The Uncle in Carbonite

I was drawing pictures with my nephew Jack.

“What shall we draw?” I asked.

“Let’s draw Star Wars,” Jack said, innocently enough.

We began to draw Star Wars. Jack drew a guy, then a box. Next he drew a face and feet in the box. Then he made a line so the guy next to the box had an arm that touched the guy in the box.

“What the heck is that?” I asked.

“That’s me,” Jack said, adding his name to the figure on the left.

“So what is that?”

“How do you spell ‘carbonite’?” Jack asked, a big smile beaming across his face. He started to giggle.

“C-A-R …” I began. He began to write. The kid was seven. “B-O-N … I-T-E.”  Then he added another word: “E-T-H-A-N-[space]-I-N.”

The giggling commenced.

“Wait. Is that me?”

More giggling from Jack.

I was incredulous. “You little … So, that makes you … Boba Fett?”

Uncontrollable giggling. “Uncle Ethan! You’re trapped in carbonite!”

Read the rest on wired.com's Geek Dad

A Hard Day's Knight

In the short film "A Hard Day's Knight," an average guy (Ethan Gilsdorf, author of Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks) dons his chain mail and takes to the streets to find glory, camaraderie and donuts. Searching for Gandalf, Frodo and Harry Potter, our hero battles indifference and ridicule as he tries to convince others to join his fellowship and begs for spare change for the quest. 

WATCH ON FULL SCREEN HERE | Watch on YouTube

Classic Video Game Competition Returns to Funspot

If you’re a 30- or 40-something geek like me, you probably played video games as a kid. Not on the personal computer, which in the 70s and 80s was only in its infancy. I mean the big, hulking, stand-up video arcade machines. The ones that ate your allowance (or cafeteria milk money): Pong, Space Invaders, Galaga, Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Dig Dug, Joust, Centipede, Tron, Dragon’s Lair, and my personal favorite, Robotron 2084.

As I wrote about last summer after visiting the American Classic Arcade Museum at Funspot in Weirs Beach, New Hampshire, these games have had a powerful effect on an entire generation. And now that generation is all grown up. Like with a lot of childhood or adolescent hobbies looked back on with the 20-20 hindsight of adulthood, these old school arcade games can generate a powerful wave of nostalgia.

To sate this desire, the annual International Classic Videogame Tournament returns to the American Classic Arcade Museum  (ACAM) this weekend (Thursday, June 2 through Sunday, June 5). ACAM  is the “first 501c3 non-profit organization dedicated to preserving and displaying vintage coin-operated amusements” (so sez the website). If you saw the documentary King of Kong, ACAM is the familiar site of the Donkey Kong showdown. If you were at PAX East in Boston, you probably saw the traveling collection of video games they brought down from New Hampshire for all of us to play. Wicked fun.

In the tourney, players will compete in a variety of arcade games. To maintain a fair and balanced playing field, ACAM says, the game titles won’t be announced until the first day of the event. The only exception will be the first ever “World Championships of Galaga®,” to celebrate Galaga’s 30th anniversary.

What’s cool is, unlike other museums, at ACAM you can touch the displays. Some 300+ games are available for play. Best of all, the place is a time capsule. Classic 80s music is pumped into arcade, and there isn’t a song or a game, any newer than 1987.

And if you support the preservation of these classic games, please donate to ACAM.

Ethan Gilsdorf is the author of the award-winning book Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms, his travel memoir investigation into fantasy and gaming subcultures the Huffington Post called “part personal odyssey, part medieval mid-life crisis, and part wide-ranging survey of all things freaky and geeky,” National Public Radio described as “Lord of the Rings meets Jack Kerouac’s On the Road” and Wired.com proclaimed, “For anyone who has ever spent time within imaginary realms, the book will speak volumes.” Follow Ethan’s adventures at http://www.fantasyfreaksbook.com

Tolkien hippie stickers resurface

[NOTE: you can also read about this on wired.com's Geek Dad]

I attended the recent 3rd Conference on Middle-earth (in Westford, Massachusetts) where I listened to talks on blond elf imagery and debates on how to adapt The Hobbit into one movie or two movies (and the wisdom of that latter endeavor).

I also wandered over to a vendor table manned by an older gentleman named Ed Meskys, who has been involved in science fiction and fantasy fandom since the early days. In addition to selling and giving away old copies of “The Tolkien Journal” and “Niekas,” the magazine he used to publish, he had stacks of old book jackets and other mysterious items. Meskys had been cleaning out his garage, he told me, and wanted his old treasures to see the light of day again. “I want to get them into the hands of people who will read and appreciate them,” he wrote in a recent issue of his e-fanzine “The View From Entropy Hall.” Most of the stuff was a buck or two each, or free.

Among the ephemera were these yellowed, dusty, wonderful, terrible, Lord of the Rings stickers. It was the end of the day, and Meskys gave me his last sheets of stickers for free.

I later asked him where they came from.

“When I was president of the Tolkien Society of America 1967-1972,” Meskys wrote in an email, “I received promotional materials from a number of places. All I remember was that the stickers came from Australia. I was sighted at the time and was not impressed with them. They were a little too unrealistic for my taste.” Though Meskys is now blind, clearly the image of them still made an impression in his memory.

So the Nine (yes, there are nine stickers in all) have come to light again. I’ve done my best to clean them up without destroying them. As you’ll see here (BELOW), the artist has taken some liberties with Tolkien’s vision. Legolas looks more like a crime-fighting Robin than elf, Aragorn wields an ax, Tom Bombadil is sporting some groovy bellbottoms, and Frodo resembles a pig on crack. My favorite might be Gandalf “Keep on Truckin’” the Gray.

Turn on, tune in, and drop out. Or, drop the ring, or these stickers, back into the fiery chasm whence they came. Dig? 

[Any further information on the artist or the origin of these stickers is welcome. To subscribe to “The View From Entropy Hall,” which Meskys ends by email only, contact him at “edmeskys” at “roadrunner” dot “com”]

Ethan Gilsdorf is the author of the award-winning book Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms, his travel memoir investigation into fantasy and gaming subcultures the Huffington Post called “part personal odyssey, part medieval mid-life crisis, and part wide-ranging survey of all things freaky and geeky," National Public Radio described as "Lord of the Rings meets Jack Kerouac’s On the Road" and Wired.com proclaimed, “For anyone who has ever spent time within imaginary realms, the book will speak volumes.” Follow Ethan's adventures at http://www.fantasyfreaksbook.com.

"Funny As A Crutch" comes to Cambridge 6/13/1

"Funny As a Crutch" performer Natureman, aka Kevin Kennedy. Click to download hig res version. [photo courtesy of Kevin Kennedy] [more press photos below]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

May 19, 2011

**For more information or to arrange interviews with the performers, contact Ethan Gilsdorf at ethan@ethangilsdorf.com 

**For compromising press photos of the performers holding vegetables, dressed in chain mail and stuck in back-yard composters, see: http://www.ethangilsdorf.com/ethanfreak-blog/2011/5/23/funny-as-a-crutch-comes-to-cambridge-6131.html

EVENT LISTING

What: The Drum Literary Magazine presents “Funny As a Crutch”

When: Monday, June 13, 7pm 

Where: The Enormous Room, 567 Massachusetts Avenue, Central Square, Cambridge, Mass.

Brief event description: A performance of dirty limericks, educational raps, recipes for cooking raccoon, Dungeons & Dragons-inspired poetry, children's stories that shouldn't be read to children, and fiction about the miracle of motherhood as seen from the bottom of a martini. Performed by Massachusetts, Vermont and Maine residents Kevin Kennedy, Ethan Gilsdorf, David Petrie, Carol Hammond, and Jeff Stern. Presented by The Drum (http://www.drumlitmag.com), the “literary magazine for your ears.”

Cost: $5 donation encouraged

More info and press photos: ethan@ethangilsdorf.com or http://www.ethangilsdorf.com/ethanfreak-blog/2011/5/23/funny-as-a-crutch-comes-to-cambridge-6131.html

download "Funny As a Crutch" poster here

PRESS RELEASE

“Funny as a Crutch”: Writers, geeks, bloggers, musicians bring their funny to Cambridge’s Enormous Room

Dirty limericks. Educational raps. Recipes for cooking raccoon. Dungeons & Dragons-inspired poetry. Children's stories that shouldn't be read to children. Fiction about the miracle of motherhood as seen from the bottom of a martini.

This deep, dangerous vein of comedy and music and more will be mined by the five performers of “Funny as a Crutch.”

The event unites authors, bloggers, geeks, actors and musicians from Massachusetts, Vermont and Maine, who will be presenting their funniest work at the Enormous Room (567 Massachusetts Avenue, Central Square, Cambridge, Mass.) on Monday, June 13, at 7pm.

“Funny As a Crutch” is presented by The Drum (http://www.drumlitmag.com), the  “literary magazine for your ears” that publishes short fiction, essays, novel excerpts, and interviews exclusively in audio form.

“I’ve been to enough solemn literary readings to appreciate the value of getting goofy,” said Marlboro, Vermont, resident Kevin Kennedy, founder of the event whose alter ego, Natureman, blogs about tapping trees with a 30-30 Winchester, cooking raccoons and building a flamethrower to get rid of the snow in his yard.

Kennedy, who lives in Marlboro, Vermont, has worked on the fringes of marketing and journalism for most of his professional life and is currently the communications director at the Five College consortium in Amherst, MA. His articles, columns and cartoons have been enjoyed by dozens in a variety of obscure trade journals. He has eaten raccoon, moose, bear, goat, cattails and milkweed. 

Natureman will be joined by Ethan Gilsdorf, David Petrie, Carol Hammond, and Jeff Stern.

Ethan Gilsdorf is the Somerville-based self-professor geek, gamer and author of the award-winning travel memoir/pop culture book “Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms.” A regular contributor to the “New York Times,” “Boston Globe” and “Washington Post,” Gilsdorf’s blog Geek Pride is a frequent feature at PsychologyToday.com. He plays with his dice as often as possible.

Brattleboro, Vermont, resident David Petrie writes about parenting on the Huffington Post. Even though he worked on a locked adolescent psychiatric ward and managed a program for juvenile delinquents he learned the most about kids while driving a school bus through the cornfields of Iowa. David now lives in Vermont with his wife and four children and works as an editor for an educational publishing company. His stories appear in places like The Rumpus, The Good Men Project Magazine, the Springfield Republican, and The Commons. Petrie will be reading selections from “The Big Book of Children's Stories That Probably Shouldn't Be Read To Children” and “Daily Affirmations for Tired and Worn-Out Parents.”

Carol Hammond is a writer from Portland, Maine, where she cobbles together a living helping businesses present themselves as far more exciting and successful than they would otherwise seem. She also blogs at unworkinggirl.wordpress.com about the travails of being hopelessly unemployable. Carol will read a story about a woman contemplating the miracle of motherhood from the bottom of a martini.

Jeff Stern is a Cambridge-based director, screenwriter and actor whose work has screened at the Woods Hole, Olympia, New Hampshire and Boston Underground Film Festivals, among others. After stints as an ice cream truck driver, brickstacker, lead singer, and hotel AV guy, Stern has settled into an all-too comfortable life as a filmmaker and teacher. Always on the brink of disaster, Stern believes this could be the night when everything blows up and he again finds himself wandering the streets, unsure where his next sandwich will come from, not a friend in the world. At the event, he will be administering self help, dirty limericks, and educational raps.

The Drum is an online literary magazine that publishes short fiction, novel excerpts, essays, and interviews exclusively in audio form. You don't read The Drum. You listen to it. Since launching in May 2010, The Drum has published new work by New York Times best-seller Jenna Blum, PEN award-winner Jennifer Haigh, New Yorker writer Susan Orlean, and other notable writers like Ben Percy, Bret Anthony Johnston, Lauren Grodstein, and many more and interviews with authors such 2010 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction winner Paul Harding. Visit www.drumlitmag.com to hear The Drum's brand of Literature Out Loud.

“Funny as a Crutch” will be presented at the Enormous Room, 567 Massachusetts Avenue, Central Square, in Cambridge, Mass. (T: Red Line, Central Square, http://www.enormous.tv/), Monday, June 13 from 7 to 9pm.

A $5 donation is requested to cover expenses.

For more information, contact Ethan Gilsdorf at ethan@ethangilsdorf.com or http://www.ethangilsdorf.com/ethanfreak-blog/2011/5/23/funny-as-a-crutch-comes-to-cambridge-6131.html

PRESS PHOTOS:

download "Funny As a Crutch" poster here

"Funny As a Crutch" performer Carol Hammond, with Spider-Man. Click to download hig res version. [photo courtesy of Carol Hammond]
"Funny As a Crutch" performer Natureman, aka Kevin Kennedy. Click to download hig res version. [photo courtesy of Kevin Kennedy] "Funny As a Crutch" performer Natureman, aka Kevin Kennedy. Click to download hig res version. [photo courtesy of Kevin Kennedy] "Funny As a Crutch" performer Natureman, aka Kevin Kennedy. Click to download hig res version. [photo courtesy of Kevin Kennedy] "Funny As a Crutch" performer Jeff Stern. Click to download hig res version. [photo courtesy of Jeff Stern]
"Funny As a Crutch" performer Ethan Gilsdorf. Click to download hig res version. [photo courtesy of Meg Birnbaum] "Funny As a Crutch" performer Ethan Gilsdorf. Click to download hig res version. [photo courtesy of Meg Birnbaum]

Reconnecting separated siblings

[By Ethan Gilsdorf. This story originally appeared in the Christian Science Monitor, May 20, 2011]

• 

Ashley Figueroa and her brother Jonathan went to Camp to Belong in Massachusetts.

[photo by Ann Hermes/Staff]

Ashley Figueroa will never forget the day in 1995 when she and her siblings were taken away from their mother and placed in foster care.

"They told us we were going to McDonald's," she says. "We were all crying. What kid doesn't want a Happy Meal? But we didn't get a Happy Meal."

Their mother struggled with substance abuse and lived with an abusive boyfriend. Their father was absent.

The children lived in a series of foster and family-based kinship homes both in their hometown of Lowell, Mass., and as far away as Ohio and New York.

Then three years ago, seven of the 10 kids came to Camp to Belong in Hinsdale, Mass. "We lost contact for six or seven years," says the bubbly Ashley, now 20. "Camp to Belong brought us together."

"We had never been to a place like that before," says her brother, Jonathan, 13. "We had never been so happy."

Now in its 17th year, Camp to Belong (CTB) has a mission to reunite siblings ages 8 to 20 separated in foster homes and other out-of-home care situations. The camp experience changes lives.

Lynn Price, founder of the camp, was herself once disconnected from a sibling due to foster care. "I didn't know I had a sister until I was 8 years old," she says. But as she began working with the homeless and children in foster care, she started to see how brothers and sisters were losing track of each other. "I realized they were going to miss out on childhood memories."

CTB has grown to nine camps in eight states – Georgia, Maine, Massachusetts, Nevada, Oregon,California, Washington, and, new this year, New York – plus Australia. Ms. Price's hope is to one day offer camps in each of the 50 states.

Some 550,000 children live in foster care in the United States. But even if they live in the same town or go to the same school, 75 percent of these kids live separately from a sibling. CTB gives them a chance to connect and feel empowered by that sibling connection, to read a book or eat breakfast or roughhouse together – the kinds of daily interactions most families take for granted. Thus far, the organization has forged bonds among more than 3,700 brothers and sisters.

"For the first time, we were surrounded by kids who understood," Ashley says, recalling her first summer at the week-long Massachusetts camp. "We were finally all in the same place." The Figueroa kids found themselves among peers for whom foster care was not a source of shame.

READ THE REST OF THE STORY HERE

Taken for a ride

With the new Pirates of the Caribbean out in theaters, it's clear the movie-theme park synergy is conquering our entertainment dollar

In search of movie plots, Hollywood has mined books, plays, TV shows, mythology, epic poems, even religious texts. Today, cinematic narrative is unearthed in other, less traditional places --- comic books, video games, cartoons, toy and theme parks rides.

Take "Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides," which opens Friday, the fourth film in the multi-billion-dollar franchise based on the 1967 Disneyland attraction featuring  "Avast, mateys!" pirate talk, skeletons at the ship's wheel, and buccaneers chasing wenches.

Why keep making feature-length adventures inspired by what are essentially elaborate, 10-minute log rides? Is Hollywood that desperate for ideas? Are audiences that unadventurous?To make money? Perhaps. Intellectual property owners do want to make money. The "Pirates" ride at Disney is a beloved institution, with name recognition. Well-executed as a movie series, the Johnny Depp juggernaut have conquered the box office, spawned spin-off novels, picture books, action figures, and video games.

But there are other forces at work here.

Newer generations of genre fans don't want merely to absorb narratives on the big screen. They want to participate in fictional worlds. Multi-platform, movie/book/video game tie-in products are built to sate this desire to experience the narrative outside the movie theater, to interact more directly with the storyline, or to help create a narrative --- whether by playing an video game, writing fan fiction or collecting tchotchkes or other fandom activities.

Movie-inspired amusement park attractions complete the cycle. Take your pick from dozens: Peter Pan to 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea to Mr. Toad's Wild Ride (all based on Disney movie adaptations of classic books); Shrek to E.T. to Men in Black; Revenge of the Mummy, Jaws, to Jurassic Park. The Star Tours motion simulator attraction (now closed at US Disney parks for an upgrade and open only at Tokyo Disneyland) takes place in the "Star Wars" film universe. Warner Bros. Movie World (in Australia) has attractions based on "Batman," "Austin Powers," "Scooby Doo" and Marilyn Monroe. At Thorpe Park (in Britain), there's Saw, the world's first roller coaster based on a horror film. We've come a long way since the first roller coasters began appearing in15th century Russia.

So far, only the Walt Disney Company has the pop-cultural relevance and gravitas to get away with basing a movie on an amusement park attraction. That said, few of these adaptations have raked in pirate-like booty. Take "The Country Bears" (2002), based on the Country Bear Jamboree, both critically derided and a $35 million box office dud. Performing better was Brian DePalma's "Mission to Mars" (2000), partially inspired by the old attraction of the same name that was discontinued in the early 1990s; the EPCOT ride Mission: Space was built after the film came out and houses several of the movie props plus the rotating "gravity wheel" set. "The Haunted Mansion" (2003) also did somewhat better. ("Tower of Terror" (1997), based on the Disney-MGM Studios ride, was a made for TV movie.)

What's clear is that amusement parks have always been associated with deviance. Ever since the carnival came to town, so have carnies, serial killers, and torrid summer romances with strangers. In "Rollercoaster" (1977) --- released in Sensurround, an effect that vibrated theater seats with huge bass speakers --- Timothy Bottoms's plot to blow up a roller coaster is thwarted by ride inspector George Segal. Then here's the creepy side to those "It's a Small World" robots. In the dreadful "Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park" (1978),  the '70s rock band, in full makeup, battles an evil engineer turning park-goers into mindless cyborgs. In the adult-themed Wild West amusement park of "Westworld" (1973), androids malfunction and start killing the patrons; its sequel, "Futureworld" (1976) concerns a cloning machine and a sci-fi-theme. The "Jurassic Park" movies (1993, 1997, 2001) further fueled fears of mad scientists and technology run amok, and nicely skewered the wholesome, antiseptic Disney park experience.

Of course, theme parks aren't just for cyborgs and dinosaurs; the undead also love them. Two brothers, Jason Patric and Corey Haim, are the new kids in town in "The Lost Boys" (1987), and must confront Kiefer Sutherland and his gang of teenage vampires plaguing an amusement park set on the California coast. In "Zombieland" (2009), zombie apocalypse survivors Woody Harrelson and Jesse Eisenberg hit the road in search of a safe haven, eventually landing in the "Pacific Playland" amusement park, where various rides play a role in the climactic battles.

But not all theme parks are nefarious. "National Lampoon's Vacation" (1983) begins with the lighter theme of summer vacations gone wrong. Chevy Chase drives his family cross-country to the Disney-like Walley World, only to find the park closed for repairs. Which drives Chase crazy, turning him into a BB gun-wielding psychopath. The funny kind. In the 15th James Bond installment, "The Living Daylights" (1987), the Ferris wheel at Vienna's Prater park is where Timothy Dalton scores with one of his Bond girls. In the dramedy "Adventureland" (2009), recent college grad Eisenberg (again) is stuck with a summer job at an amusement park in his hometown (bad), then falls in love (good). At least there are no zombies.

The most lucrative scenario for an entertainment mogul would be to base an entire amusement park on a single franchise. Disney began this by dividing its parks into vague "worlds," like Tomorrowland, Fantasyland, Frontierland, and Adventureland. The "movie studio" parks at Universal and Disney/MGM developed this concept, basing parks around various but mostly unrelated movies ("Jaws," etc). Then Universal's Islands of Adventure created mini-parks devoted to themes like Marvel super heroes, cartoons such as "0Rocky and Bullwinkle," "Jurassic Park"/dinosaurs, ancient myths, and the world of Dr. Seuss. One of these "islands," The Wizarding World of Harry Potter, has blazed a new trail by devoting itself to a single consistent, fictional world. The park opened last year, and features Dragon Challenge, a double roller coaster with intertwining tracks; a more conventional steel roller coaster called Flight of the Hippogriff; and a tour of Hogwarts Castle  called Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey that ends with a broomstick ride past spiders, the Whomping Willow and Dementors. The "set" includes a restaurant, various fake storefronts and real stores where you can purchase merchandise like sugar quills, lemon drops, Bertie Bott's Every-Flavour Beans, and your own broomstick.

It's only a matter of time before entire, giant theme parks are based on the most lucrative franchises in history: Star Wars, Star Trek, The Lord of the Rings, Avatar. But if they build them, will fans come?

In the Boston area, there's an entrepreneur who is hoping that answer is yes. Based at Patriot Place in Foxborough, Matt DuPlessie's company 5 Wits taps into our desire to be part of a movie plot. DuPlessie's walk-through spy adventure Espionage (not affiliated with the James Bond franchise, but definitely inspired by it) opened last fall, and another attraction, 20,000 Leagues, based on Jules Verne's "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea," opened in March. Neither limits users to train car tracks or restricts their motions with seat belts; visitors walk freely through the sets to solve puzzles and, hopefully, save the day.

As the movie-theme park alliance has offered successful synergies, audiences have grown more sophisticated in their taste for special effects. The environments of the original Anaheim and Orlando Disney rides seem primitive by today's standards. Oddly, the quartet of "Pirates of the Caribbean" movies also have very little to do with the ride's original plot, such as it is, which simply evokes generic pirate-themed worlds. To fix this, the old attractions have been retro-fitted and refurbished with better lighting and audio effects. Audio-animatronic figures of Captain Jack Sparrow, his nemesis Barbossa, the squid-faced Davy Jones (all voiced by Depp, Geoffrey Rush, and Bill Nighy respectively) have been added that match the movie world more closely. Of course, the franchise branding had to be updated too; the pirate ship banner and other signage outside the Disney rides now matches the movie poster typeface and other marketing collateral.

While the digital bling of XBox Live, CGI and motion capture may have usurped the power of theme-park attractions, it turns out roller-coaster rides and haunted houses still have their nostalgic tug. They remain an outdated but nonetheless real-world way to participate in cinematic narrative. Taking a ride can still make us feel part of the movie.

As long as the movie is worth the ride.

Recently there's been talk of Jon Favreau ("Iron Man") directing a film based on the entire Disney theme park, Magic Kingdom, but no details yet on what the plot might be. Undead Mickey with assault rifle? 

I'd pay to see that.

Ethan Gilsdorf is the author of the award-winning book Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms, his travel memoir investigation into fantasy and gaming subcultures the Huffington Post called “part personal odyssey, part medieval mid-life crisis, and part wide-ranging survey of all things freaky and geeky," National Public Radio described as "Lord of the Rings meets Jack Kerouac’s On the Road" and Wired.com proclaimed, “For anyone who has ever spent time within imaginary realms, the book will speak volumes.” Follow Ethan's adventures at http://www.fantasyfreaksbook.com.

Sucker Punch misses

Sucker Punch

 What happens when you mix Heavy Metal (that episodic, 1981 sex, rock and violence fantasy movie) with teenage boy fantasies of girls in mini-skirts kicking ass with automatic weapons and samurai swords, and a treacle-infused revenge and sacrifice plot about escape from mental institutions?

 You get the chaotic, seething, psycho-nonsense that is Sucker Punch.

 The premise had some promise. In the unnamed 1960s, the doll-faced Babydoll, played by Emily Browning (The Uninvited), accidentally shoots and wounds her evil, molesting step father. No problem; she acts in self-defense. But a stray bullet also offs her little sister. Ooops. Off Babydoll goes to Victorian, thunderstorm-swept Lennox House for the Mentally Insane, hilariously located in Brattleboro, Vermont (where I once lived). Here, dozens of other girls have been incarcerated, and like Babydoll, her compatriots inexplicably have hot-sounding pseudonyms perfectly suited for our Age of Madonna and Days of Lady Gaga. There’s the not-so-sweet Sweet Pea (Abbie Cornish of Bright Star), the chummy Rocket (Jena Malone from Into the Wild), and two others with microscopic roles, the non-blonde Blondie (Vanessa Hudgens, who appeared in the High School Musical films) and the near-invisible Amber (Jamie Chung of Sorority Row), They’re all possibly insane or, like Babydoll, just abandoned by wicked step-parents.

 The big, scary Lennox House is full of nut house clichés, from rusty doors, peeling paint and white tile, to the oblivious orderlies, the lecherous cook (who of course is obese), and the doctor (Jon Hamm of “Mad Men”) who administers the lobotomies. A megalomaniac lech heads up the institution (Oscar Isaac from Robin Hood). There’s one understanding psychiatrist, Madam Gorski (Carla Gugino from Watchmen), whose play-therapy shtick equates imagination with freedom. “That world you control,” she says with her Slavic accent. “That play can be as real as any pain.”

 Lovers of games and genre “escapism” already get the point of fantasy: We enter these realms when, sometimes, real life’s crap bears down too hard on us. High expectations also weigh on director Zack Snyder, whose past movies Watchmen and 300 mostly pleased his fanboy and fangirl audiences. (A recent profile in the New York Times Magazine plumbs Snyder’s sudden surplus of geek cred). Clearly, he loves his graphic novels and his Dungeons & Dragons, and for Sucker Punch, he unfurls that well-trodden path of a quest for something—honor, courage, freedom—by an ordinary-person-with-extraordinary-and-hidden-gifts.

 But here, more so than his other outings, Snyder is preaching, even pandering, to the converted, with wild and disappointing results.

 First, you have to swallow this: More than half of the movie takes place in BabyDoll’s mind. Supposedly, to keep her sane in the loony bin, our Snow White begins to have fantasies of being a hooker trapped inside a Moulin Rouge-like whore house run by the creepy pimp (Isaac again; everyone plays at least two roles in the film). Apparently, in the girl’s mind, being a whore is a step-up. But Babydoll inserts another fantasy layer inside the first (I know, but stay with me here): a quest to obtain five items—a map, fire, a knife, a key and a fifth thing TBA. If she succeeds, she can escape the institution and bring her friends with her. This second fantasy she can only access when she revs up her erotic dance routine for the voyeuristic men. (Cleverly, Snyder never lets the audience see her sexy moves.)

When BabyDoll embarks on quest Part One, a solo adventure set in feudal Japan, she meets an unnamed “Wise Man,” the veteran actor Scott Glenn, who’s been wonderful in movies ranging from The Right Stuff, The Hunt for Red October, The Silence of the Lambs and The Bourne Ultimatum. Here, his grizzled, grandfatherly Wise Man character is Master Po/Yoda to Babydoll’s Grasshopper/Luke. “What are you looking for?” he asks, before handing over some serious firepower. “A way out,” replies the stoic Babydoll, who doesn’t break a smile all movie. Emily Browning’s wide, inviting, snow-white face, punctuated by two giant eyes, is an anime artist’s wet dream.

After defeating a trio of troll-like, giant armored samurai, Babydoll invites her ragtag galpals to join her on the next installment of heroic derring-do. Like in the Rupert Holmes song, she wants them to “Come with me and escape.” And they do: first to the zombie-infested trenches of World War I, then into a WW II–medieval castle-siege mash-up scenario, and finally on a bomb-defusing mission on some craggy rock next to what looks like Saturn. Luckily, for the viewer, the babes march off into battle, often in slow-motion, dressed like “slovenly trulls” and “brazen strumpets” from Babydoll’s Prostitutes & Pimps role-playing game. (Check the “Random Harlot Table” from your Dungeon Master’s Guide for details). This set-up permits the young ladies to wear fishnet stocking and high heels as they fight undead German infantrymen and shiny robots from the future. The Wise Man reappears in each fantasy episode as quest-giver, instructing the gals where they’ll find the particular item on their wish list. He also offers advice like “Don’t ever write a check with your mouth that you can’t cash with your ass.”

In shooting his asylum/brothel scenes, Snyder composes his shots with a painstakingly, almost achingly overthought attention. But at least these shots are mostly quiet. Once the fantasy ass-kicking begins, the bloody camera can’t stay still, sweeping, pivoting, dipping, swooping, all the while shooting with jerky, “Hey, aren’t we missing a few frames of film here?” look-and –feel that’s all the vogue these days. Adding to the head-throbs are the blaring remixes of classics like Eurhythmics’s “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This),” Queen’s  “We Will Rock You” and “I Want It All,” and Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit.” Each fight episode feels like a video game level sponsored by a record label. Advil, anyone?

Meanwhile, the production design and digital landscapes have been steeped—OK, soaked—in a sea of sepia. Some of it is stunning. We see some cool cross-pollination of genres. Those big samurai dudes wield “naginatas” (a pole arm with curved blade on the end, much like a European glaive) but also primitive machine guns. In that siege scene, the ruined castle is swarming with orcs and foot soldiers in plate mail; into this mess the gals air drop from a bomber plane, then kill a sleeping dragon. Back in WW I, there’s zeppelins but also zombies and an anime-inspired, jet pack-powered bipedal armored fighting machine emblazoned with a pink bunny. That’s piloted by Amber, who handles all the flying duties. At one point, when Wise Guy barks at the ladies, “They’re using steampower and clockwork!” I half expected a subtitle to pop up: “Hey Steampunk Fans: We get it!” followed by, in smaller type, “[Hey Newbies: Steampunk is a genre the uses anachronistic technology or futuristic inventions as Victorians like Jules Venre might have envisioned ...]”

That first action scene, where Babydoll faces the giants with glowing red eyes (they glow, therefore they are evil), has its pleasures. But here’s where the major flaw of Sucker Punch is revealed. There’s nothing at stake. We know each mission is a fight of fantasy. The girls are imbued with awesome superpowers—with their blades they deflect bullets from nasty German undead; they leap, slow-mo, over the crude weapon blows dealt by Japanese trolls; they are thrown across temples and train cars and tossed through stone walls; they are pummeled by shiny robots. Nary a scratch on their milky cheeks. The audience figures out these gals are impervious. So where’s the danger? Babydoll has as many lives as a video game avatar. Only towards the end do we see real death, but the moment is laughable.

Sucker Punch aims to work on the level of universal heroic fantasy epic, but it barely functions as pulp. The Sweet 16 set may get off on the “grrrrrl power” theme, and not a few boys will dig the upskirt action shots mixed with oodles of cartoon violence. But the cocktail of comic book clichés is too sour to swallow. Strong female heroines are welcome, but their impact as role models is diluted when we see their exploits are simply fantasies nested within further fantasies, like level 60 Russian Night Elf dolls.

So what are we left with? Men are horrible, predatory pervs? That they “silence” a young woman and her “voice” via real or imaginary lobotomies? That, as the film’s PR material touts, the only resort is her “dream world” which “provides the ultimate escape from her darker reality.” Or that we should thrilled by the ambiguity of it all, because the filmmakers say, “her incredible adventures blur the lines between what’s real and what is imaginary.” Sucker Punch, meet Jacob’s Ladder, A Beautiful Mind, Fight Club, Psycho and about a hundred other movies with imaginary characters or unreliable (or insane) protagonists and narrators.

Yes, a lobotomy would be the ultimate bummer. But so is that “What chains us? Who holds the key?” voice-over doggerel right before the credits roll. “You get out there and live for all of us,” are Babydoll’s final words before her own grim ending begins.

I think even teenage girls will have more fun playing a couple hours of World of Warcraft, Halo or Portal.

 Ethan Gilsdorf is the author of the award-winning book Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms, his travel memoir investigation into fantasy and gaming subcultures that the Huffington Post calls “part personal odyssey, part medieval mid-life crisis, and part wide-ranging survey of all things freaky and geeky." National Public Radio described the book as "Lord of the Rings meets Jack Kerouac’s On the Road" and Wired.com proclaimed, “For anyone who has ever spent time within imaginary realms, the book will speak volumes.” Follow Ethan's adventures at http://www.fantasyfreaksbook.com.

What's up with alien invasion movies?

Battlefield: Earth

When alien visitors do not come in peace

The White House was one of several iconic sites destroyed by aliens in Roland Emmerich’s 1996 film, “Independence Day.’’ (20th Century Fox via AP)

By Ethan Gilsdorf

Boston Globe Correspondent / March 11, 2011

“We’re facing an unknown enemy,’’ barks a Marine officer once the alien spacecraft have begun their assault in “Battle: Los Angeles.’’ In the film, which opens today, the attackers arrive in metallic ships. Other times, they arrive in asteroids, as in “The Day of the Triffids’’ (1962). Or they use asteroids as weapons: in “Starship Troopers’’ (1997) the Arachnids, or “Bugs,’’ from planet Klendathu launch a large space rock that flattens Buenos Aires.

But no matter the mode of transport, nothing gets our flags waving and patriotic juices flowing more than the threat of Earth’s destruction at the hands of ruthless, repugnant, anonymous aliens.

Here’s one reason: Because our angsty, modern-day wars don’t let us demonize the enemy as in decades past, it’s hard to get excited about blowing apart Iraqis and Afghans, whether in the real world or onscreen. Hence the appearance of “Battle: Los Angeles,’’ or last year’s LA-invasion “Skyline.’’ Combating hulking spacecraft and silvery foot soldiers whose weapons are surgically implanted ends up dicier than anything Al Qaeda can throw at us. In one scene, the platoon’s Nigerian medic grumbles, “[Expletive]! I’d rather be in Afghanistan.’’

Not all alien invasion movies are created equal. Earthlings might be mere bystanders in a battle between alien races: Take “Transformers’’ (2007) and its tagline “Their war. Our world.’’ Or “AVPR: Aliens vs Predator — Requiem’’ (also 2007). Watch “Invasion of the Body Snatchers’’ (1956, 1978) and you will notice the aliens don’t rub out metropolises; the Pod People colonize one citizen at a time. Or they walk unnoticed among us, as in “Men in Black’’ (1997). In the Godzilla “giant monsters’’ genre, or even “Cloverfield’’ (2008), they’re not even technically aliens, since the monsters (mostly) hatch from our atomic waste. The cartoon “Monsters vs. Aliens’’ (2009) combines these elements: A human beaned by a meteorite grows gigantic and joins forces with creatures to battle an invading alien robot.

You could argue these invasion films serve a higher cultural purpose. They can be seen as metaphors for some nameless fear — communism, viral infection, illegal immigration. Or think of these films as talismans. Directors imagine the worst, then the ruination won’t happen in real life.

But to paraphrase Gertrude Stein, “War is a war is a war is a war.’’

What follows are battlefield reports from a few memorable movies where the little green men invade armada-style in a coordinated attack, unilaterally and unprovoked. They storm the beaches of, say, Santa Monica, like it’s the Normandy invasion, ray guns a-blazin’. They harvest our resources, take no prisoners, and destroy our beloved strip malls and skyscrapers. When they do, we guiltlessly circle our wagons and fight back. As in “Battle: Los Angeles,’’ there’s only one rightful response. “You kill anything that’s not human.’’

“War of the Worlds’’ (1953, 2005)

You might say H.G. Wells’s 1898 book kick-started the whole alien-invasion genre. At least two major film adaptations (and one freaky radio broadcast) have followed, transposing the battleground from London to US cities. In the 1953 film version, the setting is Southern California. A meteorite falls, and out pop the manta-like Martian ships. A friendly greeting is answered by heat rays and electro-magnetic pulses that vaporize our backyards. Even our A-bombs are useless. When all hope seems lost, it turns out the aliens have no defense against our germs. Should have had their flu shots! Weirdly, 2005 gave us three remakes: two low-budget, straight-to-video affairs, and the Spielberg-Cruise megalith that takes us on a paranoid road trip from destroyed New York through the ravaged New England countryside to Boston, all the while the tripedal aliens hot on the refugees’ tails.

“Mars Attacks!’’ (1996)

Think of “The Day the Earth Stood Still’’ (1951, remade in 2008) or “Close Encounters of the Third Kind’’ (1977). An alien ship arrives. Do we strike first or parley? Do they talk back in musical tones or English? Do they play fair? In Tim Burton’s spoof starring a Hollywood who’s-who (Jack Nicholson, Annette Bening, Glenn Close, Jack Black, Natalie Portman, and more), the conventions are overturned. When Martians surround Earth with their flying saucers, negotiations begin. But the tricksy aliens infiltrate the White House and the destruction commences. The evil invaders even redo Mount Rushmore with Martian faces. Luckily, there’s always a weakness: This time their demise is Slim Whitman, whose yodeling voice in “Indian Love Call’’ causes alien brains to explode. Makes you want to place your K-tel order today.

“Independence Day’’ (1996)

The xenophobia and hawkishness of some of these invasion dramas aside, perverse pleasure can also be found in seeing beloved cities and monuments obliterated: the Eiffel Tower, White House, Golden Gate Bridge. That’s what we get in Roland Emmerich’s alien-inundation flick. Ragtag survivors gather in the Nevada desert in a last-ditch effort — on July 4 — to plan retaliation. But first the audience is treated to the deployment of dozens of 15-mile-wide saucers whose blue energy blasts decimate some of our favorite urban vacation destinations: DC, LA, New York. Eventually, a computer virus (not the common cold) defeats the ship’s force field, and Jeff Goldblum and Will Smith prevail. Yay, Earth!

Ethan Gilsdorf, author of “Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks,’’ can be reached at www.fantasyfreaksbook.com.

"Not so long ago, in a galaxy not so far, far away": Hanging with Nick Frost and Simon Pegg

from the feature story by Ethan Gilsdorf in the Boston Globe

Like Tolkien and Lewis, Nick Frost and Simon Pegg are British and longtime friends. Also like Tolkien and Lewis, Frost and Pegg tell stories that please them. “Paul,’’ the latest film they wrote and in which they star, opens Friday. It’s about two British geeks who leave the pop-cultural convention Comic-Con, in San Diego, on an RV excursion through the Southwest, only to take on an unexpected passenger: the title character, a gray-skinned, big-eyed, Area 51 escapee (voiced by Seth Rogen). Greg Mottola (“Adventureland,’’ “Superbad’’) directed.

“We’ve written a film that we want to watch and laugh at with our mates,’’ said Frost, in Boston last week to promote the film. Unlike the socially-awkward, aspiring science fiction writer Clive Gollings he plays in the film, the cheery Frost sported dark-rimmed glasses that self-consciously bespoke “nerd.’’ “That’s always what we have always done. You find that there are pockets of ‘us-es’ everywhere.’’

Those pockets of fanboys and fangirls will have a hard time not whispering to their theater seatmates when they spot the dozens of dorky inside jokes riffing off of “Star Wars,’’ “Star Trek,’’ “The X-Files,’’ “The Blues Brothers,’’ and nearly every fantasy or adventure film in the Steven Spielberg canon, from “Close Encounters’’ to “Raiders.’’

“The movie is very much a tribute to him,’’ said Frost, who was 10 when “E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial’’ was released in 1982; Pegg was 12.

Some of the references are more “sci-fi 101,’’ said Pegg, who plays Clive’s best friend, the wannabe comic book artist Graeme Willy. That’s to make sure average moviegoers and not just hardcore genre geeks will buy tickets. “We had to make this film appeal on a broad level because it cost a lot of money. Because of Paul, really. He’s expensive. It’s like hiring Will Smith, literally, to get Paul on the screen.’’

But Pegg promised the film has plenty of obscure references, too. “It’s replete with gifts for those who know their stuff,’’ he said. “For the faithful.’’

One such nod: “Duel,’’ an early Spielberg film, is listed in red letters on the movie marquee seen toward the end of “Paul.’’ “ ‘Easy Rider’ is on double bill with that,’’ said Frost. “The street we were [shooting] on was the street where Jack Nicholson meets Peter Fonda.’’ Be on the lookout for even more abstruse references, and cameos.

In fact, geeks might bring bingo cards that replace numbers with such items as “swooning Ewok,’’ “mention of Reese’s Pieces’’ “Mos Eisley cantina music (played by country band),’’ “dialogue from ‘Aliens,’ ’’ and “bevy of metal bikini-costumed, ‘slave girl’ Princess Leias.’’ Drinking coffee in a hotel suite overlooking the Charles River, the two stressed that the point of “Paul’’ was not to ridicule those who collect samurai swords or speak Klingon (as both characters do in the film), but to celebrate them.

“We never wanted to make fun of it,’’ said Pegg. “Obviously those kind of fans are our bread and butter and helped get us where we are. We didn’t want to then turn around and say ‘Ha, ha. You big bunch of losers.’ ’’ Clive and Graeme are portrayed as mildly, and endearingly, dysfunctional and codependent, but ultimately good guys with big hearts.

Both actor-writers long ago established their geek cred. Pegg costarred with Frost in the cop-action movie spoof “Hot Fuzz’’ (2007) and the “zomedy’’ “Shaun of the Dead’’ (2004). Pegg cowrote both films and more recently voiced the character Reepicheep in “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.’’ “Young Scotty,’’ from “Star Trek’’ (2009), is his highest profile role to date. He will also star in the planned sequel. Both have acted in the forthcoming “Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn,’’ and when the Spielberg-Peter Jackson motion-capture juggernaut hits screens later this year, each of their stars will rise even higher into the dweeby firmament.

On the “Paul’’ set, they also geeked out on special effects required to bring the pot-smoking, wise-cracking space-dude to life. Rogen (“The Green Hornet,’’ “Knocked Up’’) shot a video reference version of the movie and recorded dialogue on a sound stage, but never joined the actors on location. Instead, Pegg, Frost, and the rest of the cast, which includes Jason Bateman and Kristen Wiig, acted with “a child, a small man, a ball, a stick with balls on it, some lights,’’ said Pegg. “All the way through I was thinking, this is never going to work.’’

Lining up sightlines between the eyes of humans and the yet-to-be generated CG Paul (to establish believable connections between the characters) caused the biggest headaches. “How do I know where to look?’’ Pegg said. “But it worked.’’ (“You see Ewan McGregor looking at Jar Jar Binks,’’ he added, taking a swipe at the “Star Wars’’ prequels. “He’s like looking above his head.’’)

If one geek fantasy is finally to defeat the bully, get the girl or boy, and find fame or fortune with your secret passion, then “Paul’’ fulfills the dream. Not to spoil the ending, but Willy and Gollings do become rock stars in their own realm.

Another holy grail is that geeks might get to hang with real wizards, orcs, hobbits, superheroes, or robots. For two hours, “Paul’’ brings this pipe dream closer, too.

“We always see these characters in fantasy environments. We see Gollums in Middle-earth and all the ‘Star Wars’ animations are in the ‘Star Wars’ universe,’’ said Pegg. “The context fits the sprite. But in ‘Paul,’ we wanted that character to be in an environment that was totally, literally, alien to him.

“And that makes him seem even more real, because you don’t expect to see him.’’

Ethan Gilsdorf, author of “Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks,’’ can be reached at www.fantasyfreaksbook.com.

"like swimming with a shark in dark waters": Review of Tornado Alley

TORNADO ALLEY

Directed by: Sean Casey

Starring: Sean Casey, Joshua Wurman, Karen Kosiba, Don Burgess, narrated by Bill Paxton

Running time: 43 minutes

At: Museum of Science

Rated: unrated

from Ethan Gilsdorf's review in The Boston Globe

“Hunting a tornado can feel like swimming with a shark in dark waters,’’ the narrator says. “You know it’s there. You just can’t find it.’’

The voice, of course, is Bill Paxton, from “Twister.’’

“Tornado Alley,’’ the latest IMAX spectacular, which opens tomorrow at the Museum of Science, follows a team of 100 scientists and their fleet of vehicles mounted with Doppler weather radars, collectively called VORTEX 2. Their mission: to understand which supercell thunderstorms make tornadoes and why, and to plumb their “unseen architecture,’’ thus increasing warning times and saving lives. They spend a springtime scanning a seven-state swath of the Midwest known as “tornado alley,’’ home to 80 percent of the world’s most violent tornadoes. One wonders what happened to VORTEX 1.

You get what you might expect: the behind scenes sit-and-wait, then the psychedelic radar images blossoming on screen. The meteorologist geeks drop probes on the roadside and speak in crackling voices over the CB: “Rogue 11, deploy’’ and “Copy that.’’ Then a dark funnel gathers its strength, the soundtrack’s horns blare and kettle drums thunder, and “55-gallon oil barrels fly like leaves in the wind,’’ Paxton says, injecting the proceedings with requisite drama.

Meanwhile, Sean Casey (of The Discovery Channel’s “Storm Chasers’’) offers the thrill-seeker angle. He races around in his 14,000-pound armored Tornado Intercept Vehicle, or TIV, which looks like a prop from a low-budget postapocalyptic action movie. The TIV is equipped with a roof-mounted turret letting Casey shoot with his 70mm film camera in a 360-degree panorama. “It’s coming right at us!’’ he barks, and the turret swivels like he’s battling TIE fighters swarming the Death Star. Everyone in this documentary wants to be Han Solo.

“Tornado Alley’’ is awe-inspiring, doom-slinging fun, fluffy as the 10-mile-high clouds towering on the screen. More real might have been any grumbling between adrenaline junkie Casey, who seeks point-blank footage from the heart of a twister, and the more cautious researchers, who are actually doing science. In 43 minutes, only so many subplots can unfold.

Given tsunamis and other disasters swamping the planet, there’s some perversity to be had here, too. Weather geeks and motor heads alike might enjoy “Tornado Alley’’ and take pleasure in the chase. But when the clouds part and the destruction is revealed, can we feel good in the morning?

Ethan Gilsdorf, author of “Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks,’‘ can be reached at www.fantasyfreaksbook.com.

How do you have a day without creativity, imagination, and thought?

Taking the time to stop WHO

Drake Patten

WHAT

Drake Patten knows what looms if arts and culture disappear. A lifelong arts advocate and former director of the Rhode Island Council for the Humanities, Patten is now the executive director of The Steel Yard, a Providence-based center that uses the industrial arts to foster community revitalization and workforce development. She recently co-founded Culture Stops!, a volunteer-run nationwide day of action (or rather, inaction) on Thursday, March 10, to draw attention to the impact of proposed federal budget cuts on the creative sector. Q. Your website www.culturestops.org asks people “to witness a world devoid of creativity, imagination and thought: America after culture stops.’’ How do you have a day without creativity, imagination, and thought? A. This is a day about absence. This Culture Stops! movement is about what is there when it’s not there. We want people to stop and mark the day. Q. How would it work? A. People who are performing, for example music, could stop their performance and try to educate the audience, or leave the stage and join the audience and look at the blank stage. We have talked to people who have said they would cover their works of art with a black cloth. Or simply put up the Culture Stops! logo on their website or Facebook page. Q. So you don’t necessarily want to shut down culture for the day. A. In the Culture Stops! call to action, we say “stop work for eight minutes to a full eight hours.’’ You choose. Keep your store open that sells local art but put something in the bag that says, “You just bought something on Culture Stops! day.’’ To say you should just stop working that day and alienate your clients, that’s not realistic. But the education of clients is necessary. Q. How widespread is participation so far? A. We just launched [last week]. We are hearing from every state but I think five. What is great is that people are saying that they are prepared to take on what is immediately local. Q. How did this idea originate? A. Culture Stops! began around a kitchen table in Cranston, R.I., with five people, one dog, and $87. I was speaking to my colleagues about our fears. It’s the fear about not being able to do our work, and living in a nation where arts and culture is not valued. In a human way this translates to darkness. It’s like a black stage. Q. How do you answer those who claim that, in a down economy, arts and culture are luxuries, that we all have to tighten our belts? A. When you set a budget, you are setting the program. You are saying publicly that arts and culture have value or they don’t. We have increasingly seen over the years the cultural budget line being embattled. While we’re very clear this budget will demand sacrifice across the board, we feel this is disproportionate. Q. It seems that what you call “the creative sector’’ could do a better job explaining itself. A. The cultural sector is a critical part of the national economy with big impact nationwide. The non-profit arts sector represents the equivalent of 5.7 million full-time jobs, including many in a range of related industries traditionally not thought of as part of the arts world. That’s $166.2 billion annually in economic activity and more than $12.5 billion in federal income taxes. This isn’t a niche market developed around earmarks. These are mainstream American jobs. It’s not that it’s just artists. It’s the skills that go into every sector. IBM recently put out a report that asked what does the business world really value in leadership? Creativity, innovation, imagination. Q. Let’s say you’ve paid $20 to go to a concert or play on March 10. Are you worried some people might get upset if that experience is interrupted? A. I’m sure it could make some people angry. But I do think it’s very important to be exposed to the idea that art goes away. We in this culture, we have a lot. But we don’t have the experience of taking away. If people are upset about it, that might be the best thing. I was inspired by what came out of Egypt. America knew at one point how to take to the streets. Perhaps we are at that point again. Interview was condensed and edited. Ethan Gilsdorf can be reached at www.ethangilsdorf.com.

From fart jokes to infidelity

The Farrelly Brothers discuss marriage, fidelity, The Flintstones, bathroom humor and their new comedy "Hall Pass"

By Ethan Gilsdorf

BOSTON --- Peter Farrelly loves his wife. He loves his kids. Yet, like many married men and women, he entertains wild visions of bachelor freedom. And for that impulse, in part, he blames "The Flintstones."

"I saw Fred come home and saw Wilma just rip into him. 'Where have you been?! Myna myna nya!'" Peter says, mimicking Wilma's high-pitched shriek that he recalls from watching the show as a kid. "I thought, why doesn't he just leave? ... I wouldn't put up with that."

Not wanting to put up with the day-to-day drudgery of marriage and its inherent declining sexual desire is the fantasy Peter and Bobby Farrelly tap into with their new comedy "Hall Pass," which opens today.

Bobby and Peter Farrelly flank the author, Ethan GilsdorfMore so than with this fraternal filmmaking duo's previous films such as "Dumb and Dumber" (1994), "Me, Myself & Irene"  (2002), "Fever Pitch" (2005), and their most commercially successful film, "There's Something About Mary" (1998), "Hall Pass" takes on a topic many comedies avoid: domesticity and the vast distance from singlehood that married couples must endure.

"We had all our friends at the screening last night," says Bobby. "I would say 98 percent of them are married. ... It's fun to do a story that most of them can seemingly relate to."

"This one is probably closer to our actual lives than any other movie we've done," Peter adds.

Loyal Farrelly brothers fans will be pleased to learn that, as always, bathroom humor is involved. But the film's premise isn't about giving a student a pass to head to the little boy's room. It's more like a "get out of jail free" card.

Caught ogling women and becoming wistful for their days before the chains of marriage and fatherhood, two friends (Owen Wilson and Jason Sudeikis) are given a week's break from the bonds of matrimony by their way-too-understanding wives (Jenna Fischer and Christina Applegate). Are they still on their game? Comedy ensues.

A bit off their own games, Peter and Bobby eat breakfast in a suite at the Ritz Carlton in Boston. It's the morning after a recent Boston screening of "Hall Pass," and despite being a little groggy from the night's festivities, the brothers still can't resist recounting how the two of them, plus their 80-year-old father, recently all went in for a colonoscopy together. "A triple header," Bobby, 52, deadpans (Peter is two years his senior). "Good times. We've done that twice."

But sharing a couch and a plate of pastries as they reminiscence about their path from Cumberland, Rhode Island, to Hollywood, the Farrellys aren't always the fart-joke, class-clown types you'd expect. Their material -- most of it -- is surprisingly PG-13 rated.

That said, the Farrellys do like to talk about women. And sports. When a reporter informs them he once lived in Baton Rouge, Shaquille O'Neal's former stomping grounds, they want to know if they have "really pretty girls down there." (They do.)

"If my wife came to me and said you can have a hall pass but I'm taking one, too, I wouldn't do it," says Peter, who dominates the discussion. (When Bobby speaks, he tends to let his eye wander to the window overlooking Downtown Crossing.) Running his fingers through his mop of brown hair, Peter continues, "but if she said you can have a hall pass; I'm staying home with the kids" -- he snaps his fingers -- "I would be out the door in about 30 seconds."

Just like Fred Flintstone.

"I would say girls are probably the single most alluring thing on the planet," Bobby says, his "the" more like "da," his Ocean State accent still coloring his speech.

But Pete, as his bro calls him, fesses up that if he played the dream of bachelor freedom, he'd strike out. "If I couldn't use the movie rap that we're in the business, I can assure you that I'd get nowhere, without taking my wallet out." He mentions watching newly single friends in their 50s try to pick up women. "Horrifying and hilarious at the same time. It's shocking how much they have lost off their fast ball."

In the case of "Hall Pass," Wilson and Sudeikis don't let their flabby physiques and Clinton-era musical knowledge prevent them from trying to score with chicks. While "Saturday Night Live" veteran Sudeikis may not have obvious lady-killer looks, the filmmakers needed to bring Owen Wilson's charm down a few notches -- otherwise, Bobby asks, "Where's the comedy?"

"We dorked him up a little," says Pete. Wilson is dressed in plaid short-sleeves and a "Born in the USA" T-shirt.

Despite taking place in Rhode Island and on the Cape, "Hall Pass" was shot in Georgia, partly due to tax breaks and the winter shooting schedule, with some second-unit footage shot in Providence. "People say why don't you just make it a Georgia story?" says Bobby. "Because we don't really know Georgia. We don't know how people talk."

Today, Bobby lives on the South Shore with his wife and kids and commutes to Los Angeles when needed. Peter lives in Ojai, California, about 90 minutes north of LA -- "only because my wife is from Santa Monica."

With "Hall Pass," the two have nine films under their belts in 17 years. But their direction hasn't progressed much technically since their debut, "Dumb and Dumber," when they didn't know a focus-puller from an F-stop.

"We still don't know," Bobby says.

So on the first day of shooting, the Farrellys still give the same speech. "We say, 'Look guys, we wrote the script, we understand the script, but there's a hell of a lot we don't understand. We're going to need your help,'" says Peter. Like with their writing collaboration, on the set, they divide the responsibilities. Peter works with the actors while his quieter sibling generally looks on from behind the monitor. Usually they agree if a performance is on target or if a gag is working, but if they disagree, they'll shoot it both ways and decide in the editing room.

They stress that their comedy rests not on the outrageous humor, but on likable characters. Nailing down protagonists the audience cares about is the hard part. Once the goofy guys are in place (in many a Farrelly comedy, the men are clueless dorks while the women are savvy and hot) the gags flow naturally.

But while the theme of "Hall Pass" may be slightly more earnest than in other Farrellymovies -- Peter insists that when the hijinks are over, it ultimately carries a "pro-marriage message" -- there's plenty of humor involving excrement, masturbation, and oral sex.

The Farrelly's next project should also appeal their core fan base: a movie adaptation of "The Three Stooges," now in pre-production and scheduled to begin shooting later this year. While names including Russell Crowe and Benicio Del Toro (as the anger-management-challenged Moe), Sean Penn (as wild-haired Larry), and Jim Carrey (hairless Curly) were once attached to the project, at the moment, the film is not cast.

"There's been more interest [from actors] in 'The Three Stooges' than any movie we've ever done," says Pete, "which is ironic since it's been the hardest movie to make because the studio thinks there's not enough interest in 'The Three Stooges.'" Confident there's still a Stooges audience, he called the studio's reticence a "head-scratcher."

Set in the present day, the Farrelly's "Stooges" will include three individual episodes, staged much like the vaudeville-rooted original, in wide shot. "At all points you want to see all of them," says Bobby. "Typically the camera will tell you where to look. Look at his face. Look at how he reacts. It's doin' the work for ya. Not with the Stooges. You pick and choose what you want to watch."

They'll shoot in color, but the palate will be black and white.

"They're not big bright color guys," Pete says of the Stooges.

"Unless they go golfing," Bobby says.

After the "Stooges," then what?

"We don't have a grand plan. You kind of do what's in your heart," says Peter. The  Stooges were in their hearts for a decade. "And then something else will come up and I don't know what it is." He pauses. "I wouldn't be surprised if one of these days we did a horror movie. Or a thriller."

"We'll do something," Bobby says. "We do what we think is funny. We're not shy about it. We'll do it. We'll do it in a big way."

Their next big thing done in a big way will surely include their brand of boundary-pushing humor. Yet Peter says there's a deeper theme that remains constant. "We write about love. Loving women, or loving baseball, or loving bowling, or loving something."

Even loving Betty Rubble.

He thinks back to Fred running out on Wilma. "I'd stay with Betty. I know Barney had a better thing going."

Ethan Gilsdorf is the author of the award-winning book Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms," his travel memoir/pop culture investigation into fantasy and gaming subcultures that the Huffington Post calls “part personal odyssey, part medieval mid-life crisis, and part wide-ranging survey of all things freaky and geeky." National Public Radio described the book as "Lord of the Rings meets Jack Kerouac’s On the Road" and Wired.com proclaimed, “For anyone who has ever spent time within imaginary realms, the book will speak volumes.” Follow Ethan's adventures athttp://www.fantasyfreaksbook.com.

When is shock just schlock?

The re-release of William Lustig’s “Maniac’’ (1980), the notorious film in which a serial killer scalps women, is a chance to reevaluate shock value, or the value of shock, or schlock. 

Ever since Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí’s 1929 “Un Chien Andalou’’ reinvented squeamish by showing a razor slicing open an eyeball, filmmakers have tested the limits of good taste. Whether in the service of high art or plain shock, films make us face what we’d rather not even imagine.

Each year ups the ante in some way. With gore galore, Tobe Hooper’s “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’’ (1974) reveled in being censored. William Lustig’s “Maniac’’ (1980) gave us a serial killer who scalps women. Peter Jackson’s “Meet the Feebles’’ (1989) depicted the lives of Muppet-like puppets not on Sesame Street but Skid Row. More gentle but no less revolting, the Farrelly brothers’ “There’s Something About Mary’’ (1998) suggested a new way to style Cameron Diaz’s hair. And so on.

Yet just because filmmakers can depict such depravities, should they? And how far can our envelopes be pushed before we, as an audience, feel ripped apart?

Lustig has been appearing at theaters nationwide this winter to introduce a fresh, 30th-anniversary print of his notorious slasher film, and possibly address these and other questions. If nothing else, the re-release of “Maniac’’ lets us reevaluate shock value, or the value of shock, or schlock. [Upcoming dates include: February 18-19, Brookline, MA; March 11-12,Omaha Nebraska; March 26 & 27, Kansas City, Mo.; April 16th,
Richmond, VA; May 6, Phoenixville, PA; May 12, Stamford, CT; More info: http://www.grindhousereleasing.com/maniac.html]

In its day, Lustig’s film gained notoriety as among the most disturbing of its genre, not only because of the graphic violence — in one scene, a man’s head is shown blowing apart in slow motion — but because “Maniac’’ focuses on the killer, played by character actor Joe Spinell (“The Godfather,’’ “Taxi Driver,’’ “Rocky’’). Other horror movies like “Halloween’’ (1978) and “Friday the 13th’’ (1980) followed the victims. “You find yourself feeling empathy for someone committing despicable acts,’’ says Lustig in a phone interview from Los Angeles.

“Maniac’’ and its ilk helped usher in a new over-the-top horror category that attracted its share of controversy. Feminists protested the unrated “Maniac,’’ and “Sneak Previews’’ critics Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert incited audiences to boycott. “If ‘Maniac’ doesn’t deserve to be rated X for violence,’’ Siskel wrote, “no film does.’’ As for the rape-revenge flick “I Spit On Your Grave,’’ another poster-child slasher film, Ebert said “attending it was one of the most depressing experiences of my life.’’

Clearly, the moviegoer “finds pleasure in movies meant to challenge, disturb, shock and even sicken,’’ Newsweek critic David Ansen wrote. “But at what point does the challenging become the unbearable?’’ What inspired Ansen’s inquiry was the notorious 2002 French film “Irreversible,’’ which includes a 10-minute scene of Monica Bellucci being raped while her head gets pummeled against a cement wall.

If the point is to “push taboos,’’ says Lustig, a film like “Irreversible’’ succeeds. “There’s a liberation of ideas [in these films], a willingness to push the envelope, something that’s taboo.’’ Of course, gross-out stunts like drag queen Divine eating dog excrement in John Waters’s “Pink Flamingos’’ (1972) seem aimed only to induce a gag reflex. Other films, like Hitchcock’s “Psycho’’ (what Lustig calls “the granddaddy of them all’’), tapped into something more psychologically primal.

That we want and even need to have the bejesus scared out of us is clear; works by everyone from the Brothers Grimm to Stephen King have taught us that. If watching an action hero injects us with a shot of adrenaline, feeling disgusted by gore or repelled by torture reminds us of the limits — of morals, of pain, of our own bodies — we must not exceed.

Lustig never intended to sate any highfalutin cultural or psychic craving. “I made ‘Maniac’ as a horror film fan. I didn’t intellectualize it,’’ he says. “It wasn’t what I said, ‘to push the envelope.’ We just went on instinct. We were making the film for ourselves.’’ Lustig now heads Blue Underground, a DVD company that stokes our nostalgia for gore of yore, distributing lost classics about “psychopaths, cops, robbers, zombies, cannibals, madmen, strange women and more,’’ its website declares.

Undoubtedly, what it takes to shock us has changed since the Surrealist Twenties, the Comics Code Authority crackdown of the Fifties, and the Dungeons & Dragons/heavy metal parental freakout endured in the 1980s. Movies reset our boundaries, then we become habituated, then unimpressed.

“Years ago when we were younger, we craved some form of radical stimulation, and early horror/slasher films filled in the gap,’’ wrote Carl Cephas, president of Washington, D.C.’s Psychotronic Film Society, in a recent e-mail. But as visual stimulation “went into overkill,’’ the audience reached over-saturation. The films left nothing to the imagination. A new wave of film history twisted that border till it bled again.

Looking back, 1972 was a banner year for limit-pushing. Among other things it gave us “Pink Flamingos,’’ “Deliverance,’’ “The Last House on the Left,’’ and “Last Tango in Paris.’’ But even then, some suspected its alarming effect would prove ephemeral. Reviewing Bernardo Bertolucci’s “Last Tango,’’ Vincent Canby wrote, “It’s so Now, in fact, that you better see it quickly. I suspect that its ideas, as well as its ability to shock or, apparently, to arouse, will age quickly.’’

Or take 1975’s “Salò,’’ based on the Marquis de Sade’s book “120 Days of Sodom’’ but re-envisioned in Fascist Italy. Banned in its day, Pier Paolo Pasolini’s film was available only as a bootleg until two years ago when it was finally released on DVD. But the long wait disappointed. “[People] were expecting gore, and they were bored,’’ says Brian “Horrorwitz’’ Horowitz, who runs a movie and collectibles business called Trash Palace out of Frederick, Md. We’d moved on.

Horowitz’s list of top audacious titles includes “Cannibal Holocaust’’ (1980), infamous because the director (Ruggero Deodato) was accused of making a snuff film; Sam Peckinpah’s 1971 “Straw Dogs,’’ known for its groundbreaking violence; and “A Clockwork Orange’’ (also 1971), which Stanley Kubrick pulled from theaters when it was accused of inciting gang violence. After each of these, more “more’’ became acceptable.

So what daring subject matter is left to colonize? And is it harder to make a more disturbing film these days when most boundaries have been explored, if not by mainstream movies then by video games and pornography? The answer might be the “torture porn’’ trend of the “Saw’’ series, or “The Human Centipede,’’ with its diabolical premise of a surgeon joining the digestive systems of three unfortunate tourists. Both are shocking, but also readable as responses to Abu Ghraib and our obsession with plastic surgery.

Meanwhile, recent remakes of “Last House,’’ “Texas Chainsaw,’’ and “I Spit on Your Grave’’ suggest the industry won’t take big risks. It wants to bank on the safety of familiar franchises, while soaking that cutting edge of what Canby called “Now’’ in as much blood as the ratings board can stomach. According to Cephas, it’s a game of “gore-upsmanship and the bucket is already full.’’

At least we’re beginning to look back on controversial films with rosier glasses. David Lynch’s 1977 “Eraserhead’’ was deemed by Variety a “sickening bad-taste exercise.’’ Now it’s a beloved cult film preserved by both the Library of Congress and National Film Registry. Same with “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,’’ now added to the permanent collection of New York City’s Museum of Modern Art.

As for Lustig, he went on to direct a few more films — “Vigilante’’ and the “Maniac Cop’’ series — but none attracted much controversy, or notice. Even though a “Maniac’’ remake is in the works, the slasher veteran seems jaded by the genre he helped to create. For him, better computer effects, more gallons of blood, is actually less. It’s what’s suggested in the mind, not splashed on the screen, that can disturb the most.

“I always thought that Steven Spielberg’s best film was ‘Jaws,’ ’’ Lustig says. “You have the shark that pops out of the water when Roy Scheider is chumming. But what sells it is the expression on Roy Scheider’s face. You see his veins popping out and see that fear. That’s what it’s all about.’’

Wading through garbage to pick out the gems

Nick Prueher and Joe Pickett will visit 75 cities on the Found Footage Festival tour. Among the videos they’ll show are “Cutest Cat Capers’’ and “Ventriloquism for Fun & Profit.’’ (Josh Hertz)WADING THROUGH GARBAGE TO PICK OUT GEMS 

by ETHAN GILSDORF

Celebrating the Dark Ages of VHS, the Found Footage Fest kicks off its international tour

Nowadays, an eight-year old armed with a Flip camera and iMovie can shoot and edit a video as sophisticated as what, 25 years ago, required a TV studio teeming with technicians. That same pesky kid can upload content in minutes to a potential audience of millions.

But once upon a time, if one dare imagine such a horrifying past, YouTube and Facebook didn’t exist. You couldn’t burn a DVD from your laptop. God -- aka Al Gore --- hadn’t even invented the Internet yet.

These were the Dark Ages of VHS. To shoot a home video meant lugging around a camera, tape deck and battery pack a heavy as a Renault LeCar. The only way to disseminate your video awesomeness to friends (real friends, not virtual ones) was to invite them over. Or entrust the videotape to the US Mail.

The Found Footage Festival recalls that cruder, less ironic “Golden Age of Home Video” of the mid-Eighties through the mid-Nineties, a time when how-to videos exploded and CG effects were only a few steps evolved from your Commodore 64.

The 2011 fest has kicked off its 75-city tour, with stops in many cities, from Boston to New York; Montreal to South Bend, Indiana; Buffalo to Tucson; San Francisco to

Winnipeg; and dozens of destinations in between.

For those old enough, video artifacts from that era exhume painful memories of mullets and shoulder pads. For others, their amateurish look is unintentionally hilarious. The Found Footage Festival rides that edge, alternately touching our funny and nostalgia bones.

“We come from the old analog world where to watch a video you had to trade it with someone,” say Nick Prueher,  34, festival co-founder and co-host, by telephone from his home in Queens, NY. “It used to be a social thing.”

Prueher and partner in crime Joe Pickett have revive that communal element by touring a selection of found videotapes --- corporate training videos, public access programs, home movies --- they’ve freshly culled from thrift stores and garage sales. During the live show, the two add context and off-the-cuff commentary: “What we were doing in our living room,” Prueher says. “‘Pre-Mystery Science Theater 3000,’ we were already making fun of bad TV.”

The show has one mandate. The footage must exist on physical media: VHS, or occasionally three-quarter inch U-matic videocassette.

“We don’t take anything from the Internet,” says Pickett, 35. “No one wants to see a YouTube video all blown up.”

The 2011 lineup includes all new footage Pickett and Prueher found while on last year’s tour. Their website --- www.foundfootagefest.com --- archives top finds from the thousands of tapes they’ve scrutinized; on the big screen is what Prueher calls “the cream of the crop.”

Clips that rose to the top include: how-to ventriloquism videos found in an Atlantic City Goodwill store; self- hypnosis videos promising better performance in tennis, bowling and lovemaking; exercise videos featuring an impressive assortment of celebrities including Cher and the American Gladiators; a Linda “The Exorcist” Blair instructional tape called “How to Get Revenge”; a montage of 25 hunting call videos with names like “The Mouth Yelper A to Z”  and“The Magic of Squirrel Calling”; and dozens more.

“It’s burly, mustached men in camouflage making funny sounds,” says Pickett of the hunting call compilation. “It almost sounds like freeform jazz.” In a segment called “Lying & Stealing,” they show tapes obtained while claiming to run a meat processing plant, or by working at a video store, for a day.

Where possible, a video’s director or on-camera talent are tracked down and invited to come up on stage. Or, sometimes the hosts get the call. Pickett recalls when the makers of a shopping video contacted him. “We thought they were pissed, because it’s not very flattering footage. But we met them and they loved it. They came [to a show] and did a reenactment.”

Prueher make it clear that while the festival screens only the highlights, er, lowlights, the edits aren’t manipulative. They’re “true to the tape.” Pointing out the poofy hair and Dokken concert T-shirts gets laughs, he says, but the point isn’t ridicule.

“There’s partly that nostalgia. There’s partly that remembering the format and the production values of yesteryear and cataloguing and preserving it,” says Prueher. “The AFI [American Film Institute] is preserving ‘Citizen Kane.’ We’re preserving ‘Cutest Cat Capers.’” For them, these tapes are a more accurate portrait of the American people. With their bad tracking and washed-out colors, they “have more truth,” Prueher says, than any AFI top 100 films list.

“One thing we learned is there is a surprising amount of racism in ventriloquism,” he deadpans. “I always wanted to be a ventriloquist as a kid.”

Friends from the 6th grade, when they hailed from Stoughton, Wisconsin, Prueher and Pickett began their collection in 1991 after finding a McDonald’s training video called “Inside and Outside Custodial Duties.”

“Our friendship is based on our appreciation for things that are so bad that they’re good,” Prueher says. “We didn’t excel in school other than that. Our sense of irony was very well developed from the age 12.” Prueher went on to be a researcher at the “Late Show with David Letterman,” Pickett a film technician, and both have written for “The Onion.”

In 2004, living in New York, the two were encouraged by friends to turn their private screenings of Reagan-era archeological AV finds into a show. Sold-out performances in the East Village snowballed. Since then, they’ve appeared at theaters and comedy festivals, and on cable and network TV. Today they hit the road for nine months out of 12, hosting 75 to 100 shows a year. The Onion's “A.V. Club” features their web series; also in the works is a book.

While the rules forbid soliciting videos, sometimes Pickett and Prueher stumble across something too brilliant to resist. Take one film called “Spring Break ’85.” After attending a screening last year, Rockland, Mass native Rudy Childs handed over a tape with a curious backstory. One of Childs’ friends worked security at Reagan’s inauguration; his job was to guard CBS TV equipment. “They should have had a security guard watching him,” Childs, now 50, recalls. “He stole badges, hats, microphones.” Childs brought a video camera on vacation to Fort Lauderdale, and he and his buddies wandered the beach, posing as news reporters with a genuine CBS microphone.

“We were dressed up in shorts,” Childs says. “They [the interview subjects] didn’t know what to make of us. You have a beer in your hand, and long hair, asking questions. ... Video cameras weren’t that prevalent back then.” Childs was in attendance at the Brattle Theatre screening in Cambridge, Mass., to reveal more about the making of “Spring Break ’85.”

Another video breaking the “thrift store only” rule is “Heavy Metal Parking Lot.” Directed by Jeff Krulik and John Heyn, the 16 minute cinema verité short captures the caterwauling, beer-swilling, zebra-stripe-spandex-wearing populace outside a 1986 Judas Priest concert. Passed around Hollywood and the indie rock scene --- everyone from Sophia Coppola to Ed Norton to Dave Grohl (of Nirvana/Foo Fighters) saw it --- “Heavy Metal Parking Lot” was dubbed a cult classic, and has joined the festival to celebrate its 25th anniversary.

“It was an underground thing from jump,” says Krulik, now 49, by phone from D.C. “We gave it away. We threw it in the public domain by accident.” Krulik and Heyn have since shot explorations of other “weird, eccentric subculture” behavior: at a Neil Diamond show parking lot (same venue as the Judas Priest concert, but a decade later), in line at a Harry Potter book signing.

Krulik and Childs just completed a “making-of” documentary called “Heavy Metal Picnic,” about a Potomac, Maryland, blues fest; the organizers decided to bring in heavy metal for two days. “Shirtless men running around, fights breaking out – everything you love from ‘Heavy Metal Parking Lot,’” says Pickett.

As for the future, one might wonder if the age of broadband might conquer the Found Footage Festival’s low-fi nostalgia trip. Nick Prueler thinks not. With the superabundance of downloadable material out there, he feels people appreciate the Found Footage Festival’s curatorial role. As Prueler puts it, “Two people wade through all the garbage to pick out the gems.”

Besides, in 20 years, they might be showing stuff they find on DVD or SD memory cards --- even YouTube or Facebook. Prueler: “Bad ideas never change.”

Then Prueler and Pickett will rescue those bad ideas and bring that terrible, beautiful garbage to a theater near you.

Ethan Gilsdorf is the author of “Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks.” Reach him through his website www.ethangilsdorf.com

Geek love

Geek love

Can a gaming and fantasy fanatic find romance outside his realm?

By Ethan Gilsdorf

[originally published in the Boston Globe Magazine]

In a famous scene in the 1982 movie Diner, Eddie (played by Steve Guttenberg) makes his wife-to-be pass a football trivia quiz before he’ll agree to marry her. Me, I’m a fantasy and gaming geek, not a sports freak. I may not know how many yards Tom Brady has passed for this season, or the Red Sox bullpen’s average ERA last season, but I can name all nine members of the Fellowship in The Lord of the Rings, and I can tell you that the Millennium Falcon made the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs.

This has caused some problems in my dating life. Not that I’ve pulled a litmus-test stunt on prospective mates, like: Do you prefer DC Comics or Marvel? Can you name the houses at Hogwarts? Rather, it’s me who’s felt tested. Should I admit I once played Dungeons & Dragons religiously? That I was president of my high school AV Club? Revealing my dweebishness hasn’t always produced the best results. “Huh . . . interesting,” more than one lady has said on a first date during my epic quest for damsels, one that has taken me from Star Wars cantina-like dive bars to the heartless land of Mordor.com, er, Match.com. “I never knew Chewbacca was from the planet Kah . . . how do you say it?”

“Kashyyyk,” I muttered, sipping my ale and deciding I’d not sing my hobbit drinking song – not until at least the third date.

Because these utterances have at times been deal breakers, I’ve often mulled whether couples can bridge the differences. Can partners hail from opposite ends of the hipster-to-geek continuum or the nerd-jock divide? Need they share the same geekery to make love work? As a decorated veteran of the Dating Wars, I’m here to report the answer is mixed.

One woman I was obsessed with seemed cool with the idea of watching The Fellowship of the Ring with me. In bed. We barely made it out of the Shire. When I proposed a marathon, 12-disc extended edition viewing of the trilogy (including the “making of” videos), with Middle-earth themed food, she de-friended me. I went out with another woman whose online profile declared, “I’m a sci-fi geek.” We met up at a sports bar, where my “Han shot first” reference met a blank stare and my Monty Python jokes fell flat. It seemed her professed geekiness was only skin deep.

I once met a couple who found a solution, though. Both through-and-through geeks, they resided, surprisingly, in opposing Dorklands. He collected Star Trek action figures and built reproduction props from movies and TV shows likeBattlestar Galactica. She baked medieval period bread, wore bodices, and kept a pseudo-Middle English blog. Still, the marriage worked. Maybe the solution to a successful relationship is not so much mutual participation in tunic-sewing and wizard rock as it is mutual respect for each other’s kooky infatuations. Yes, even that Captain Kirk command chair that dominates the den.

At least geeks today aren’t as ostracized as I was back in the Reagan administration. Boys and girls of all ages get down with Wii. Plus, as it turns out, hipsters, sports nuts, and fashionistas are really geeks in disguise. Dwarf-bearded men smitten with fixed-gear bicycles have appropriated nerdy glasses. Ex-jocks play fantasy baseball. In fact, a collection of action figures has a lot in common with a shoe fetish – the main difference being it’s OK to take your Manolo Blahniks out of the box. Whereas Voltron stays in his plastic bubble, forever. Plus, D&D players, adept at role-playing, make great lovers. Wizard, barbarian, or naughty secretary – what’s the difference?

As for the woman I’m currently seeing, she didn’t have to pass an Elvish exam. She’s no geek. She’s a former jock who set a couple of track records back in the day. Her passion is art and graphic design, not graphic battles with orcs or zombies. But she’s cool with my playing Risk with the boys. And she’s seen me in my tunic. Recently, she agreed to accompany me on a journey to my geek-friendly ancestral home. Before I had a chance to ask, she offered, “Hey, I’d love to watch the trilogy with your family. What can I bring?”

Before I could suggest “Boba Fett feta dip” or “a nice hobbity ale,” I realized she hadn’t specified which trilogy, Star Warsor Lord of the Rings. But I figured she’d be game for both.

Ethan Gilsdorf is the author of the award-winning, travel memoir/pop culture investigation Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms (now in paperback). Follow his adventures at http://www.fantasyfreaksbook.com.

YouTube playlist of Tolkien-themed videos!

Hey! There's a new dedicated playlist of Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks videos on TheOneRing.Net's YouTube channel.

These are Tolkien-themed videos I shot in New Zealand: looking for hobbits in Hobbiton (Matamata); elves in Rivendell (Kaitoke Regional Park); Weta Workshop (Wellington); and a mash-up of footage from the "If you want him, come and claim him!" scene (Arrowtown). 

More to come. Hope you'll take a look.

We're gonna need more holy water

Sure, the Crusades are morally reprehensible—but when it comes to battling evil, out come the holy water, sacred texts, and "in the name of the father" pronouncements. 

a review of Season of the Witch

by Ethan Gilsdorf

What ever happened to the risky Nicolas Cage who took on meaty roles like Adapation? Or, at least, the one who played sincere characters like Ben Sanderson in Leaving Las Vegas? Or, for that matter, the comic and goofy Nic of Raising Arizona?

Rather, and sadly, the actor of late has imprisoned himself within a cage lackluster supernatural action vehicles like Ghost Rider, The Sorcerer's Apprentice, The Wicker Man, Next, and Knowing. In each, Cage possesses some awesome power, prognosticates some doomed secret, or stumbles across a malevolence force. Cue the time portals, fiery circles, demonic possessions, pagan rituals and creepy flash-forwards of knowledge mere mortals ought not to know.

In Season of the Witch, the hangdog-faced Cage (now with greasy, shoulder-length locks) confronts another paranormal conundrum, this time set in medieval Europe. Disenchanted by his time in the armed services, aka the Crusades, Behmen (Cage) deserts the war with his longtime fighting, boozing and whoring buddy Felson, played by the primitive-looking Ron Perlman (Hellboy, Hellboy II). "You call this glories? Murdering women and children?" is Behmen's anti-war epiphany moment, after he takes part in a massacre at the fortified city Smyrna. The two pals wander back home from the Holy War and are captured for going AWOL.

Meanwhile, Europe has been engulfed by the Black Plague. A dying Cardinal (Christopher Lee, ghastly enough without makeup but here unrecognizable behind icky prosthetics of festering boils and tumors) offers them clemency if they agree to transport a suspected witch, a girl played by newcomer Claire Foy, who is blamed for causing the plague. Get she to a monastery. The monks there will know what to do. Right.

Ergo, the quest commences.

An A team is assembled: our two heroes, a monk named Debelzaq (Stephen Campbell Moore, from The Bank Job), a stoic knight (Ulrich Thomsen), an elfin altar boy who craves adventure (Robert Sheehan, from Cherrybomb) and Hagamar, a convicted thief (Stephen Graham from "Boardwalk Empire") who is freed because he knows the way and because he can provide comic relief.

The journey takes the party through craggy mountains, barren plains and haunted forests. Much of the scenery is appropriately Dark Agedly forlorn. The film was shot in Hungary, Austria, Croatia, and that other European location known for its Old World charm, Shreveport, Louisiana, and the Eastern European film crew, who also handled much of the special effects, is chock with Istváns and Zoltáns.

Season of the Witch film borrows more than a few tricks from that other quest epic you may of heard of, The Lord of the Rings. The kinetic camera may as well have been controlled via remote control by Peter Jackson. It sweeps across CG landscapes melded with the real scenery and filtered with that bluish, gauzy light (likely added in post-production color grading), a look-and-feel we now associate with films set in days of yore. The score, composed by Icelander Atli Örvarsson ("Law and Order," "The Fourth Kind") includes more than its share of Howard Shore-esque brass fanfares and haunting choruses. And yes, one of the nasty forests they must cross, patrolled by wolf packs, is called ... not Mirkwood ... not Fangorn ... but Wormwood.

The Tolkien echoes don't end there. Behmen and Felson's friendly rivalry—"Whoever slays the most men, drinks for free"—recalls Legolas and Gimli's battlefield body-count contest, minus 99 percent of the chemistry. Likewise, Felson's "What madness is this?" line regurgitates Boromir's "What is this new devilry?" moment when the Fellowship first faces the Balrog in the Mines of Moria. To Perlmans's query, Cage replies: "This be a curse from hell."

No one attempts an English accent, which is probably for the best, for already Cage as heroic knight is hard to swallow. But director Dominic Sena (Gone in Sixty Seconds, Swordfish) makes no attempt to establish any sort of linguistic consistency. One moment, Hagamar, who speaks like he wandered off the set of "Jersey Shore," spouts lines like "Don't be deceived. She sees the weakness that lies in our hearts"; then he's all "Let's kill the bitch!" Likewise, early on our monk Debelzaq intones, "There is a whisper throughout the land, that the hour of our judgment is on us." Later, in the climactic battle, he exclaims, "We're gonna to need more holy water." Debelzaq may as well be channeling Roy "We're going to need a bigger boat" Scheider from Jaws.

Like in many action movies, the creaky script by Bragi Schut, Jr. (who wrote and directed the CBS sci-fi series "Threshold") tries to ride that knife edge: sober and serene so we'll buy the premise, yet giving the heroes a wide berth for wisecracks. Perhaps because Season of the Witch is meant to be taken as a period picture—OK, a supernatural thriller set in the 14th century—this familiar Hollywood cocktail of lofty prose and battlefield quips feels especially strained. Amazingly, Schut's screenplay won a major writing competition, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences's Nicholl Fellowship. Which does not instill much confidence in the Academy's ability to recognize good screenplays.

Schut's other problem is story. Much is made of whether the ragged girl is, in fact, a witch. Cage's character suspects she might be wrongly accused. You're not like the others—you're kind, the girl says. But the audience knows whether or not the innocent gal possesses supernatural powers long before the characters do; despite evidence that should alert our clueless heroes, they're unnecessarily dense. The unexpected wrinkle of exactly how the evil forces takes form partly redeems this plotting mishap, but not before the film's credibility has been battered.

A more serious shortcoming is the film's contradictory message. Early on, showing a rather a modern and enlightened perspective, Cage and Perlman defect from the Crusading army to protest the unjust and brutal wars. Killing soldiers and innocent women and children in the service of a Christian God is offensive, our heroes intuit. Yet Season of the Witch reveals its odd logic in the final reel. Sure, the Crusades are morally reprehensible—but when it comes to battling evil, out come the holy water, sacred texts, and "in the name of the father" pronouncements. Schut, our screenwriter, can't have it both ways—implicating the Church for atrocities that shoved Christianity down the throats of infidel Muslims, while suggesting that only Christian mojo can save the day.

Despite the drawbacks—the cumbersome script, the flat performances by Cage and Perlman—genre fans with their bars set low will find this junk food fun. The effects are decent. The production design's medieval grittiness is convincing. The scenery is moody and sometime staggering. (Attention Hungarian Tourist Board: begin your Season of the Witch movie location bus trips now.)

(Before I go, other gripe: Am I the only one dislikes that flickery, ever-so-slightly sped up combat photography so in fashion now? It's like you're viewing the fighting through an old-timey projector. Ridley Scott recently used this technique in Robin Hood. I find the jerkiness distracting.)

Ignoring Sena's cheap horror and suspense tricks, overall the action sequences are rousing, with plenty of mass-scale sword-clangings, torch-bearing through dark passages, and effortless beheadings. If you like your swords-and-sorcery mind-candy a campy blend of Tolkien and The Exorcist, and you don't mind a few groaners, Season of the Witch might, heroically, do the trick.

Ethan Gilsdorf is the author of the award-winning, travel memoir/pop culture investigation Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms (now in paperback). Follow his adventures at http://www.fantasyfreaksbook.com.

Is steampunk the new goth?

Is steampunk the new goth? 

By Ethan Gilsdorf, December 29, 2010

(links to images on the Christian Science Monitor site)

A Steampunk mantel clock by Roger Wood of Ontario is valued at $1,500. It’s part of an exhibition titled (with Steampunkish ornament), ‘Steampunk, Form and Function, an Exhibition of Innovation, Invention and Gadgetry’ at a Waltham, Mass., museum. [photo: Melanie Stetson Freeman/Christian Science Monitor Staff]Some pop culture genres such as Tolkienesque fantasy imagine a magical past of strange races and global quests. Others, such as hard-core dystopian science fiction, warn against a future marred by apocalyptic meltdown.

Then comes steampunk, a hybrid vision of a past that might appear in the future – or a future that resides, paradoxically, in the spirit of another age.

No, you're not stuck in some goofy concept album by The Moody Blues. Steampunk is a fantasy made physical, made of brass and wood and powered by steam, born of the Industrial Age and inspired by the works of H.G. Wells and Jules Verne. It takes form both as an aesthetic movement and a community of artists; role-players; visionaries; and those who use the tools of literature, film, music, fashion, science, design, architecture, and gaming to manifest their visions.

"[Steampunk is] drawing on actual history. You can pull into it what you're into and put your spin on it. It's accessible yet expandable," says Jake von Slatt (real name: Sean Slattery, of Littleton, Mass.), who likens the philosophy behind steampunk to the open-source software movement. "There is a real focus on sharing, exploring things together, building community."

Steampunkers gather in conventions to exchange ideas – plus, they know how to dress to the nines and party like it's 1899.

Mr. von Slatt, who came of age in the era of punk rock, new wave, and Goth, has always been a tinkerer. Steampunk lets him "revisit youthful enthusiasms," he says. Now he creates intricately crafted anachronistic objects: for example, computer keyboards taken apart and rebuilt with brass, felt, and keys from antique manual typewriters. He's transformed a 1989 school bus into a wood-paneled "Victorian RV," which he uses to travel to steampunk conventions.

Currently, he's "steampunking" a fiberglass, 1954-style Mercedes kit car, tricking it out with salvaged gauges and lights from other cars and gold filigree trim. Drawn to steampunk's "do-it-yourself, making something from nothing" mantra, von Slatt scavenges most of his components from the dump.

Roots in a 1960s TV series

Steampunk was first introduced as a literary subgenre. William Gibson and Bruce Sterling's 1990 novel "The Difference Engine" popularized the idea of an alternate history where the Industrial Revolution-level technology of pistons and turbines, not electricity, powers modern gadgets, as Victorians might have designed them. But even way back in 1960s, the television series "The Wild Wild West" helped define the genre. The sci-fi western featured a train outfitted with a laboratory and featured protagonists who were gadgeteers.

Today, steampunk's reach has exploded, from Boston to San Francisco's Bay Area, to Britain, New Zealand, Japan, and beyond.

"Steampunk is definitely growing in popularity," says Diana Vick, vice chair of Steamcon, an annual convention in Seattle that doubled its attendance when it held its second meeting in November. "I believe it is due in part to the fact that it is a rejection of the slick, soulless, mass-produced technology of today and a return to a time when it was ornate and understandable."

This year, Steamcon celebrated what its website called the Weird Weird West. It notes: "Imagine the age of steam on the wild frontier ... roughriders on mechanical horses, mad inventors ... mighty steam locomotives ... airships instead of stagecoaches."

Every culture that embraces steampunk seems to make it their own. Patrick Barry, a member of New Zealand's League of Victoria Imagineers, has seen myriad international examples. "All have a different flavour, world vision and cultural base for the artists and writers to draw from and it shows," he writes via e-mail. Even in his tiny hometown of Oamaru, steampunk has taken off. Three groups have recently mounted an exhibition, a fashion show, and run several events. "Oamaru has a population of about 13,000 people. We had 11,000 people visit the exhibition over its six week [run]."

Previously, most works in the genre would have been set only in the Industrial Age. Over time, explains Dexter Palmer, author of the novel "The Dream of Perpetual Motion," the term "steampunk" has undergone "definition creep." "Nowadays the label's much more comprehensive, and seems to refer to any retrofuturistic or counterfactual work that features machines with lots of gears, or lighter-than-air flying craft, or similar sorts of things."

Some works have been retroactively embraced as part of the genre. For example, Terry Gilliam's dystopian satire, "Brazil," is now considered steampunk even though the film was not called steampunk when it was released in 1985.

In Mr. Palmer's novel, a greeting-card writer who is imprisoned aboard a zeppelin must confront a genius inventor and a perpetual motion machine. The author created a set of rules for his fictional universe: While things might be "scientifically implausible" to the reader, they would be "self-consistent and plausible to the inhabitants of the imaginary world." He based his ideas on source materials that predicted life in the year 2000 and then designed gadgets that seemed modern, but used turn-of-the-century tech. For example, there's an answering machine in the novel that functions by recording to a wax cylinder.

'It wants to teach us things'

"One of the really wonderful things about Steampunk is that it, more than any other subculture, seems to want to teach us things," von Slatt wrote on his blog at steampunkworkshop.com. And, like the punk and Goth movements before it, steampunk teaches another way of looking at the world.

Ms. Vick adds that another appeal lies in its largely optimistic and romantic, not dark and cautionary, outlook. "We also embrace and foster good manners and dressing up, which are both sorely lacking in society today," she says.

Indeed, dedicated steampunkers are lured by fashion. To dress up as a privateer and pilot flying machines powered by "lift-wood," or play a mad scientist who meddles in alchemy, the required accouterments include corsets, top hats, and lace-up boots; military medals, parasols, and aviator goggles.

Bruce and Melanie Rosenbaum aren't particularly into costuming, but when attending an event they will break out period garb. Their businesses, ModVic and SteamPuffin, offer home remodeling and design services for steampunking Victorian-era homes, an idea they applied to their own 1901 house in Sharon, Mass. They loved the turn-of-the-century fantasy but, Bruce says, "you don't want to live in the 19th century in terms of conveniences." So they retrofitted modern appliances or hid them behind facades of functional art. Combining old and new, their living room sports a plasma TV framed by an antique wooden mantel.

Upstairs, Bruce's attic office incorporates portholes, a bank vault door, and computer workstation made from an antique desk and pipes from a pump organ. You can almost see the ghost of Jules Verne hammering out a few e-mails.

"How much more fun is it to make something ornate and beautiful, rather than boring and unadorned?" asks Melanie. The couple is working on a book project, and recently curated two exhibits in the Boston area.

Tom Sepe, an artist exhibiting in one of them, the "Steampunk Form & Function" show at the Charles River Museum of Industry & Innovation in Waltham, Mass., shipped his "Whirlygig," a "steam-electric-hybrid motorcycle," from his workshop in Berkeley, Calif. The circus performer discovered steampunk via the Burning Man art community, and looks at his life as art. "Every choice we make is part of a performance," he says. "Every object we make or touch becomes an artifact of who we are and how we have been."

For Mr. Sepe, "three crucial elements" keep him engaged in the steampunkmaker culture: the "warmth factor" of its handmade materials, its functionality, and whimsy – "free thinking imagination and fun." Unlike other art forms, he says, "It doesn't take itself too seriously."

And whereas other genre fans can niggle over the small stuff, steampunk tends to be more open-ended. Jeff Mach, one of the partners behind New Jersey's Steampunk World's Fair, remembers Goths back in the 1990s sniping at one another for not being "Goth enough." No so with this latest, more inclusive cultural mashup. "It's not starting from a single point but many points," he says.

Many suggest steampunk is the next Goth, or even bigger. "I think this is the beginning of steampunk as a new sort of thing, as a pop culture phenomenon," says von Slatt. "I think it's the tip of the iceberg."

16 books to buy the geek on your list

16 books to buy the geek on your list

Trouble finding the perfect last-minute gift for that geek on your shopping list? Here are 16 great books covering all stripes of geekery

Just in time .... a Geek Book Gift Guide
 

'Twas the night before Christmas, when through the black hole

Not a fanboy or girl was stirring, not even a troll;

The MacBooks were placed near the Wi-fi with care,

In hopes that St. Geekolas soon would be there.

Have you been a good little geek this year? Have you kept your PS3 and Xbox consoles all shiny and neat? Did you get all A’s in Elvish and Klingon and Shyriiwook (aka Wookiee Speak)? Did you roll all 20’s the last time you went dungeon crawling? If so, perhaps you’ll find one of these geek-eriffic books under the tree this year.

But if you haven’t been good ... Well, Sauron’s eye, I mean Santa’s eye, is ever watchful. So you better watch out.

My Best Friend Is a Wookiee: A Memoir, One Boy’s Journey to Find His Place in the Galaxy

by Tony Pacitti ($19.95, Adams Media)

Certified Star Wars geek (and Massachusetts native) Tony Pacitti charts his life in relation to the Trilogy—from pathetic childhood and adolescence to Luke Skywalker-like coming of age. We see a painfully shy kid slowly trying out the Jedi-like powers of adulthood and using the transformative Force (and forces) of the Star Wars universe to get him there. A hyperdrive tour through Star Wars fandom that's more fun than shooting womp rats in Beggar's Canyon. But “My Best Friend Is a Wookiee” also a comical, tender, no-punches-pulled coming of age memoir.

Android Karenina

by Leo Tolstoy and Ben H. Winters ($12.95, Quirk Books)

What happens when you mash-up “Anna Karenina” with the world of 19th century Russia, this time retro-fitted with robotic butlers, mechanical wolves and moon-bound rocketships? You get “Android Karenina,” from the same folks who brought us “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” and “Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters.” Here’s a sample line from Winters’ steampunked Tolstoy: “When Anna emerged [from the rocket], her stylish feathered hat bent to fit inside the dome of the helmet, her pale and lovely hand holding the handle of her dainty ladies’-size oxygen tank ...” A fun tongue-in-cheek romp for literature majors and science fiction aficionados alike.

We, Robot: Skywalker's Hand, Blade Runners, Iron Man, Slutbots, and How Fiction Became Fact

by Mark Stephen Meadows ($19.95, Lyons Press)

If you grew up like I did on a steady diet of “The Jetsons,” “The Six Million Dollar Man,” “Star Wars,” and “The Terminator,” then you’ve been wondering when all your robot fantasies might become true. But unlike personal jet packs (never happened) and hover craft (another back-of-comic-book pipe dream), cyborgs, androids, and avatars are real. With wit and insight, Mark Stephen Meadows separates science fiction from actual fact, navigating the ethically sketchy territory of domestic robots and autonomous military robots, artificial hands and artificial emotions. “We, Robot” raises the crucial questions that robot-makers largely ignore. In doing so, Meadows shows us that in our quest to create more and more life-like robots, we’ve become more robotic ourselves.

The Lord of the Rings Location Guidebook: Extended Edition

by Ian Brodie ($24.95, HarperCollins)

When I traveled to New Zealand to research my book “Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks,” and embarked on my own Lord of the Rings filming location geek-out quest, this guidebook was indispensable. With its detailed maps, directions, insider information and exclusive movie stills—even GPS coordinates—I was able to find dozens of sites, from the Shire (Matamata) to Mordor (Mt Ruapehu in Tongariro National Park) to Arrowntown’s The Ford of Bruinen, location for the famed “If you want him, come and claim him!” scene. Perfect for the Tolkien freak planning his or her own LOTR adventure Down Under.

Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter

by Tom Bissell ($22.95, Pantheon)

Must video games remain mere entertainment?Could they provide narratives that books, movies, and other vehicles for story delivery can’t? Might they even aspire to art? Tom Bissell's new book "Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter" aims a tentative mortar shot at these targets. His investigation is bedrocked upon personal experience; along the way, we also meet game developers at such megaliths as Epic Games, Bio Ware, and Ubisoft. Thankfully, the book isn’t pure fanboy boosterism. Video games can be great, he says, but they can be “big, dumb, loud.’’ A master prose stylist, the erudite Bissell is frequently insightful in the analysis of his video game obsessions.

Halos and Avatars: Playing Video Games With God

by Craig Detweiler, editor ($19.95, Westminster John Knox Press)

A thoughtful collection of essays at the cross-section of religious and media studies. The various contributors take on quirky topics such as the theological implications of apocalyptic video games like Halo 3, Grand Theft Auto IV, and Resident Evil; how avatars are changing social networks and our spiritual lives; and the medical ethics and theology in controversial games such as BioShock. Bonus material includes an interview with Rand Miller, cocreator of Myst and Riven, and other video game industry folks.

The Dream of Perpetual Motion

by Dexter Palmer ($24.99, St. Martin’s Press)

In the steampunk tradition comes this debut novel a greeting card writer imprisoned aboard a zeppelin who must confront a genius inventor and a perpetual motion machine. In creating his world, Palmer borrowed from archival source materials that predicted life how life would be in the year 2000, then retro-designed modern gadgets that use turn-of-the-19th-century technology. A kind of Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” as Jules Verne might have envisioned it and a great, richly-imagined read.

Confessions of a Part-Time Sorceress: A Girl's Guide to the Dungeons & Dragons Game

by Shelly Mazzanoble ($12.95, Wizards of the Coast)

Dungeons & Dragons insider Mazzanoble (she now works for Wizards of the Coast, the company behind D&D) gives a sassy and informative look at D&D from the female gamer's POV. She tackles myths and realities of gamer stereotypes and proves that women should be, and increasingly are, welcome to roll dice and at Cheetos with the rest of the trolls. As Mazzanoble writes: “Let’s get one thing straight: I am a girly girl. I get pedicures, facials, and microderm abrasions. I own more flavors of body lotions, scrubs, and rubs than Baskin Robbins could dream of putting in a cone. ... I am also an ass-kicking, spell-chucking, staff-wielding 134 year-old elf sorceress named Astrid Bellagio.”

Star Wars Jesus: A Spiritual Commentary on the Reality of the Force

by Caleb Grimes ($17.95, WinePress Publishing)

Is Obi-Wan Jesus? Why does Yoda speak like a character from the Old Testament? What inspires our devotion to this mythical universe of Jedis, Dark Sides and “feeling the Force”? Grimes gives us a different take on the LucasFilm empire, one that sees the Star Wars stories as potentially as powerful and useful as the ones we learned in Sunday school. In my case, I missed church entirely, but that didn’t stop me from quoting “There is no try. Do or do not” as a kind of spirtual/philosophical mantra.

Collect All 21! Memoirs of a Star Wars Geek: The First 30 Years

by John Booth ($14.95, Lulu.com)

Not long ago, enviro-spiritual interpretations of “The Lord of the Rings” were all the rage. Now, paeans to “Star Wars” are popular. Here’s one that’s a deliciously warped nostalgia trip through Star Wars fandom. From collecting Kenner action figures to getting Star Wars birthday cakes from puzzled parents to scribbling fan letters to Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher, Booth shamelessly flaunts his lifelong lust for all things Star Wars. Like a tractor beam, this endearing account draws us in and makes us reminisce about our own geeky obsessions.

A Guide to Fantasy Literature: Thoughts on Stories of Wonder and Enchantment

by Philip Martin ($16.95, Crickhollow Books)

A diverse and thoughtful examination of the so-called “fantasy” genre: from Middle-earth to Narnia, high fantasy to dark fantasy, fairy-tale fiction to magic realism and adventure-fantasy tales. Peppered with meaty quotes by J.R.R. Tolkien, J.K. Rowling, C.S. Lewis and Stephen King, Martin’s book provides a concise primer for those wondering why it is we’re drawn to tales of magic quests and heroic derring-do.

The Mythological Dimensions of Doctor Who

by Anthony Burge, Jessica Burke and Kristine Larsen, editors ($15.00, Kitsune Books)

Dr. Who fans, rejoice! This collection of essays takes a look at the mythological undercurrent in this classic BBC television series considered by the Guinness World Records as the “longest-running science fiction television show in the world” and "most successful" science fiction series of all time.” (Take that, Lucas and Roddenberry). Topics connect Dr. Who to Arthurian legend, Batman and medieval Scandinavian Valkyries. An engaging discussion for the serious traveler of the Whoinverse.

Unplugged: My Journey into the Dark World of Video Game Addiction

by Ryan G. Van Cleave ($14.95, HCI)

Most of the time, playing video games is fine, fun and perfectly harmless. But every now and then, a player gets a little too immersed in a game’s imaginary word. In Cleave’s case, the game was World of Warcraft, and his playtime turned into an 80-hour-a-week, life-wrecking addiction. “Unplugged” tells a cautionary tale of hitting rock bottom, wising-up and climbing out of the dungeon.

How to Survive a Garden Gnome Attack: Defend Yourself When the Lawn Warriors Strike (And They Will)

by Chuck Sambuchino ($14.99. Ten Speed Press)

Silly. Ridiculous. And a hoot. In the spirit of those “how to survive a zombie apocalypse” manuals comes this tome to tell us how to defend against the latest enemy. The book claims it is “the only comprehensive survival guide that will help you prevent, prepare for, and ward off an imminent home invasion by the common garden gnome.” Great color photos bring the spoofy goofiness alive.

Carl Warner's Food Landscapes

by Carl Warner ($22.50, Abrams Image)

For the food geek on your list. Sumptuous, jaw-dropping, eye-popping, mouth-watering fantastical landscapes made entirely from real fruit of this earth: vegetables, cheeses, breads, fish, meat, and grains (and fruit, too). The 25 photographs take you on a trip around the world... and the sweet treat is each photo is followed by making-of insights into the creative process. Don’t read on an empty stomach.

Geek Dad: Awesomely Geeky Projects and Activities for Dads and Kids to Share

by Ken Denmead ($17.00, Gotham)

The title pretty much says it all. You’re a geek. You have a kid who’s a geek (or you want to turn your kid into a geek). Read this crafty book for ideas to share your love of science, technology, gadgetry and MacGyver. Engineer and wired.com’s Geek Dad editor Ken Denmead offers projects so you and your child can, among other things: 1) launch a video camera with balloons; 2) make the "Best Slip n' Slide Ever”; and 3) build a working lamp with LEGO bricks and CDs. Soon, together, you can rule the galaxy as father and son. Mwahahah!

Ethan Gilsdorf is the author of Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms, now in paperback. Follow his adventures and get more info on this book at /