Lucy meet Neo meet Will Caster

I was intrigued by the similarities between the July 2014 movie Lucy, the 1999 film The Matrix (Neo) and April 2014 movie Transcendence (Will Caster). Lucy combines elements of both films and even shares a co-star from Transcendence, that of Morgan Freeman. Of course The Matrix also featured Black co-star Laurence Fishburne who was Neo's teacher regarding the terrible truth of the world in which he lived and learned to manipulate just as star Scarlett Johansson's character does in Lucy. In Lucy and Transcendence Freeman's character is a scientist, though more of a professor in the former. I was somewhat disappointed by Transcendence, which also had an element of the TV series Revolution in it. The trailer I saw for Lucy showed Scarlett Johansson at her formidable best a la her Black Widow character from The Avengers.

RIP Cory Monteith

Shocked and saddened to read about the death of TV series "Glee"'s Cory Monteith in Vancouver (BC) where he had been staying at the Fairmont Pacific Rim.

Zenoids contest Top 10 ready for your vote

I've made my choice among the Zenoids theme title Top 10 Finalists, so now it's your turn. The deadline for voting is January 2, 2012 and the winner will be announced January 3, 2012.

Congrats to the Top 40 Zenoids title theme contest semi-finalists

My congrats to the Top 40 Zenoids title theme contest semi-finalists which were announced on December 1, 2011. Sadly, for me, I'm not among them. I'll see about getting permission to post my entry on YouTube following the public voting and selection of a title theme.

I've posted an audio-only version of what I thought was my best of three entries on SoundCloud.

My hometown of Aiea in "Hawaii 5-0"

On the October 17, 2011 broadcast of the second season of "Hawaii 5-O" there were a couple of mentions of Aiea as a plot plot when one of the characters pointed out that a woman being searched for was staying at a small motel in Aiea.

So far as I know, there are no motels, small or otherwise, in Aiea. There are three "apartment hotels" that come up for Aiea in a Google Maps search. They're opposite the watercress farm on Kamehameha Highway that fronts the Pearlridge Shopping Center. I guess for TV, motel works better since it's one word instead of two.

"Terra Nova", is this "Avatar" for TV?

I'm not that impressed with the new TV series that premiered on September 26, 2011 called "Terra Nova". One of the stars is none other than Stephen Lang, who plays a similar character to his role in the movie "Avatar". The compound in the world the lucky citizens of the 22nd century are sent back to 85 million years ago is somewhat reminisicent of the compound on the planet in "Avatar" that's being mined for an energy source that will help an Earth also on the verge of envrionmental collapse as is the 22nd century Earth in "Terra Nova".

Danno's dead, we'll miss

And now we bid a fond aloha to James MacArthur who played Danno on the original Hawaii Five-O TV show for 11 years. Just before the new series aired, he didn't rule out the possibility of making a guest appearance. He won't have that chance now, but he'll live on in my heart and mind whenever I hear the phrase "Book 'em, Danno."

"Through Her Lens" Knowledge Network short on Hannah Maynard

I was hired to do some research and writing about 19th century Victoria portrait photographer Hannah (Mrs. Richard) Maynard for a video short, one of a series called "The Edge of the World," that's available for free online viewing on the Knowledge Network. The title of the short is "Through Her Lens". I'm credited at the end of the video.

For a treatment of Hannah Maynard within the developing cultural community of arts Victoria, see Karen Finlay's exhibition catalogue "A Woman's Place" (2004).

Lost, the Movie

How long before we see a Lost movie based on the TV series that ended its six year run on May 23, 2010?

[polldaddy poll=3250135]

Lost repeats itself, see the beach where it was filmed

I'll bet some of you are as annoyed as I am that the Lost episode airing tonight, April 27, 2010, is a repeat. Hey, weren't we promised all new episodes until the two-part series finale? I want my money back.

Just to get you in the mood for next week's hopefully new episode, here's a photo I took on the Mokueia beach looking towards Kaena Point. This is one of the Oahu North Shore beaches where Lost was filmed.



And this is the end of the public road at Kaena Point as seen through Google Maps Street View. This is from a parking lot looking towards the start of the northeastern foothills of the Waianae Range that separates central Oahu from the Wainae coast.

[googlemaps http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=21.578951,-158.237355&spn=0,0.00408&t=h&z=19&layer=c&cbll=21.578951,-158.237355&panoid=lCYqJ5ftH2NiD9nnb0ljsg&cbp=12,184.47,,0,-8.37&source=embed&output=svembed&w=425&h=350]

Woke Up Dead Web series on Showcase.ca

Was checking something on a Web site and spotted an ad for a 22-part Web series called Woke Up Dead on Showcase.ca starring Jon (Napoleon Dynamite and Blades of Glory) Heder. He's dead but still alive, sort of, as a zombie.

Lost TV episode filmed at King Intermediate School, Oahu?

In the episode broadcast on March 9, 2010, I thought the exterior of the school where Lost TV character Dr. Ben Linus, a history teacher, worked looked a lot like King Intermediate School in Kaneohe on the Windward side of Oahu. Can anyone confirm that?

Beyond Eden rock musical, setting the record straight

None of the reviews I've read of the Vancouver Playhouse's rock musical Beyond Eden (January 16-February 6, 2010), and that includes those of the Globe and Mail (January 22, 2010) and CBC News, mentioned that the 1957 totem-pole-collecting expedition on which Bruce Ruddell's musical is based, was jointly sponsored by the British Columbia Provincial Museum (now the Royal BC Museum) and the University of British Columbia. Ironically, anthropologist Wilson Duff, on whom the character Lewis Wilson (played by John Mann) is based, worked for the Provincial Museum until 1965 when he became a professor at UBC. The BC Government filmed the expedition, the production is called The Silent Ones, with CBC also filming it and calling their work Totem. You can see a shortened, retitled version of Totem on the CBC Digital Archives ("Bill Reid's rescue mission for Haida art"), originally broadcast on May 21, 1959 in the series Pacific Eight.

Caprica TV series a keeper

I watched the premiere of Caprica, the TV series that debuted on January 22, 2010 on the Syfy and Space channels in the USA and Canada. It's a keeper. The show, filmed on location in Vancouver, BC, Canada, is the prequel to Battlestar Galactica (2004-2009 and 1978-1979) and is set 50 or so years before the near-total destruction of humanity by the Cylons. The series looks at two families, the Graystones and the Adamas, both living on the planet Caprica. Adama is from the planet Tauron which seems to have reputation for generating a host of nasty people. At the end of the first episode I could see how the backstory and some of the many questions that remained unanswered in the more recent Battlestar Galactica will be dealt with. Daniel Graystone's dead daughter Zoe, whom he resurrects as a Cylon, might just be the progenitor of the Cylon faction that believed in the One True God, whereas the Cylon he produced under a Caprica defense contract will likely become the source of the Cylon horde that almost destroyed humanity.

It was fun seeing the Vancouver landscape transformed through CGI into the urban center of Caprica. A couple of places I recognized were Library Square outside of which Daniel Graystone and Joseph Adama (William Adama's father) first meet and the Georgia Street side of the Vancouver Art Gallery, which used to be the Vancouver Courthouse.

The show will probably not sit well with those who believe in the One True God since it reverses what North American and other audiences hold most dear.

Killer Subs in Pearl Harbor on Nova, January 5, 2010

I watched with great interest the PBS Nova series broadcast on January 5, 2010 titled "Killer Subs in Pearl Harbor". I sent these comments in via the feedback link on the PBS Web site:

Near the end of the broadcast the narrator comments that the 1944 West Loch disaster in Pearl Harbor had been shrouded in secrecy until recently. This is incorrect as a 1989 (2nd ed., 1990) publication from the U.S. National Park Service titled Submerged Cultural Resources Study: USS Arizona Memorial and Pearl Harbor National Historic Landmark describe this event (p. 70-73).

I also found it odd that no one commented on the fact that it the odds of striking the Arizona with a torpedo from a midget submarine firing broadside were next to impossible since there was another vessel moored in front of her.

I also wondered what year the fifth midget submarine had been located since that fact was never stated during the program.

I discovered the answer to my last comment myself. According to this Los Angeles Times story, "Pearl Harbor mini-submarine mystery solved?",

The three pieces of the sub were found during routine test dives between 1994 and 2001 by Terry Kerby, chief pilot of the Hawaii Undersea Research Laboratory's submersibles Pisces IV and Pisces V. ... Stephenson got involved in 2007 because he was looking for the fifth Japanese mini-sub.

While the Nova program laid out a convincing case that a midget submarine fired its torpedoes and may have sunk one or two battleships, this is far from the overly dramatic claim that the midget submarines played a major role in the attack. Four of them were either sunk or captured and the fifth was scuttled in the West Loch of Pearl Harbor, which was subsequently dredged after the 1944 landing craft explosion disaster, and the sub's remains redeposited along with the wrecks of what was being transported on the destroyed landing crafts outside Pearl Harbor.

Heroes and Ray Bradbury

I was struck while watching the November 30, 2009 episode of the Heroes TV series by the similarities between Ray Bradbury's novel Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962) about Cooger & Dark's Pandemonium Shadow Show and his amazing collection of short stories based on tattoes covering the body of The Illustrated Man (1951). The Illustrated Man was also a 1969 Hollywood feature film starring Rod Steiger and Claire Bloom. In the movie, he is searching for the woman who tattoed his body. Sound familiar?