Take that, Ledger.

Science Fiction blog io9 has just discovered Joey de Leon's "Alyas Batman en Robin" (one of my demented personal favorites). Anyway, scroll down to the comments. The pinoy there is right: Rene Requiestas is the first Joker tragedy.

Oh, and Bat-Milk isn't the dirtiest drink he offered. Tagalog speakers know it's the Bat-Tea.

The Hodg-man further on nerds v. jocks

Hodgman elaborates on his speech in front of Obama.

End credit art

Landscape with the Axiom spaceship done Seurat style.

Here's something interesting: an interview with the creators of the end credits in "Wall-E." I loved that piece, a perfect blend of the history of Earth 2.0 and the history of art, culminating in 8-bit graphics to signal the start of a new computer era. Just like the "Watchmen" opening credits, the "Wall-E" ending is something I can watch over and over.

Well I, for one...

welcome our new ant overlords.

"Lost" in Space

The crew in conference. Yes, they're in a spaceship.

The "Virtuality" pilot (for now just a TV movie, unless a network picks it up) does what good a pilot should do: it sets the premise up, shows us the characters and setting, and gives us an idea of the potential stories of the various characters and devices.

The premise is ok enough, it's 2050, 12 people are manning Earth's first starship, which will take 10 years to reach the nearest star potentially capable of sustaining life. But that won't be enough to sustain modern audiences (much less SF enthusiasts) so they add a twist -- the astronauts' day to day lives are filmed and shown on earth as a reality show -- and a literal plot device -- personal virtual reality modules (think realistically portrayed Star Trek holodecks) that help while away the time AND serve as the ship's interface.

Each character has his/her issues that are illuminated through the "confessional" shots for the reality series and their VR worlds. From civil war reenactments to anime-inspired fantasies, each scenario is an episode in itself and a chance for the actors and writers to play around.

Oh, and there's a guy going around the VR worlds killing their VR selves.

Download it from your riendly neighborhood torrent site and support the call for a full series. We need more shows like this.

Oh, and yay, the ship uses an Orion drive.