Super-Culture

In recent years many comics have tried, seriously and facetiously, to address the impact of superheroes on world events. Others attempt to explain why the heroes didn’t affect events; Earth-2’s Hitler found a mystic artifact that kept the JSA at bay.

But what about the broader culture? How would the characters and conventions associated with superheroes affect the cultural world?

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Robert Wise: Sept. 10, 1914 – Sept. 14, 2005

Robert
Wise has passed away. Genre fans will know him as
the director of Star Trek: The Motion Picture
and The Day The Earth Stood Still. Our
mothers would likely know him as director of The
Sound of Music and West Side Story. He
also directed The Andromeda Strain, 1963’s
The Haunting, Run Silent Run Deep,
The Set-Up, The Curse of the Cat
People and many others. He served as an editor
for Orson Welles on Citizen Kane and The
Magnificent Ambersons, and has a host of other
impressive credits. At age 91, this wasn’t a shock,
but it’s definitely a loss.

Weekly DVD Picks – Tuesday, September 13, 2005

Sorry this is late. I was out of town last week, and
when I got home last night I realized that my entire
Bureau 42 directory was somehow neglected when backing
things up on the desktop computer in my switch from
Fedora to Kubuntu. (It’s all on the laptop, so it’ll
get rescued.) At any rate, this week looks a little
sparse, but that’s going to pick up dramatically by
the last week of October.
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Fall Sci-Fi Premiers

Thanks to Sci-Fi Wire for the dates (though I don’t really feel Desperate Housewives is really genre, Sci-Fi Wire does). I can’t really say I’m interested in any of the new shows. I may watch Invasion, but only because it’s on after Lost.

•Tuesday, Sept. 13: 9 p.m. Supernatural (The WB)

•Friday, Sept. 16: 9 p.m. Threshold (CBS)

•Monday, Sept. 19: 8 p.m. Surface (NBC), 10 p.m. Medium (NBC)

•Wednesday, Sept. 21: 9 p.m. Lost (ABC), 10 p.m. Invasion (ABC)

•Friday, Sept. 23: 8 p.m. Ghost Whisperer (CBS)

•Sunday, Sept. 25: 8 p.m. Charmed (The WB), 9 p.m. Desperate Housewives (ABC)

•Thursday, Sept. 29: 8 p.m. Smallville (The WB), 8 p.m. Alias (ABC), 9 p.m. Night Stalker (ABC)