Salon.com > Science Fiction and Fantasy

Salon.com > Science Fiction and Fantasy http://www.salon.com Wed, 30 May 2012 06:12:34 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 “Sound of My Voice”: A tense sci-fi puzzler http://www.salon.com/2012/04/28/sound_of_my_voice_a_tense_sci_fi_puzzler/ http://www.salon.com/2012/04/28/sound_of_my_voice_a_tense_sci_fi_puzzler/#comments Sat, 28 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12911337 David Lynch likes to talk about "movies that make you dream," and he's made his share of them. (Whether any sane people wanted to share the dream that was "Inland Empire" is another question.) I've always preferred a more prosaic phrase: Movies that mess with your mind, using another verb in place of "mess." My personal view is that even when cinema apparently depicts the most quotidian reality, it poses a sort of epistemological challenge: How do we tell the difference between image and narrative and reality, when all we ever have to work with are mental constructions of those things anyway? There are the crowds who (supposedly) ducked in terror while watching the Lumière brothers' 1895 film of a train arriving at La Ciotat, and there are people who have Internet arguments about what "really happened" in "Memento" or "Mulholland Drive." Both are caught on the horns of the same dilemma.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/04/28/sound_of_my_voice_a_tense_sci_fi_puzzler/feed/ 22 Interview: Joss Whedon on his two big movies http://www.salon.com/2012/04/13/interview_joss_whedon_on_his_two_big_movies/ http://www.salon.com/2012/04/13/interview_joss_whedon_on_his_two_big_movies/#comments Fri, 13 Apr 2012 15:30:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12859341 Joss Whedon already belongs on a very short list of the most beloved creators of serial television drama in the medium's history, a list that includes Gene Roddenberry and Norman Lear (two of Whedon's more obvious forebears) as well as ostensibly more serious contemporaries like David Chase and David Simon. But while the other guys on that list are widely admired and widely imitated, perhaps only Roddenberry was adored by his fans the way Whedon is. His work is rooted in a deep and sincere passion for the genre traditions of science fiction and horror -- as he said during our interview, he doesn't worry about fans because he sees himself as one of them -- but like all the best genre practitioners he sees them as a means to telling bigger stories, not as ends in themselves.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/04/13/interview_joss_whedon_on_his_two_big_movies/feed/ 18 Pick of the week: Joss Whedon’s horror puzzler http://www.salon.com/2012/04/13/pick_of_the_week_joss_whedons_horror_puzzler/ http://www.salon.com/2012/04/13/pick_of_the_week_joss_whedons_horror_puzzler/#comments Fri, 13 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12860751 So here's the situation with Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard's mashed-up horror movie "The Cabin in the Woods": It's complicated. I'm recommending that you rush out and see it, but not altogether because I think it's so totally great and completely works. Quite a bit of it is great, and most of it works, and the stuff that clicks is outrageously entertaining and funny, sometimes with surprising depth. But I also want you to see it so we can argue about what works and what doesn't, and discuss the so-called surprise twist, which in-the-know, Whedonverse-type people will already completely have down but which I still shouldn't really talk about.

See, "Cabin in the Woods" is a self-knowing horror movie that is partly about a group of college students behaving like dumb-asses and unleashing unknown terrors at an isolated mountain retreat full of secrets, and partly about what it means to make that kind of movie and tell that kind of story. And if you're rolling your eyes right about now and saying, "Oh no, another damn movie that's too clever for its britches," well, that's OK too. Because Whedon (creator of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Firefly"), who produced and co-wrote the screenplay, and his longtime collaborator Goddard, who co-wrote and makes his directing debut here (after writing "Cloverfield"), have that angle covered.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/04/13/pick_of_the_week_joss_whedons_horror_puzzler/feed/ 29 Is “Game of Thrones” too white? http://www.salon.com/2012/04/01/is_game_of_thrones_too_white/ http://www.salon.com/2012/04/01/is_game_of_thrones_too_white/#comments Sun, 01 Apr 2012 13:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12766651 Ser Jorah’s face grew thoughtful as their horses trod together down the godsway. “When I first went into exile, I looked at the Dothraki and saw half-naked barbarians, as wild as their horses. If you had asked me then, Princess, I should have told you that a thousand good knights would have no trouble putting to flight a hundred times as many Dothraki.”

“But if I asked you now?”

“Now,” the knight said, “I am less certain.”

-- George R.R. Martin, "A Game of Thrones"

Epic fantasy -- sprawling stories full of swords, castles, magic, kings and lots and lots of white people – is slowly finding its way into America's cultural mainstream. In the age of the anemic box office, Peter Jackson's films of J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy remain a gold standard of blockbusterdom – and his forthcoming version of "The Hobbit" will almost certainly follow suit. Newer writers like Brandon Sanderson and Patrick Rothfuss have sold hundreds of thousands of their "door-stopper" tomes of wizardry and courtly intrigue. And tonight, countless viewers will be glued to their sets for the return of what is arguably the hottest show on television, "Game of Thrones," HBO's adaptation of George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire fantasy novels.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/04/01/is_game_of_thrones_too_white/feed/ 246 Will “John Carter” rank among the all-time bombs? http://www.salon.com/2012/03/08/will_john_carter_rank_among_the_all_time_bombs/ http://www.salon.com/2012/03/08/will_john_carter_rank_among_the_all_time_bombs/#comments Thu, 08 Mar 2012 01:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12608071 In considering the fate of "John Carter," the Disney studio's $250 million gamble on a Wild-West-goes-to-outer-space yarn that's 100 years old, it's tempting to observe that two of the biggest box-office bombs in recent Hollywood history have been movies set on Mars. With little sense that the barrage of worldwide publicity has built up much public appetite for "John Carter," is the Mouse prepared for No. 3?

You can't say Disney wasn't warned. One of those Martian elephant eggs was a quite recent Disney film, one the studio and the rest of us have done a good job forgetting. The execrable anti-feminist animated nightmare "Mars Needs Moms" came and went without much fuss a year ago, but viewed through a long lens it looks like one of the biggest disasters in film-industry history, piling up net losses in the ballpark of $140 million. The difference may have been that by the time "Mars Needs Moms" was released, Disney knew it was a turkey. Even at this writing, nobody knows quite what to expect from "John Carter," a long-long-brewing Edgar Rice Burroughs adaptation that marks the live-action directing debut of Pixar's Andrew Stanton, director of "WALL-E" and "Finding Nemo."

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/03/08/will_john_carter_rank_among_the_all_time_bombs/feed/ 96 The brilliance of speculative sci-fi http://www.salon.com/2012/03/04/the_brilliance_of_speculative_sci_fi/ http://www.salon.com/2012/03/04/the_brilliance_of_speculative_sci_fi/#comments Sun, 04 Mar 2012 01:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12464221 Isaac Asimov memorably identified the three major types of science fiction as "What if," "If only," and "If this goes on." Magnificent works have emerged from each of these categories, but readers -- and writers -- have reserved their greatest love for the first of the trio. Asking simple, counterintuitive, counterfactual or even childlike and naïve questions -- the kinds that begin with those two words -- seems to unlock the storytelling imagination like nothing else.

In many cases, what follows naturally from "What if" is something almost as fundamental to speculative fiction: the Big Idea. A massive, revolutionary, visionary conceit that practically begs to be instantiated in fiction. Big Ideas are the highbrow cousin of the Hollywood "elevator pitch," a concise formulation of a winning premise. (And sometimes a Big Idea gets positively reductive, producing a "Big Dumb Object," such as Larry Niven's Ringworld.) The Big Idea might very well be attended, in an SF novel, by a flock of lesser idealings to help support it. But generally, the core notion looms at the center, like a monarch on the throne. Recognizing the centrality and importance of such crystallizing conceits, author John Scalzi even invites his peers to discuss the Big Ideas behind their own projects at his popular blog, Whatever.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/03/04/the_brilliance_of_speculative_sci_fi/feed/ 10 Robert Harris’ sci-fi thriller, ripped from the business headlines http://www.salon.com/2012/02/05/robert_harris_sci_fi_thriller_ripped_from_the_business_headlines/ http://www.salon.com/2012/02/05/robert_harris_sci_fi_thriller_ripped_from_the_business_headlines/#comments Sun, 05 Feb 2012 19:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12294661 Most thrillers do not send me hustling off to Wikipedia for a refresher course in the Stoic philosophy of the first century A.D. Greek sage Epictetus. But that's where I found myself before commencing this review of "The Fear Index," by Robert Harris. I wanted to be sure I was properly grounded before straying into treacherous territory: the nature of being in our phantasmagorical high-finance, high-tech era.

I certainly had no time to brush up while actually reading the novel. "The Fear Index" is a perfect exemplar of the species "taut thriller." It's a book whose pages cannot be turned fast enough; a mystery with just a dash of science fiction and plot twists ripped from the business news headlines of the past year. Beware taking this book to bed with you, because you will stay up too late. (And your dreams will be queasy.)

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/02/05/robert_harris_sci_fi_thriller_ripped_from_the_business_headlines/feed/ 4 William Gibson: I really can’t predict the future http://www.salon.com/2012/01/22/william_gibson_i_really_cant_predict_the_future/ http://www.salon.com/2012/01/22/william_gibson_i_really_cant_predict_the_future/#comments Sun, 22 Jan 2012 21:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12190651 On the Toronto stop of his book tour this month, William Gibson was asked by an earnest 20-something reader for advice: “Give my generation whatever you think is helpful for it to survive.” Where an author with an inflated sense of self-worth might have dispensed a few pearls of wisdom, Gibson replied that one should distrust people on stages offering programs for how to build the future.

As much as people look to Gibson as a prophet, the science-fiction writer who invented the term “cyberspace” (in the 1982 short story “Burning Chrome”) helped conceptualize the ways we interact with the Web (in 1984’s "Neuromancer" and later works) and foretold the explosion of reality TV (in 1993’s "Virtual Light") is notoriously reluctant to predict the future. The title of his new collection of journalism and essays, "Distrust That Particular Flavor," is taken from a piece on H.G. Wells where Gibson explains his suspicion of “the perpetually impatient and somehow perpetually unworldly futurist, seeing his model going terminally wrong in the hands of the less clever.” Though he’s often able to extrapolate from the present with great prescience, Gibson prefers to probe, not prescribe.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/01/22/william_gibson_i_really_cant_predict_the_future/feed/ 7 How I found my father in the “Twilight Zone” http://www.salon.com/2011/12/28/how_i_found_my_father_in_the_twilight_zone/ http://www.salon.com/2011/12/28/how_i_found_my_father_in_the_twilight_zone/#comments Wed, 28 Dec 2011 01:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=10124617 The last time I saw my father, he was lying in a hospital bed in a room with bright green and yellow walls, inappropriate colors intended to console the sick, the dying. As he slept, curled beneath a sheet, I watched him breathe, willing him to, his face still tan against that pillow so white. And as I sat looking at him, I thought of how, when I was small, I would wake in my room beside my flowered wallpaper and listen for his footsteps down the hall, comfortable in their familiarity, secure in the insular world of my childhood, knowing without question or doubt that when I followed those sounds, I would always find him.

When he first got sick, I wiped his forehead dry until he became too ill and I could do nothing, and on the eighth floor of Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester, N.Y., my father died. He was just 50 years old, I barely 20.

- - - - - - - - - -

In 1975, open heart surgery was new, but we believed the operation was the answer. My father told me that himself. “Pops,” he’d said, calling me by my nickname, “I think this surgery will fix things.” For a moment, we were quiet, the brown of his eyes reflecting my own. I never admitted hearing him tell the doctor, “My survival chances were better in the war.” Deep down, in a place I didn’t want to glimpse, was a fear as immeasurable as his.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/12/28/how_i_found_my_father_in_the_twilight_zone/feed/ 52 “After the Apocalypse”: The end of the world, without heroes http://www.salon.com/2011/12/18/after_the_apocalypse_the_end_of_the_world_without_heroes/ http://www.salon.com/2011/12/18/after_the_apocalypse_the_end_of_the_world_without_heroes/#comments Sun, 18 Dec 2011 22:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=10466881 The post-apocalyptic adventure story, in the American imagination, at least, is a wish disguised as a fear. Feigning horror at the notion of civilization razed to its foundations, we can indulge in the fantasy of remaking it from the ground up. Finally, we'll get it right because we Americans -- despite not knowing about stuff like, say, Libya -- abound in native common sense and gumption. And that's all we really need, right?

"After the Apocalypse," a new short story collection by Maureen McHugh, amounts to a merciless dismantling of this delusion. The first story, "The Naturalist," is a zombie yarn (the only one in the book), set in the ruins of Cleveland, a fenced-off no-man's land where convicts are impounded in the unspoken hope that the zombies will finish them off -- or vice versa. Whittaker, the inevitable self-appointed leader of the cons, likes to make speeches about "how they were all more free here in the preserve than they'd ever been in a society that had no place for them, about how there used to be spaces for men with big appetites like the Wild West and Alaska -- and how all that was gone now."

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/12/18/after_the_apocalypse_the_end_of_the_world_without_heroes/feed/ 27 The overlooked sci-fi of 2011 http://www.salon.com/2011/12/18/the_overlooked_sci_fi_of_2011/ http://www.salon.com/2011/12/18/the_overlooked_sci_fi_of_2011/#comments Sun, 18 Dec 2011 17:01:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=10488781 When compiling best-of lists at the end of the year, it's easy to overlook certain classes of deserving books. In a year filled with massive, highly publicized releases -- a new Neal Stephenson, a Vernor Vinge sequel awaited for twenty years -- wonderful books with less flash can go unnoticed in the shadows. A debut novel, perhaps. Or the second book in a quiet series. Or a novel published right at the busy holiday end of the calendar year.

I have selected one of each of these oft-neglected types to bring to your attention. But besides highlighting these superior books, this essay hopes to remind you to cast your own literary nets widely when selecting your personal candidates for the year's finest.

When the World Is Running Down

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/12/18/the_overlooked_sci_fi_of_2011/feed/ 9 Neil Gaiman’s audiobook record label http://www.salon.com/2011/11/23/neil_gaimans_audiobook_record_label/ http://www.salon.com/2011/11/23/neil_gaimans_audiobook_record_label/#comments Wed, 23 Nov 2011 22:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=10248650 Neil Gaiman's enthusiasm for audiobooks is no secret. The best-selling author has narrated many of his own titles, including "The Graveyard Book," which won the Audiobook of the Year award (from the Audio Publishers Association) in 2009. He's even narrated books by other authors on occasion.

Recently, Gaiman kicked his advocacy up a notch by agreeing to hand-select and produce a line of audiobooks in partnership with the audio download retailer Audible.com. Neil Gaiman Presents released its first five titles last month; they include the novel "Land of Laughs" by Jonathan Carroll and "You Must Go and Win" by musician-turned-essayist Aline Simone. Future releases will include books by the early 20th-century American author James Branch Cabell (the target of a once-notorious censorship suit for writing an "offensive, lewd, lascivious and indecent book") and "Dimension of Miracles" by Robert Sheckley, a work Gaiman likens to "A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," and which will be narrated by television personality John Hodgman.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/11/23/neil_gaimans_audiobook_record_label/feed/ 6 The frustrating sci-fi drama “Terra Nova” finally shows signs of life http://www.salon.com/2011/11/22/the_frustrating_sci_fi_drama_terra_nova_finally_shows_signs_of_life/ http://www.salon.com/2011/11/22/the_frustrating_sci_fi_drama_terra_nova_finally_shows_signs_of_life/#comments Tue, 22 Nov 2011 14:43:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=10247986 Stephen Lang and the dinosaurs: Those are the only two reasons to watch "Terra Nova." And that's depressing when you consider that the Steven Spielberg-produced science fiction series is the most expensive show on TV right now, and that it's still considered a long shot for renewal even though more worthy network shows -- including NBC's "Community" and ABC's "Pan Am" -- have effectively been canceled.

Last night's episode was solid and surprising, but arriving eight episodes into the series' run, it's meager compensation for viewer loyalty. Lang's character, Commander Taylor -- the first explorer to step through the time rift that let inhabitants of a polluted Earth to colonize an unspoiled, alternate, prehistoric version of their planet -- finally confirmed what viewers suspected and hoped: that he's not such a great guy after all. (Of course he isn't! Why cast the frequently chilling Lang in an unambiguous nice-guy role?) We learned that, like so many colonies throughout real Earth history, Terra Nova is founded on a lie and a crime. That it's a well-meaning lie and a desperate crime doesn't mitigate the feeling that Taylor is one dark hombre, and that the Terra Novans' enemies, a splinter group known as The Sixers, are less an evil force than principled opposition. (I love how they communicate with a spy within the Terra Nova camp via a big dragonfly outfitted with a data chip; here and elsewhere, the series displays a knack for showing you things you've never seen before, anywhere.)

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/11/22/the_frustrating_sci_fi_drama_terra_nova_finally_shows_signs_of_life/feed/ 13 If Tolkien were black http://www.salon.com/2011/11/09/if_tolkien_were_black/ http://www.salon.com/2011/11/09/if_tolkien_were_black/#comments Wed, 09 Nov 2011 19:45:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=10177605 Looking at the most visible exemplars of epic fantasy -- from J.R.R. Tolkien to such bestselling authors as George R.R. Martin and Robert Jordan -- a casual observer might assume that big, continent-spanning sagas with magic in them are always set in some imaginary variation on Medieval Britain. There may be swords and talismans of power and wizards and the occasional dragon, but there often aren't any black- or brown-skinned people, and those who do appear are decidedly peripheral; in "The Lord of the Rings," they all seem to work for the bad guys.

Our hypothetical casual observer might therefore also conclude that epic fantasy -- one of today's most popular genres -- would hold little interest for African-American readers and even less for African-American writers. But that observer would be dead wrong. One of the most celebrated new voices in epic fantasy is N.K. Jemisin, whose debut novel, "The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms," won the Locus Award for best first novel and nominations for seemingly every other speculative fiction prize under the sun. Another is David Anthony Durham, whose Acacia Trilogy has landed on countless best-of lists. Both authors recently published the concluding books in their trilogies.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/11/09/if_tolkien_were_black/feed/ 42 “In Time”: Justin Timberlake’s OWS sci-fi thriller http://www.salon.com/2011/10/27/in_time_justin_timberlakes_ows_sci_fi_thriller/ http://www.salon.com/2011/10/27/in_time_justin_timberlakes_ows_sci_fi_thriller/#comments Thu, 27 Oct 2011 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=10147604 On my way out of the New York preview screening of "In Time," I overheard another moviegoer cheerfully describing what he had just seen as a "Marxist propaganda film." So it wasn't just me. But it says something about our times, I guess, that the phrase would even come up in reference to a motion picture that could just as well be called grade-B dystopian sci-fi, or an attempt to position Justin Timberlake as an action star. New Zealand-born writer-director Andrew Niccol, he of "Gattaca" and "S1m0ne," has been making chilly, satirical, almost-excellent science-fiction movies and thrillers for years; he cannot possibly have known that this particular one -- which advocates nothing short of full-on class warfare -- would land right on top of the Occupy Wall Street moment. I mean, could he?

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/10/27/in_time_justin_timberlakes_ows_sci_fi_thriller/feed/ 15 Has Neal Stephenson become too accessible? http://www.salon.com/2011/09/18/stephenson_reamde/ http://www.salon.com/2011/09/18/stephenson_reamde/#comments Sun, 18 Sep 2011 20:01:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/books/2011/09/18/stephenson_reamde The blurb on the back of my review copy of Neal Stephenson's new novel, "Reamde," described it as "his most accessible novel to date." I frowned when I read those words: Accessible? This was supposed to be a good thing?

In my house, the arrival of a new Neal Stephenson novel every few years (or, in the case of his epic three-volume "The Baroque Cycle" masterpiece, every six months) is always an occasion for great celebration -- as well as an associated dramatic collapse in work productivity. That's been the case ever since I fell in love with "Zodiac: An Eco-Thriller" in 1988 and was enraptured, along with almost every other science-fiction geek, by "Snow Crash" in 1991. A large part of the allure is Stephenson's uncompromising inaccessibility, his marvelous, sui generis ability to marry complexity, ambition and profound geekiness into a riveting narrative.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/09/18/stephenson_reamde/feed/ 31 How Ray Bradbury became a literary icon http://www.salon.com/2011/08/23/becoming_ray_bradbury_jonathan_eller/ http://www.salon.com/2011/08/23/becoming_ray_bradbury_jonathan_eller/#comments Tue, 23 Aug 2011 01:01:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/books/2011/08/22/becoming_ray_bradbury_jonathan_eller These days, when it's common to see adults engrossed in Harry Potter on the subway, and the edgiest shows on HBO are about vampires and dragons, it's hard to believe there was once a time when sci-fi and fantasy fiction were confined to a cultural ghetto. But in his new study, "Becoming Ray Bradbury" (Illinois), Jonathan R. Eller shows that being a sci-fi writer in pre-World War II America was thoroughly unglamorous -- less a career than a dubious kind of hobby. Ray Bradbury himself was an undistinguished high school senior when he joined the Los Angeles Science Fiction League in 1937, and in the years that followed he seemed likely to remain in that amateur realm: sending his stories to mimeographed fanzines, scraping together bus fare to attend annual conventions. The highest glory available was to publish in "prozines" with names like Astonishing Stories and Thrilling Wonder, which actually paid their contributors -- sometimes as much as a penny a word.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/08/23/becoming_ray_bradbury_jonathan_eller/feed/ 42 “The Magician” sequel delves further into fantasy http://www.salon.com/2011/08/10/the_magician_king_lev_grossman/ http://www.salon.com/2011/08/10/the_magician_king_lev_grossman/#comments Wed, 10 Aug 2011 00:30:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/books/2011/08/09/the_magician_king_lev_grossman In a recent essay in the Wall Street Journal, novelist and critic Lev Grossman used the release of George R. R. Martin's newest, long-awaited sword and sorcery novel as a hook upon which to hang a spirited defense of fantasy literature in general. Grossman first claimed that many average readers and cultural arbiters disrespected fantasy, sneerily regarding it as fit only for children, or child-minded adults. (The lament echoes Woody Allen's famous complaint to Newsweek in 1978: "When you do comedy you're not sitting at the grown-ups' table, you're sitting at the children's table.")

To the contrary, Grossman claimed, fantasy was the Ur-literature of our species; had produced many canonical works of genius; was fully capable of dealing with vital issues in a mature and complex fashion; and continued to inspire contemporary works marked by supreme craft, beauty and importance.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/08/10/the_magician_king_lev_grossman/feed/ 2 “Rise of the Planet of the Apes”: Can James Franco make peace with chimps? http://www.salon.com/2011/08/03/rise_of_planet_of_apes/ http://www.salon.com/2011/08/03/rise_of_planet_of_apes/#comments Wed, 03 Aug 2011 21:30:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/andrew_ohehir/2011/08/03/rise_of_planet_of_apes So I guess this is James Franco's new hipster performance-art career strategy, post-Academy Awards edition: Disappear behind an ape mask in an August B movie. No, I know, I know -- that's not actually Franco in the prosthetic/animatronic/digital/motion-capture/whatever get-up as Caesar, the genetically juiced-up chimp who becomes the leader of a simian rebellion in "Rise of the Planet of the Apes," a curious attempt to re-reboot the venerable sci-fi franchise. That would be Andy Serkis of Gollum fame, midway through one of the strangest Hollywood acting careers since Peter Lorre's, who damn well steals the whole movie as the charismatic ape genius.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/08/03/rise_of_planet_of_apes/feed/ 24 Did Dr. Who save Hitler? http://www.salon.com/2011/07/27/did_dr_who_save_hitler/ http://www.salon.com/2011/07/27/did_dr_who_save_hitler/#comments Wed, 27 Jul 2011 14:30:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/tv/feature/2011/07/27/did_dr_who_save_hitler Did Dr. Who cause the Holocaust? In a teaser for the new season that debuted at Comic-Con, the time-traveling, TARDIS-rocking nerd icon takes a journey back to the Weimar era, where he's seen dancing in top hat and tails in front of a swastika. And the Führer himself thanks him and his companions Amy and Rory for "saving my life." Oopsie.

The second half of the show's season doesn't begin until early fall, but the press release for the episode cheekily promises to "bring the Doctor face to face with the greatest war criminal in the universe. And Hitler." Could we be in for a showdown between Hitler and The Doctor and the Master? Or Henry Kissinger?

Putting Hitler into a fancifully fictional context is always a risky gambit. It's one thing to make a biographical movie like "Downfall" (which led to a ubiquitous Internet meme) or use Hitler-in-hell as a throwaway gag in "Book of Mormon." But for every successfully fictionalized "Inglourious Basterds" Hitler, there are a dozen cringe-worthy "Heil Honey, I'm Home" ones.

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