role, especially the prefrontal cortex. But empathy is all over the brain. When we watch others imitate our own actions, our right inferior parietal cortices--which is responsible for our own movements--are active. When we watch others sick or in pain, even experience it ourselves, in the very regions of our brains in which pain perception is located.

So for robots to destroy us, they would need logical skills. But their vision would need to be imperfect. And they would need to be emotionally-heated, pain-feeling, empathetic basket-cases.

Meet Ken Kelly, the man behind the metal-est Phoenix cover ever

Patrick McDermott — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 10:43:00 GMT

By now you've probably seen or heard that this week's Phoenix is the Metal Issue -- and it should come as a pleasant surprise for any genre loyalist to learn that our staff hand-picked a badass painting by the prolific Ken Kelly as the issue's cover art (above). Though this dude has crafted iconic images of everyone from Conan the Barbarian to Tarzan to Vampirella, his most recognizable work is a pair of album covers he painted of KISS for 1976's Destroyer and 1977's Love Gun. And well, it doesn't get much more fucking metal than that.

Born in Connecticut in 1946, Ken Kelly started making art as a toddler and has been going full-speed, brush in hand, ever since. After high school he spent four years with the marines, serving in both Guantanamo Bay and Vietnam, a tour that may have provided some real-life inspiration for his more gruesome depictions of war-torn realms. From there he studied with like-minded legend Frank Frazetta, who helped guide the talented artist towards a lively career creating book covers, comics, and album art. Kelly spent the next 30-some-odd years painting primitive beasts, noble heroes, and alien landscapes -- using his own vivid imagination to give life to some of fantasy's most original voices.

His work consistently blurs the lines between mythology, horror, and science fiction, and his affinity for using vibrant, eye-popping colors against dark backdrops has made for some seriously explosive art that, like your favorite thrash-metal anthem, pulses with static energy.

Most recently, Kelly painted some album art for prog-rockers (and apparent drug-fiends) Coheed and Cambria, giving their 2007 release, No World for Tomorrow, a classic sci-fi look.

So peep some of Kelly's metal-est work, and check out a video of him explaining why his original painting of KISS for Destroyer was deemed "too violent" by music industry execs.

Will Fall 2011 Be The Season for New Nerd TV? (tldr: Nope.)

Kelly Dickinson — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 06:58:00 GMT

With Doctor Who returning to TV with its midseason premiere and Chuck entering its final season, we're guaranteed some staple nerd fodder on TV this season; but, as usual, all eyes are on the fresh crop of pilots from the harvest. Though we're still mourning what's been chucked and shucked (Locke and Key would have been amazing, wouldn't it?), we must now set our sights on the spread on the table before us.

Perhaps there will be some surprises, and I would love to be proven wrong, but at least as far as genre TV goes, this season looks bleak.

[THE CW] RINGER

The Rundown: Sarah Michelle Gellar hides out in witness protection as her wealthy and missing twin sister and discovers, much to her surprise, that the life into which she's come might be more dangerous than the one she left behind.

What to Expect: The formula has drama and melodrama written all over it. That is to be expected, as it was picked up by the CW. Still, it has gotten some positive press since its Comic Con premiere for its great potential as a vehicle for an SMG comeback. And the action-adulty content sets it apart from the tween-centric programming of the CW as a whole.

[THE CW] SECRET CIRCLE

The Rundown: Attractive (if oddly mature-looking) teens in a small town have supernatural powers, and the hot new girl in town pulls them all together. We'll say Buffy and Vampire Diaries had a bastard child that was babysat by Charmed.

What to Expect: lots of attractive-person brooding and attractive-person sex and attractive-person magic. It's the CW. What else could it possibly entail?

[CBS] PERSON OF INTEREST

The Rundown: Imagine if Ben Linus from Lost and Jesus from The Passion of the Christ (or, Mel Gibson's: The Bible) teamed up to fight crime with a freakin' time machine by stopping it before it happens. JJ Abrams is serving up what looks to be a tangle of convoluted mystery, trying to recapture the can't-look-away allure of Lost.

What to Expect: The unexpected. Duh. It's JJ. Apparently, CBS is feeling pretty good about this, since they put it in the hot seat previously occupied by big-winner CSI. Reviews were kind of divided; some found the dialogue and plot way too heavy-handed, but others appreciated the intrigue.

[ABC] CHARLIE'S ANGELS

The Rundown: Why?

What to Expect: Bosley is a suave 20something? Again I say, why?

[ABC] ONCE UPON A TIME

The Rundown: Jennifer Morrison (House) stars in a show in which lost fairytale characters convene in the small Maine town of Storybrooke (GET IT?) where they suffer from amnesia about their true identities. The characters travel between the Real World and the Enchanted Forest.

What to Expect: On one hand, the formula sounds tried and tired. It could be mishandled so easily. But it's got a solid cast, Lost vets Edward Kitsis, Adam Horwits and Damon Lindelof at the helm, and the Goddess of Nerd TV the Most Honorable Jane Espenson (Buffy, Star Trek, Firefly, Gilmore Girls, Torchwood, BSG) is a Consulting Producer.

[ABC] PAN AM

The Rundown:- It will be like Mad Men, but in the sky, chronicling the sexy lives of the sexy pilots and sexy stewardesses in the 60s.

What to Expect: Anachronism.

[FOX] ALLEN GREGORY

The Rundown: Boy genius/pretensious asshole Allen Gregory grows up with his father and his father's life partner. Jonah Hill voices the titular character. The idea is that hilarity will ensue.

What to Expect: According to some early reviews, disgusting humor that will send the FCC into a shock. But the comedy is more character-based than pop-culture based, which, in shows like this, is a good thing. Though, that will only carry the show as it avoids using the same obvious jokes over and over.

[FOX] NEW GIRL

The Rundown: Zooey Deschanel plays herself, (ie a Manic Pixie Dream Girl) who moves in with three average guys she just met. Expect lots of indie music and hipster stereotypes.

What to Expect: Apparently the show's pilot won it the Most Exciting New Series at the Critics Choice Television Awards. Unfortunately, due to casting complications, the premise of the show was stomped on. Zooey was supposed to play the girl who moved in with three bro-ey best friends, but one of the best-friend actors dropped, and he is replaced in the second episode by a... new boy? So she's the Old New Girl? The Less New Girl? The Girl Whose Newness Has Worn Off Due to the Introduction of an Even Newer Character? Yikes.

[FOX] TERRA NOVA

The Rundown: Ill-fated high concept show about a family from the bleak future who travels to the dinsaur-y past in an attempt to save their bleak future. It has suffered from delays, rewrites, bad shooting conditions, and other difficulties, but it's finally coming to TV.

What to Expect: lots of pretty/fancy doodads and dinos, since it cost approximately seven bajillions dollars to make and is headed by His Honor Steven Speilberg. It's gotten years' worth of hype, so hopefully it will live up to the expectations; if not critically, then at least financially, since Fox jumped the gun and ordered the full 13 episodes.

[NBC] GRIMM

The Rundown: Two paranormal investigators fight of paranormal crimes in a world in which fairy tales are real. Though the formula has been done before a million times over, it's set in Portland! And that will make it fun, right?

What to Expect: a lot of the same stuff we've seen over and over. The initial reviews were lukewarm, but it was conceived by Angel and Buffy vet David Greenwalt; there might be hope for it still.

The Week in Geek, August 22-28: Needs Moar Puppets

Kelly Dickinson — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 21:29:00 GMT

Can you smell it, Bostonians? Can you smell it in the air? That, my friends, is the scent of the end of summer. Soon, the thousands of students we have been missing (or perhaps not missing) will return; everything will be open later, as summer hours will end; but so will the long days, warm nights and dreamy endlessness of summer.

For one of the last Weeks in Geeks of the summer, we've decided to pay tribute to one of the fringiest of fringe-fandoms: the Chinese-cinema-and-puppetry fanatics. We feel like we have been ignoring them, so if you are a fan of one of those things or both, then this week is truly your time to shine. We have three puppet events (which is exactly three times the number of puppet events we have had all summer) and four free films screening outdoors in Chinatown.

What could be a more fitting end to summer?

MONDAY 8.22

[book] Kevin Wilson reads from The Family Fang @ the Harvard Bookstore 7pm
Short-storyist-turned-novelist brings his first full-length effort to the Harvard Bookstore tonight. The Family Fang tells the story of the offspring of two eccentric performance artists who never quite jumped on the "proper social adjustment" bandwagon, given that they spent their childhoods participating in their parents' art. Their adulthood is as complicated as their relationship with their parents. Described as The Royal Tenenbaums meets Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolfe? this book is a must-read for any fan of poorly-adjusted adult children!

TUESDAY 8.23

[puppets] Puppeteer Nicola McEldowney @ Brookline Booksmith 2pm
In this family-friendly event hosted by the Smith, Nicola McEldowney brings Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories to life with puppets! Witness scientifically inaccurate but nonetheless entertaining explinations How the Whale Got His Throat and How the Leopard Got His Spots. This event is perfect for families with small children or adults genuinely interested in puppets.

WEDNESDAY 8.24

[puppets] Sir George and the Dragon @ Puppet Showplace Theatre Wed, Thurs + Sat, 10:30am + 1:30pm
If you missed Tuesday's Brookline-based, family-friendly puppet-fun, then worry not! The pupper showplace theatre has always got something puppet-y going on, and this week is no different. On Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday afternoons, you and your family and-or easily delighted friend-group can enjoy this fun tale of knights, princesses and dragons.

[bats] Superbat Film Screening @ Harvard Museum of Natural History 6pm
The only thing more badass than Batman would probably be the bat. The things fly around, hang upside down, and see by screaming in tones inaudible to the human ear. The Harvard Museum of Natural History presents Superbat, a 48-minute documentary about the life and times of the average bat.

THURSDAY 8.25

[puppets] Puppets on the Common presents Aesop's Fables @ Boston Public Garden 2:30pm
You know what this week's listings needs? More puppets. Forever. This Thursday, in the Boston Public Garden, Charlotte Dore of Rosalita's puppets will present some of Aesop's Fables. This return of the long but recently-MIA tradition of puppets on Boston Common is a much-welcome activity in the end-of-the-summer doldrums.

[dogs] Vincent McCaffrey reads The Slepyng Hound to Wake @ Brookline Booksmith
This week, Boston-local and mystery writer Vincent McCaffrey comes back home to present his new novel, The Slepyng Hound. Its a followup to his mystery title Hound, and tells the story of Henry Sullivan, book collector and part-time sleuth.

[dragons] Way of the Dragon @ the Chinatown Gate 8pm
The forces of Bruce Lee (awesome) and Chuck Norris (soooo awesome) star in this movie about a fighter from China who travels to Italy to fight the Mafia. It is difficult to imagine anything more badass. This subtitled film will be presented at the Chinatown Gate as part of the Films at the Gate summer series, which continues throughout the weekend.

FRIDAY 8.26

[tony stark] Iron Man 2 @ the Hatch Shell 7:29pm
RDJ returns as Tony Stark in this sequel to the 2008 superhero blockbuster. It's the last of the Hatch Shell's free summer film series, (and the first not-quite-for-the-younglings film to be featured) and also freaking Iron Man, so don't miss it

[film] Gallants @ the Chinatown Gate 8pm
Continuing the Films at the Gate series is Gallants. This tribute to old-school martial-arts film stars is set in the here-and-now, but nods to the classic action of the 60s and 70s. Aging martial artists take on a younger crowd and deal with the pangs of growing older in this acclaimed 2010 action-comedy.

SATURDAY 8.27

[con] ComiConn @ Stamford Plaza Hotel, Stamford, CT
ComiConn, not the be confused with Comic Con or ConnectiCon, is a comic convention in Connecticut that is wholly for the fans and by the fans. It is, as the name would imply, actually comics-based. There are workshops on drawing, storytelling and character-creating; this small, homegrown convention is perfect for and hardcore comic fan.

[jackie chan everywhere] The Young Master @ the Chinatown Gate 8pm
Jackie Chan is a young kung fu master (what else) who runs into trouble when his brother runs off to a gang; Chan's character goes off to track him down, but the police mistake him for his brother. Chaos and fighting ensue. This 1980 film has Chan written all over it--after all, he wrote it, directed, and starred.

SUNDAY 8.28

[pool of the dead] Dead Pool @ Flat Top Johnny's 8pm
Come celebrate billiards, music, and fringe culture (goth/industrial/new-wave/electro/retro/punk/EBM/synthpop/whatever) in this monthly event! Dead Pool takes place at Flat Top Johnny's in Kendall Square. The event is 18+ and first come, first serve. Exactly what a goth-based pool night will hold is vague, but according to the event site, "NO sporting events will be shown on the TVs during Dead Pool." It already looks promising.

[film + doc] The Kid + A Moment in Time @ the Chinatown Gate 8pm
This double-feature presents two nods to great Chinese cinema. The first is 1950s The Kid. Bruce Lee, in one of his earliest roles, plays an orphan boy, and Lee's father plays the rich factory owner who seems about to change the boy's fortunes. But things go wrong, as they tend to in film. A Moment in Time is a tribute to Chinese cinema and culture in San Francisco, and tells the story of immigrant life; how they brought the films they loved from their old homes to their new homes.

For more events, check out our geekified listings portal. If you've got any geek-related events you'd like us to post, contact us! Follow us on Twitter @LaserOrgy! Follow our RSS feed! Tell your friends!

The Week in Geek, August 15-23: Bad Daddies, Giant Killers, and Sparklepires

David Eisenberg — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 20:08:00 GMT

Unlike the green line blowing right by your stop while you wait in the rain, the handbasket we're in ain't exactly going express to hell. We've got a few pit stops along the way. Nerds, dweebs, and inbetweeners, you better get ready, because this is a week of culture. With art shows and book readings, music, gorillas, German potlucks and Twilight, your bonds ‘bout to get straight diversified. By week's end, you'll be lighting up a Marlboro and muttering between panted breaths, "That was fantasic!" Except you'll say it in German.

Cheer up, brothers and sisters, because this is the week in geek.

MONDAY 8.15

[reading] Ben Loory + Steve Himmer, Stories of the Surreal @ Brookline Booksmith 7pm
Why read about reality when you live in it? Authors Ben Loory and Steve Himmer are working to reignite the wick of imagination in their new books dealing with monsters, talking televisions and landscape altering billionaires, and will be reading from them at the Brookline Booksmith tonight.

TUESDAY 8.16

[musical] Bad Daddy @ Oberon
The evolutionary gap between two generations is always enormous. Bad Daddy is a musical about the inevitable dissidence between young and old. The Boomers don't get it - The Millennials don't appreciate it.

WEDNESDAY 8.17

[film/comedy] Rifftrax Live: Jack the Giant Killer @ Regal Fenway
We've all seen bad movies and wished the guys from Mystery Science Theater 3000 were there. Now that 1962's corny epic "Jack the Giant Killer" has found its way into their crosshairs, you can be there with them. Bring tomatoes.

THURSDAY 8.18

[festival] Greenfest 2011 @ Boston City Hall
This isn't altogether geeky, so we apologize, but an estimated 75,000 Bostonians will be at Greenfest at City Hall, which will feature live performers and fitness demos. The fitness demos will at the very least get you into shape so you can properly live vicariously through your Create-a-player in Madden '12 when it comes out in a couple of weeks.

FRIDAY 8.19

[sparkling] Twilight Convention @ Hyatt Regency Cambridge
The dude whose name is slipping our collective minds with the dumb hair, played a vampire in that movie about love and some other guy whose abs left an entire theaters' worth of seats damp by credits' end, uhh, ummm. Yeah, him. He won't be at the Twilight convention at the Hyatt, but fuck, you won't know the difference.

[death/life] The Beyond @ Coolidge Corner Theatre
Oh, the humanity! Check out the mind numbing, hellacious gore that could only come from a film made by horror mastermind/probably-a-totally-fucked-up-guy-in-real-life Lucio Fulci at Coolidge Corner to celebrate its 30th anniversary.

[double feature] The Ghost and Mrs. Muir + Dragonwyck - the films of Joseph Mankiewicz
The complete Jospeh Mankiewicz presented by the Harvard Film Archive will be like MST3K, except that his movies were good, so there's no need for snarky commentary from space dwellers. "The Ghost and Mrs. Muir" and "Dragonwyck" will make for a classic double feature.

SATURDAY 8.20

[art] Passion and Precision in the Age of Revolution @ The MFA
"Passion and Precision in the Age of Revolution" sounds like the answer someone who just got dumped doesn't want to hear after asking, "Babe, what does he have that I don't?" Thankfully, it's not that. It's the name of an awesome art exhibit at the MFA that showcases brilliant works of both romanticism and neo-classicism.

[festival] Jamaica Plain Music Festival @ Jamaica Pond
The Jamaica Plain Music Festival is a cool spot to check out local talent you might not otherwise stumble upon. You're tired of this sick consumerist culture and totally want to get in touch with the struggling locals who are just trying so damn hard to make it.

[culture] Medieval German Festival @ Charlton, MA
Guten tag, bitches! It's time to bust out the liederhausen, schnitzels, and bier for a day of being a bona fide stereotype. Or just go to the Medieval German Festival to celebrate a different culture. Tschüss!

[reading/play]PlayCes presents Baby With the Bathwater @ UFORGE Gallery
Also in Jamaica Plain is a reading of "Baby with the Bathwater," a play that challenges traditional gender roles with a satirical whip.

[film/hilarious]The Room @ Coolidge Corner Theatre [midnight]
The Room is simultaneously the best and worst movie ever made, which actually makes it modern art and the more you laugh at it, the more its intellectual merit grows like a tumor. Coolidge Corner knows this and is offering a midnight screening for you art junkies.

SUNDAY 8.21

[monkey] Kiki the Gorilla turns 30 @ Franklin Park Zoo
Kiki the gorilla turns 30, and since you just read our kickass monkey issue, you know that celebrating this beast's birthday is a must. Go check her out at the Franklin Park Zoo. Seriously, last person to ditch her party was hostage atop the Empire State Building. She likes banana cake.

[concert] Bob Dylan @ House of Blues
Bob Dylan's lyrics make even less sense when you can't understand half a word he's saying. That doesn't mean seeing him shouldn't be on your bucket list though. He's an American icon. Rule of thumb: when telling people you saw Dylan, always subtract 10 years from the date you actually saw him when going into details.

For more events, check out our geekified listings portal. If you've got any geek-related events you'd like us to post, contact us! Follow us on Twitter @LaserOrgy! Follow our RSS feed! Tell your friends!

The Week in Geek August 8-14: Distract Yourself from Potential Economic Turmoil

Kelly Dickinson — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 21:11:00 GMT

It's a bleak, bleak week in the US, Laser Orgians. With the economy taking a nose-dive and the threat of double-dip recession (which sounds more like JP Licks flavor of the month than a real thing but, woefully, it is the latter) it is time to distract our burdened minds with some good-old-fashioned escapism.

This Week in Geek will use movies and theatre to help you escape to a simpler time- be it the 60s, the 70s, medieval times (plus the 80s) or 1806 (plus the 90s.) If you prefer sobering reality of isolation of and stifling awkwardness that is modern social interaction, you could attempt the "brainy mixer" event. No matter how isolating and awkward, at least it's not speed dating.

All Week

[lyrical jams] National Poetry Slam @ All Over Boston All The Time
If we had included the full list of poetry slam events going on this week, this page would be infinitely long. This year, the National Poetry Slam is taking place in our fair city, so the festivities are aplenty and going down all over town, from Thursday through Saturday. Check out any of these events for the smooth and soulful, the touching and hilarious.

Monday 8.8

[class act] Breakfast at Tiffany's @ Regal Beagle 10pm
In a world where the trashiest celebrities get the most media attention, we can only fondly look back on the golden age of Hollywood, where the classy and the glamorous were one and the same. This event at Regal Beagle celebrates the classiest gal Hollywood has ever seen--Audrey Hepburn, of course--with a screening of Breakfast at Tiffany's and a tasting of their Holly Golightly cocktails.

Tuesday 8.9

[double feature] Cape Fear @ Brattle Theatre 3:30pm, 7:30pm
This week, the Brattle is screening two classic films scored by Bernard Hermann. The first of these is the 1962 original Cape Fear, a classic drama about violent revenge starring Gregory Peck. The next film is somewhat different in tone.
[double feature] On Dangerous Ground @ Brattle Theatre 5:30, 9:30pm
On Dangerous Ground is a forgotton gem of the melodramatic film-noir genre. Though critics were divided by it when it first came out, the musical talents of Bernard Hermann were uncontroversial and undeniable.

Wednesday 8.10

[MBTales] T Plays III, presented by Mill 6 Collaborative Theatre
The MBTA has gotten more than a little artistic attention lately, has it not? Who would have thought that a somewhat-seedy, more-than-somewhat-unreliable form of public transportation would join the ranks of Yoko Ono and Edie Sedgwich as a great artistic muse? In any case, this weekend the Mill 6 Collaborative presents a series of short plays on the T in an interactive theatre extravaganza.

Thursday 8.11

[reading] Lev Grossman reads from The Magician King @ Brookline Booksmith 7pm
Lev Grossman's The Magicians has been described as "Harry Potter for grown-ups," which is convenient (because most Harry Potter fans are now grown-ups or almost there) but also does a bit of disservice to what is actually a great but sobering novel about magic and reality on its own. This month, Grossman releases the much-anticipated followup to his first great effort, and he returns home to Boston to read from and sign this next great book.

[theatre] Bad Habit Theatre Presents Arcadia @ Boston Center for the Arts 7:30pm
The Bad Habit Theatre group presents this adaptation of Arcadia, one of the most acclaimed plays by one of the most acclaimed playwrights of our time. It tells the story preteen math genius who lived in an English country house in the early 1800s, and the intellectuals who live there in the present day.

Friday 8.12

[nonawkward speed dating] Brains, Beers and Babes- Smart Socialization @ Meadhall, 6:30
While we cannot promise, as the website seems to imply, that this brainy mixer/alternative to speed dating will not be awkward, we can promise that there will be beer, which has been known to decrease perceptual awareness of anything awkward. We'll drink to that.

[film] Better Watch Out @ Harvard Film Archive 10pm
What happens when a scientist tries to get a telepathic blind woman to talk to a serial killer who is trapped in a coma? Director Monte Hellman attempts to answer that question in his slasher-with-a-twist-film, Better Watch Out. This month, the Harvard film archive is screening a whole crop of Hellman's best movies, and a complete list of them can be found through the link above.

[film + the undead] Army of Darkness @ Coolidge Corner Theatre 11:59pm Fri + Sat
Watch Ash take on medieval deadites in this classic tale of slaughter and laughter. The Coolidge Corner presents the third and final installation of Sam Raimi's much-loved Evil Dead trilogy as part of their @fter Midnight series.

Saturday 8.13

[food] Lebanese Music + Food Festival 12pm
Lebanese food? We're all ears. Backgammon tournament? Now we have to go. JP celebrates Lebanese heritage with its annual Lebanese Music and Food Festival by Our Lady of the Cedars of Lebanon. It's our only outdoor event this week, but totally worth going outside for.

[camp] Skatetown USA @ Brattle Theatre 9:30pm
This critically-panned, financially-flopping, unintentionally-hilarious film about rollar disco is screening this weekend at the Brattle. It stars Patrick Swayze on skates, and the chick who played Macia Brady in a slutty ensemble. It has been called a 70s microcosm, which may or may not be accurate, but it encapsulates the short-lived-fad within a short-lived-fad that was rollar disco. A later interview with Maureen McCormick reveals that everyone did coke on the set of the film, which might explain a whole lot.

Sunday 8.14

[food] Boston Food Swap @ Space with a Soul 2pm
Do you have an excess of homemade pickled beets you've been looking to get rid of? Then head down to the Boston Food Swap! Trade pickles and preserves, the foraged or what-have-you in this celebration of sustainability and deliciousness.

Post-Apocalyptic Update: Apes Have Now Conquered Hollywood

James Fitzpatrick — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 20:32:00 GMT

Well, it turns out that the Monkey Issue was a good idea after all; Rise of the Planet of the Apes actually opened to rave reviews. Even after the five other Apes movies in the original series and Tim Burton's lackluster re-boot in 2001, audiences still want their fill of ape-on-human action. The film opened to $54 million dollars- that's $20 million more than the top-end of what was predicted. In fact, it trounced last weekend's winner Cowboys and Aliens, which dropped 56% of its previous gross to earn only $15.7 million. But Apes' rampage didn't stop there. It also proved that Ryan Reynolds is not a box office draw (for the second time this summer) with The Change-Up opening to only $13.5 million. Who knew the movie would be such a big hit? Well, nobody.

The truth is no one really wanted to make it. Peter Chernin, former News Cooperation president, had a lot of trouble attaching a director to the project. The laundry list of rejections came from Robert Rodriguez (Once Upon a Time in Mexico), Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker), the Hughes brothers (Book of Eli), etc. However, Fox and Chernin Studios (Apes is their first film) continued to fight for the project, eventually signing Rupert Wyatt, who's only ever made one theatrically-released film, The Escapist. But the cards began to fall into place, as Chernin signed on James Franco (127 Hours), Freida Pinto (Slumdog Millionaire), and the Peter Jacksons' WETA workshop to create the lifelike digital apes.

Speculation still swirled that the film would end up being a bomb (in the bad way, not like "it's da bomb!"). As recently as July, Franco seemed to be apologizing for the film in an interview with Playboy: "They haven't shown me the movie yet, so I don't know what the result is. I did reshoots, and it sounds to me the final movie will be different from the screenplay, which had a lot of character development. The movie seems to be more action now". In a combination of both selflessness and hubris, he at least tried to blame the expected bad press on his own detractors, "But people still have it out for me, so they're going to go after the movie".

Surprisingly though, the reviews haven't been anything close to what Franco predicted. Ty Burr from the Boston Globe, who describes the film as "part Frankenstein, part Spartacus, and part Rebel Without a Cause but With an Extra Chromosome'', actually predicts that "you may find yourself thoroughly emotionally invested in a drama about a downtrodden minority who unite behind a charismatic leader and rebel against their thoughtless overlords". Now that doesn't sound like a B-movie about monkeys smashing shit at all. Rolling Stone's Peter Travers goes so far as to suggest that Andy Serkis, the man behind LOTR's Gollum and 2005's King Kong, should be nominated for an Oscar for his role as Caesar, the lead ape. Serkis himself seems to be developing a certain bravado for his motion-capture niche: "I think actors are afraid that if they're not seen on-screen, then that's a real problem. But for me, that's never been an issue because I love filling a role that, like I say, transforms [me]".

Apes has a certified 81% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. And the lightening quick word of mouth reviews kept the film from slowing down after it's opening night. So, what're you waiting for? Get out of this week-long humidity and get some schadenfreude joy out of seeing sunny San Francisco taken over by vengeful genetically-enhanced super apes.

Life In 95 Minutes: Ridley Scott's New Documentary Records One Day Worldwide

Katie Lannan — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 21:31:00 GMT

Time capsules are primarily produced as elementary school class projects, leaving history in the hands of archivists most concerned with the preservation of their Pokemon cards and A+ spelling tests -- not necessarily the best way to provide an accurate picture of life at a given moment.

To get it right, you need a grander scale and better technology, which is exactly the combination director Kevin Macdonald and producer Ridley Scott had on their side when they set out to create the user-generated documentary Life In A Day.

Macdonald and Scott asked YouTube users to record their lives on one day, July 24, 2010, in hopes of getting enough responses to pull togetether a feature-length film illustrating the human experience. Inspired by the World War II-era social archive project Mass Observation, their guidelines were simple: tell us your story, tell us what you love and fear, and show us what's in your pockets.

Those twenty-four hours of life generated an astounding 4,500 hours of footage, submitted in over 80,000 video clips from 140 nations. There's life milestones like marriage proposals and adventures like skydiving, but much of the 95-minute film focuses on the ordinary routines we all share, the rituals that are the same in Boston or in Bali, like watching the sunset or commuting to work.

Ordinary, but not boring. When looking at scenes such as a worker's commute, the editing team tried to find a way to highlight how experiences could be simultaneously similar and diverse across the globe.

"Obviously, maybe one of those journeys is banal," Macdonald said in discussion with National Geographic, "but a hundred of them intercut showing all the different commuters, all the different pedestrians, all the different modes of transport, from bicycles to foot to trains to chauffeur driven cars ... suddenly becomes really fascinating."

Critics and audiences seem to agree so far. Acclaimed at festivals from Sundance to SXSW, Life In A Day has been positively received by 97% of critics.

Locally, the only place to catch Life in A Day is the Coolidge Corner Theatre, where it opens August 5. The film also hits screens in Revere and Worcester that same day, and you can request the film at your local cinema here, with the form at the bottom of the page. Or check out the full footage archive on the Life In A Day YouTube channel, but be prepared to give up at least a day in your life poring through the thousands of clips.

The Shark Week in Geek, August 1-7: It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Kelly Dickinson — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 15:54:00 GMT

It's finally here. People count down to this for months. As soon as the weather starts to change, it's fresh in everyone's minds -- the ritual, the camaraderie, the friends and families gathering together, all to celebrate overlarge cartilaginous fish with rows and rows of flesh-ripping teeth. Yes, ladies and gentlemen: it's Shark Week. It's one of those television events that can immobilize the entire country slack-jawed in front of the television set -- sorta like the Super Bowl, but it lasts for six whole days and is somewhat educational.

As if that doesn't make this week amazing by itself, there are plenty of awesome things going on in Boston this week, too. There are the usual concerts and readings and screenings, plus a couple cons, comedy, and roller derby. Meanwhile, the Ben & Jerry's Truck is rolling through Boston for the entire month of August, which means free ice cream erryday. The truck can be stalked via Twitter -- we all scream for ice-cream-social media.

MONDAY 8.1

[dude] The Big Lebowski Party + Screening @Coolidge Corner Theatre 7pm
Every year, the folks at the Coolidge throw a screening party to celebrate this Coen Brothers classic in all its slobbish glory. While Laser Orgy does not officially condemn or condone participation in the Big Lebowski Challenge, we can guarantee that this party will feature fun of equal or greater caliber. There will be prizes, games and other pleasantries, and, of course, a screening.

[reading] Alice LaPlante Turn of the Mind @ Brookline Booksmith 7pm
Dementia-stricken Jennifer White, a retired surgeon, is accused of murdering her closest and oldest friend. Dr. White must find a way to piece together her side of the story when she can barely piece together her own consciousness. Such is the plot of Turn of the Mind, the debut novel of Alice LaPlante -- who comes to the ‘Smith tonight to answer all your burning questions.

[music] Death Cab for Cutie + Frightened Rabbit @ Bank of America Pavillion 8pm
Meanwhile, at the Waterfront, Death Cab and Frightened Rabbit jam. Relive your old angst and alternate between standing/staring pensively into space and dancing however people would dance at a Death Cab concert. Do people dance at Death Cab concerts? Be sure to let us know.

[double] Vertigo + North by Northwest Screenings @ Brattle Theatre Mon + Tues
This double-feature of two very different Hitchcock films--one dark and romantic; the other, a lighter chase film. Jimmy Stewart and Cary Grant star in Vertigo and North by Northwest, respectively.

WEDNESDAY 8.3

[signing] Jim Butcher @ Harvard Coop 7pm
Before the recent crop of supernatural-crime-busting procedurals, there was Jim Butcher's Dresden Files, in which PI Harry Dresden investigates crimes in an alternate Chicago. This week at the Harvard Coop, Butcher will be reading from Ghost Story, the 13th installation in the series.

THURSDAY 8.4

[cyberpunk'd] William Gibson @ Harvard Coop 7pm
We've come a long, long way from Neuromancer -- William Gibson's 1984 cyberpunk tour de force -- but the Sprawl still stretches on as far as the eye can see. Gibson graces Boston this week to celebrate the paperback release of his novel Zero History, which picks up where Pattern Recognition and Spook Country left off.

FRIDAY 8.5

[tokin'] Doug Benson @ Wilbur Theatre 7:30pm
In his 2008 film Super High Me, comedian/filmmaker Doug Benson set out on a Spurlock-esque quest to discover the effects of a month-long high. Subsequently, he had a show The Benson Interruption that aired on Comedy Central, sending D.A.R.E. officers nationwide into paroxysms of despair.

[cg disney magic, part 1] Tangled Free @ Hatch Shell 7:59pm
Part of the Free Friday Flicks Series, the Hatch Shell is presenting Tangled. This 50th Disney animated feature tells the classic tale of Rapunzel with a twist involving sassy heroines and talking animals. The movie starts at sundown, which is 7:59 on Friday.

[SHARKS] JAWS @ Somerville Theatre 8pm Fri + Sat
What with it being Shark Week and all, the other option for family movie night would be Jaws at the Somerville Theatre. Experience the move that made aquaphobes of an entire generation!

[louie, louie, louie, louie] Louis CK @ South Shore Music Circus 9pm
This past month, Louis CK was nominated for not one but three Emmys -- two for his FX hit Louie, and one for a stand-up special. This week the Bay State-raised comic returns for several New England shows, including this Cohasset gig.

[awww] Critters @ Coolidge Corner Theatre 11:59pm
What do you do when a horde of furry and hideous alien creatures ascends upon your family farm? This cult-classic film attempt to answer that common question. (Hint: the answer likely involves shotguns.) Part of the Coolidge Corner Theatre's @fter Midnight series, Critters is screening for its 25th anniversary.

Supernatural Convention @ Hyatt Regency Cambridge Fri, Sat + Sun
Supernatural is one of those shows that always seems to fall of the radar of scifi mainstream, despite having six seasons on the CW. So grab your Colt (replica) and hop in your Impala (which will probably not be allowed in the Hyatt) and get ready to fight some evil (or watch people talk about it). There will probably not be any evil allowed in the Hyatt, either.

Mysterium, Myst Convention @ Embassy Suites Boston/Waltham Fri, Sat + Sun
Myst is more than a game -- it is was a surprise hit that became a pop-culture phenomenon, uniting players with games and novels. Mysterium is a for-fan-by-fan convention in Waltham that celebrates the game and the subculture that it has gathered since the 1993 release of the first game.

SATURDAY 8.6

[hellcats on wheels] Boston Derby Dames Playoffs @ Wilmington, MA 4pm
Speaking of fringe subcultures: the Derby Dames are competing in the Playoffs this weekend at the Aleppo Shriners Auditorium in Wilmington, MA. There will be ridiculous nicknames, body-slams, obstacles, and broken bones -- in other words, all the ingredients for the perfect Saturday late-afternoon-to-early-evening transitional activity.

[cg disney magic, part 2] Toy Story 3 @ South Garden sundown
The last instillation of this epic and touching trilogy that just happens to be about toy screens this weekend at the South Garden in conjunction with the Prudential Center. You'll laugh, cry, and then laugh some more at this story about friendship and loyalty that everyone in the world except Armond White loves.

For more events, check out our geekified listings portal. If you've got any geek-related events you'd like us to post, contact us! Follow us on Twitter @LaserOrgy! Follow our RSS feed! Tell your friends!