Over at Tor.com today, I tackle the first wave of this year’s genre pilots coming out of pilot season, including something so awesome/hilarious I can’t even speak of it with a straight face: they’re making Push into a TV series.

On the surface? Smart. A small group of photogenic people running from a shady government and hooking up with a series of semi-famous guest stars has proven to be sustainable for at least four decent seasons.

However, this pilot has not been picked up by a network yet. I am wondering if maybe they aren’t sure how to handle the casting of some of the characters, since our underage heroine was a little underdressed, and that will get super-awkward every week at 9pm, you know?

ALSO THEY ARE MAKING HAWAII FIVE-O AGAIN. WHOSE RESPONSIBLE THIS.

Up at Fantasy Magazine, I talk about the implications of Avatar winning the Golden Globe. (Spoiler alert: the people who vote for these awards seem really susceptible to marketing.)

However, for purposes of the article, I operated under the assumption that these special effects will change the game in the way Cameron bragged they would, and thus might be employed to better effect in stories that don’t totally blow, and suggested two. One of them is a remake request that will come as no surprise to anyone who reads Questionable Taste Theatre, but I’m dead serious when I say: SOMEONE WHO IS NOT JAMES CAMERON IS WELCOME TO MAKE THAT. (That someone also should not be Michael Bay. Or M. Night. Or most people. Ugh, just give it to Peter Jackson.)

Anecdote! Cameron kept inviting other important directors to play with the equipment (hey-oooo) while he was in pre-production, ostensibly to share this important information but clearly to brag about how awesome he was and try to distract people from his screenplay. Those invited included Peter Jackson, which has to take some balls, considering that out of all the criticism of the Lord of the Rings movies, “shitty special effects” was really not one. Plus, Jackson knows how to do a subtle effect well, JAMES. (Bilbo lunging for the ring in Rivendell: never not creepy.)

So, two things about this year’s Golden Globes:

1. The wrong people won a lot of important awards.
2. It rained.

That second thing disrupted the event in a way that the horrible results seemed not to, which means that people were running through the drizzle with the sort of look generally reserved for the otters you see in the oil-spill commercials. Style this year was largely related to how nonchalantly you could hold an umbrella.

We’ll get to that.

“It’s dial-up madness in here!”
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I have mixed feelings about Tim Burton’s recent work, and mixed feelings about this Alice adaptation (really, you need an actress and the first thing you think is “Anne Hathaway”?), but the guy knows how to give good image.

Click to enlarge; it’s totally worth it. A little royal portrait, a little Last Supper – I can dig it.

At Tor.com today, I talk about major changes for Spider-Man 4, none of which sound good.

On the other hand, if you had told me after Batman and Robin that someone was making another Batman movie, I would have asked to slap that person in the face for merely thinking such a thing. And then we got two pretty awesome Batman movies. The moral here: it’s a good thing I am rarely within slapping distance of people. The other moral: sometimes grinding a franchise into the ground means you are free to start over with something better.

In case anyone was smart enough to avoid Batman and Robin, and are foolish enough to do so now, consider this a primer/warning; a brief photo essay of the sorts of faces you will make while watching this film, presented without commentary.

I will say this for Batman and Robin: I laugh every time.