March 10, 2010 | 2:08 pm

Corey Haim—Actor, Fanboy

Posted by Adam Wills

(From left) Jamison Newlander (Alan Frog), Corey Haim (Sam Emerson) and Corey Feldman (Edgar Frog) in "The Lost Boys."

Corey Haim, best known for his part in “The Lost Boys,” died early Wednesday morning after collapsing at his mother’s home in North Hollywood. He was 38.

Haim, a comic fanboy early in life, shared that trait with his “Lost Boys” character Sam Emerson. The role also paired him for the first time with Corey Feldman, who played Edgar Frog, a teen who worked with his brother Alan in their parents’ comic book shop. “Lost Boys” marked the beginning of a lifelong collaboration between Haim and Feldman that stretched from teen-oriented ’80s comedies like “License to Drive” and “Dream a Little Dream” to the recent reality TV series “The Two Coreys.”

From MTV:

Fans will likely recall that Haim’s character was given a stack of vampire-themed comics (including some issues of Marvel’s “Tomb of Dracula” series) to learn the ins and outs of their California town’s bloodsucker dilemma. But that wasn’t the only crossover for Haim with the comics world.

In 2008, Haim’s “Lost Boys” character made his comics debut in “The Lost Boys: Reign of Frogs,” a four-issue comic book series published by Wildstorm. The miniseries served as a bridge between the original 1987 film and its sequel, 2008’s “Lost Boys: The Tribe.”

However, other than retaining the name, Haim’s character in the comic bore little resemblance to the real-life actor, as the publisher reportedly had issues securing the likeness rights for Haim to use in the series.

From the two Coreys’ first on-screen meeting in “The Lost Boys”...

To the hidden ending of “Lost Boys: The Tribe”

0 Comments — Leave your comment

March 9, 2010 | 5:26 pm

Rumor: Sacha Baron Cohen in MIB 3 Talks

Posted by Adam Wills

Columbia is in talks with Sacha Baron Cohen for the third Men in Black film, according to industry rumor picked up by horror blog Bloody Disgusting:

Columbia Pictures is officially having conversations regarding their third entry in the Men in Black franchise as we’re being told by industry insiders that in addition to Jonah Hex cowboy Josh Brolin likely (still unconfirmed) to star, they’ve shown strong interest in both Sacha Baron Cohen (Sweeney Todd, Bruno) and Jemaine Clement (“The Flight of the Conchords”) for a character named “Yaz” (a new agent?). Neither are locked, this should be taken strictly as rumor for now. Etan Cohen (Tropic Thunder, Igor, Idiocracy) wrote the screenplay. Shooting was originally rumored to begin this spring. The 1997 Men in Black grossed nearly $600m worldwide, while its 2002 sequel took in $440m. Why so long for another sequel? Who knows!

0 Comments — Leave your comment

February 1, 2010 | 3:25 pm

The high price of unobtainium

Posted by Adam Wills

SETI Institute’s senior scientist Seth Shostak recently took on some implausible elements in “Avatar” on Space.com, most notably the feasibility of mining that precious mineral worth $20 million a kilogram—unobtainium. It’s not worth the expense, he says:

I do want to note something about the premise, because Tinseltown has used the idea of interstellar mining over and over. Simply put: Is there some naturally occurring element or compound that would really be worth hauling back to Earth from another star system?

This question was addressed two centuries ago, when England began to send people (mostly low-grade criminals) to Australia. This population needed something to export to London to earn foreign currency, and they settled on wool. This was not because the Aussies are particularly fond of sheep (although New Zealanders have plenty of jokes about that), but only because wool is very expensive per pound. Sending it back to Europe was expensive, and Australian wool would only be competitive in the London markets if the shipping costs were a small fraction of the product value. Even in the day of wooden ships, this criterion was met.

Now let’s consider the tariff for sending a kilo of unobtainium back to Earth. Our descendents in this film have some pretty nifty looking rockets, and we hear shortly after the opening titles that the trip to Pandora takes only about five years (as measured on-board). Well, even the nearest other star system, Proxima Centauri, is 4.3 light-years from where you’re sitting. That means that transport between Earth and Pandora occurs at 85% the speed of light or more!

Getting a kilogram of unobtainium (or anything else) up to that speed, and then decelerating it at the end of the ride, takes at least 1017 joules of energy. That’s freshman physics. What’s the cost of that energy? Our cheapest joules are supplied by your local utility company at about ten cents a kilowatt hour, or 36 million joules per dollar. At that rate, the price of shipping a kilo of unobtainium works out to $3 billion, or — assuming 2% annual inflation between now and 150 years from now — $50 billion in 2154 c.e. dollars (that’s the year in which the film takes place).

In other words, the transport costs for unobtainium exceed the value of the merchandise by a factor of more than 2,500!

So that settles that. You are not about to pay $60,000 to Amazon as the shipping charge for this month’s best seller. Interstellar mining — and the affront to natives it might imply — should be tactfully removed from Hollywood’s box of tropes.

0 Comments — Leave your comment

January 11, 2010 | 6:21 pm

Raimi out, ‘Spider-Man 4’ no more

Posted by Adam Wills

Sorry true believers, but “Spider-Man 4” is toast. Sam Raimi has pulled out of the project, saying he couldn’t make the 2011 release date, Deadline Hollywood reports. Sony plans to reboot Peter Parker back to high school with a new director and cast for summer 2012.

Script problems over which villains to use in the film led to clashes between Raimi and Sony, according to the Hollywood Reporter—Raimi wanted to use Vulture (John Malkovich?) while Sony was pushing to include Black Cat, possibly eyeing Anne Hathaway for the role.

From Deadline Hollywood:

The events that led to today’s shocking decision to scrap Spider-Man 4 can be traced to mid-December when I saw a December 11th email alerting the pic’s special effects crew that the fourquel would not be starting as planned “but Sam Raimi has story issues [that] need to be resolved before we are ready to shoot”. At that point, it wasn’t well known that the Spider-Man franchise director helming the 4th installment had huge problems with the script that has run through screenwriters Jamie Vanderbilt, David Lindsay-Abaire, and Gary Ross. I was told Sam Raimi had been very vocal inside Sony that he “hated” it. I broke this story on January 5th, and reported that Raimi and Sony were anxiously waiting for still another version from screenwriter Alvin Sargent, who wrote Spidey 2 & 3 and is married to Spidey franchise producer Laura Ziskind. “It is unlikely that May 11, 2011, date will be made,” a Sony insider told me that day.

According to a studio release, Sony is going ahead with a script by James Vanderbilt to be produced by Columbia, Marvel Studios and Avi Arad and Laura Ziskin. Sony co-chair and Amy Pascal and Raimi struck a conciliatory tone:

“A decade ago we set out on this journey with Sam Raimi and Tobey Maguire and together we made three Spider-Man films that set a new bar for the genre. When we began, no one ever imagined that we would make history at the box-office and now we have a rare opportunity to make history once again with this franchise. Peter Parker as an ordinary young adult grappling with extraordinary powers has always been the foundation that has made this character so timeless and compelling for generations of fans. We’re very excited about the creative possibilities that come from returning to Peter’s roots and we look forward to working once again with Marvel Studios, Avi Arad and Laura Ziskin on this new beginning,” said Amy Pascal, co-chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment.

“Working on the Spider-Man movies was the experience of a lifetime for me. While we were looking forward to doing a fourth one together, the studio and Marvel have a unique opportunity to take the franchise in a new direction, and I know they will do a terrific job,” said Sam Raimi.

Raimi is now free pursue his previously announced projects, including a “World of Warcraft” film or an adaptation of Dennis Lehane’s novel “The Given Day.”

0 Comments — Leave your comment

January 6, 2010 | 4:19 pm

How do you say ‘wormhole’ in Hebrew?

Posted by Adam Wills

Why is English the go-to language for science fiction, even when it isn’t the writer’s mother tongue?

Israeli-born sci-fi writer Lavie Tidhar skipped an opportunity for “shameless self-promotion” on World SF News to mull this phenomenon, citing as example French, Finnish and Dutch sci-fi authors who are choosing to write in English. Tidhar, author of the English-language novel “The Bookman”—due out in the UK and Australia tomorrow, summer/fall-ish in the United States—uses his editorial (which Charlie Jane Anders blogged at io9) to look at the English-centric world of science fiction through a Hebrew lens:

So… why English? I ask the question not for myself but because a common argument – across languages, in fact, since I’ve heard it expressed with regards to any non-English language, from Hebrew to French – is that English is the language of science fiction.

What do they mean by that? Why can’t science fiction be written in other languages?

My own view, of course, is that this is (to borrow a term from that great showman, P.T. Barnum) complete hokum. Yet it is so prevalent, and I see it repeated again and again. Partially it is the terminology of science fiction – anything from wormhole to ansible, from warp drive to FTL, from “plugged in” to BEM to the “science fiction” itself. In Hebrew, for instance, science fiction was initially called mada dimyoni, or “imaginary science”, before being replaced with mada bidyoni, or “fictional science”, then shorthanded conversationally to madab, the sort of acronym Hebrew likes so much. English is the language of science fiction! And there’s something in that – when you even have to argue about which word to use for the English “telephone” or “computer”…

But consider.

One of the nicest words Hebrew doesn’t use is “sach-rachok” (try pronouncing the ‘ch’ as that sort of deep-in-the-throat sound). It means something like “speak-distance” and was an early word proposed, by that most venerable institute, the Academy of the Hebrew Language, for “telephone”.

Of course, it also sounded a bit silly, and no one wanted to use it, and Hebrew ended up borrowing the word “telephone” and making quite nice use of it after all.

But see, that’s the beauty of language – any language. Not just the act of borrowing (what is also called ‘loan words’) – the way English borrowed “amen” or “cabal” or “sack” from the Hebrew, or borrowed “algebra” and “bazaar” from Arabic, or “chocolate” from Nahuatl…

Languages always evolve, and they do so by borrowing, and by modifying, and by adapting, and by making up new words (neologisms). English does a lot of it… and so does any other language. Being a speaker of Bislama (the pidgin English – and now, sometimes, creole – of the South Pacific islands of Vanuatu), I was delighted recently to come across a new verb – gugelem. Which means, of course, to google! (as in, bae mi gugelem – I’ll google it).

The argument about vocabulary really doesn’t hold. Indeed, it should be one of the most fun parts of writing science fiction in another language – coining new terms or transforming existing ones to create a new language of science fiction.

And yet…

Here I am, “guilty” just as much for writing in English.

The thing is, I do love English. And by writing in English I can assure myself not only more readers, but also – and this is rather crucial, alas – better pay for my work. But I continue, albeit rarely, to write in Hebrew for the pure joy of it – short stories such as “Shira” (later translated and published in English in The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction & Fantasy, ed. Ellen Datlow), or “Chalomot Be’aspamia” (translated and published, as “Daydreams” in Apex Digest) – I even wrote an entire book in Hebrew, with Nir Yaniv, just for the hell of it – “Retzach Bidyoni”, or “A Fictional Murder” (itself a play-on-words on the Hebrew term for science fiction), a tongue-in-cheek murder mystery set in an Israeli SF convention, a la Bimbos of the Death Sun…

I’m even working on a book that incorporates at least segments of Bislama into the narrative – and would happily write an entire book in that language, if only there was someone to publish it…

For it is market forces that dictate the writing of science fiction, not “a limited vocabulary” or some mythical Campbellian (John, not Joseph) strictures; it is not lack of words but lack of finance that restrict, in many parts of the world, the writing of science fiction into the foolhardy act of a maddened lover. And yet there is a joy in it, a purity that can be captivating.

My love of Hebrew science fiction – however obscure the titles, however bad some of its early forms – remains alongside my love of English science fiction. And it shapes my own writing, whatever the language.

0 Comments — Leave your comment

December 16, 2009 | 12:54 pm

Jewish exorcism record discovered

Posted by Adam Wills

David Goyer’s thriller “The Unborn” proved to be a bit of a letdown for moviegoers hoping for a uniquely Jewish horror film, but new dybbuk source material has been uncovered that could make for an interesting period piece.

A text detailing a Jewish exorcism has been discovered among a collection of 11,000 manuscript fragments rescued from a 1,000-year-old storeroom – or genizah—in Cairo’s Ben Ezra synagogue.

The neatly written 150-word document describes a ceremony to dispel the evil spirit of Nissim Ben Bunya from his widow, Qamar Bat Rahma. Apparently, Qamar had been possessed by the spirit—or dybbuk—of her late husband while engaged to, or just married with, Joseph Moses Ben Sarah.

Renate Smithuis, the medieval Jewish studies scholar at The University of Manchester who found the text, thinks the Hebrew document was most likely written in the 18th century and probably originated from Egypt or Palestine. Professor Gideon Bohak from Tel Aviv University, who has worked with Smithuis, discovered that the prayer is ascribed to the famous 18th century Kabbalist Rabbi Shalom Shar‘abi.

JPost reports:

The fragment contains the second part of a prayer ritual in which the husband—or husband-to-be—of a widow recites an exorcism prayer, to which the other men gathered in the synagogue respond with a similar prayer.

Smithuis said that from the second half of the 16th century onwards, there were many stories about exorcisms in Jewish communities across the Mediterranean, primarily in North Africa and Palestine.

“But this fragment is so exciting because it’s not a story, but the record of a real event using a prayer which was actually recited in a synagogue,” he said. “The prayer was said in the presence of a minyan—the minimum number of 10 adult Jews required for a communal religious service.

“We think it likely to have come from Egypt or Palestine not only because the fragment originates from the Cairo Genizah but also because Qamar (Arabic for “Moon”) and Rahma (“Mercy”) are names of Arabic origin,” Smithuis continued, adding that “we know little more about what happened than what is contained within these 150 or so words - but it does throw some light on this mysterious and little known side of Jewish culture.”

Although Smithuis and many other Jews consider exorcisms beyond the pale of everyday Jewish practice, if you ask certain kabbalistic figures in Jerusalem’s Geula, Beit Yisrael and Mea Shearim neighborhoods, you’ll receive another answer altogether.

Kabbalist Rabbi Yitzhak Batzri said that exorcisms, which are known in Jewish parlance as “removing the dybbuk,” are a fairly common practice.

“My father has performed several of them in the past few years,” said Batzri on Tuesday, referring to Rabbi David Batzri, head of Yeshivat Hashalom.

In fact, a video on the haredi Internet site Ladaat shows Batzri performing the removal of a dybbuk to a man in America via Internet just two weeks ago. The procedure was “successful,” but it took several hours.

Batzri also performed exorcisms on a woman from Dimona and a woman from South America.

Batzri’s son said that the dybbuk talks “out of the throat” of the person which it inhabits, and that the exorcism ceremony is performed by 10 men with Shofars who read special liturgical texts.

“Basically, the dybbuk is encouraged to leave the body of the person it has entered,” said Batzri. “The dybbuk is in actuality a lost soul who did not merit going to the Garden of Eden but also did not deserve going to Gehinom. He remains in limbo and at some point enters the body of a person,” said Batzri.

In Ladaat’s video Batzri is shown reciting prayers together with nine men and coaxing the dybbuk out of the man’s body.

The goal is to get the dybbuk to leave the body through the small toe of the left foot of the person who was possessed, explained Batzri.

0 Comments — Leave your comment

October 22, 2009 | 5:52 am

Mooning over new ‘Wolfman’ trailer

Posted by Adam Wills

The new trailer is up for “Wolfman,” a remake of the 1941 classic due out February 12. It features intense action, some gorgeous period sets and lycanthrope-a-rific transformations. But if you think it looks a little goyishe (Benicio Del Toro, Anthony Hopkins, Emily Blunt…), you’re missing all the Jewish subtext, my friend. (And Gene Simmons providing the Wolfman’s howls.)

Here’s Jeremy Wexler on the Jewish aspects of the werewolf:

[The] modern-day werewolf ... is largely a metaphor for being Jewish in the 20th century. Consider the modern werewolf narrative: A hairy young outsider becomes saddled with an identity he doesn’t want or particularly like, the meaning of which is told to him by an old European lady speaking a lot of mumbo jumbo. He is in love with a blonde girl who loves him back, but their love is doomed. Eventually he gets chased and killed by a bunch of peasants with pitchforks and torches. And, oh, yes, he feasts on human blood, but it’s not his fault.

The parallels between Jewish ideas of how non-Jews perceived us and the lifecycle of the werewolf aren’t surprising, considering that Jews effectively created the modern werewolf.

1 Comments — Leave your comment