* First, I’d like to start by officially introducing the latest addition to the blogroll. More a Legend Than a Blog is emitted by the fertile mind of my good friend, film lover and music-maven CZR, who is actually the only other person to have ever blogged here other than yours truly (under a different name). His site is a treat and he deserves a heartily warm welcome to the cinephile (and music) blogosphere.

CZR’s latest takes on the “Ten Characters” meme, which I’m still tardy on myself. (Brian Doan tagged me some time ago, but I only noticed he had done so about a month after the fact!)

* Over the weekend, a couple of posts by me appeared over at Premium Hollywood regarding weekend box-office, etc. There will be more of this to come in the near future, and that may cut into my blogging here to some degree. I’m definitely planning to preserve this spot as a place for more personal and/or esoteric musings and I’ll look into a way to connect my work at both places somehow, but posts here may become even more sporadic. We shall see.

* And, in other, other news, A veritable geek storm has erupted over an item at the Hollywood Reporter reporting a Star Trek and Twilight inspired reboot, or something, of the Buffy, the Vampire Slayer franchise, only without Buffy creator Joss Whedon, sans Buffy’s erstwhile “scooby” friends (no Willow!!!! Aaaagh!!!!!!), and, if I read it right, without Buffy.

A bit of backstory: Fran Rubel Kuzui, director of the original, pleasantly mediocre, movie version of the franchise once upon a time fashioned a perfectly respectable, pleasantly lightweight autobiographical indie romantic comedy, Tokyo Pop (or that’s how I remember it…I haven’t seen it since it’s 1988 release, when I was but a highly precocious toddler). In typical Hollywood fashion, on her second (and, so far, final) feature as a director, most accounts hold that Rubel and company seriously refashioned Whedon’s original screenplay from a serio-comic actioner to an out and out teen comedy with random changes made to the screenplay from a number of sources, including, according to Whedon, co-star Donald Sutherland (who you will never see in any other Whedon project, it’s safe to say).

Since then, Rubel Kazui has held on to some of the rights, and fans of the Buffy TV show saw her name at the front of every episode…and almost nothing else about her existence that I know of. It’s safe to assume that she had zero input on the television show and received the credit as part of her compensation for the rights. Now, as most of you probably know, a major plot thread of the TV show was Buffy’s trouble-plagued romance with a (mostly) good guy vampire named Angel, setting the hearts of fans of Sarah Michelle Geller and David Boreanaz seriously aflutter. Hence, the Twilight connection — though lips that touched blood never touched those belonging to movie-Buffy Kristy Swanson.

So, with those Trek and Twilight grosses pointing the way, Kuzui and Vertigo Entertainment, which usually specializes in remaking Asian films for the American market, is trying to restart the franchise, apparently using a loophole from the original concept of there being a new slayer in every generation. As a fan of the show, trust me when I say this is nowhere near as clever as the loophole J.J. Abrams and company came up with to stay on (most) Trekkies’ good sides. Overall, this idea strikes me as if the Coca-Cola company had put out New Coke as a non-carbonated non-cola. Buffy without Buffy Summers, and the Whedonverse, without Whedon = box office gold?!? Nah.

Assuming it ever happens, of course. Whedon is an extremely savvy third-generation show biz writer who has already pulled off the unheard of feats of retrieving a lost screenplay concept and remaking it as his own TV show, and then turning another quickly-canceled television show into a major, if not immediately profitable, Hollywood film (Serenity). He is usually protective of his properties, to the extent that he has any control. I’m guessing that this one is almost certain to generate very interesting behind-the-scenes maneuvers.

As always, on Whedon-related matters Whedonesque is very much on top of the story.

UPDATE: Michael Ausiello has managed to elicit a four word response from Joss Whedon, whose currently working on his horror film collaboration with Drew Goddard, “The Cabin in the Woods.” Those four words are:

I hope it’s cool.

H/t Whedonesque.

UPDATE, the second: The aforementioned Brian and CZR each have some worthwhile thoughts on Buffy-less Buffy, or whatever it is.

Sad news via Greencine, the world’s best known and most beloved genre fan has passed on at age 92.

If you grew up a geek in Los Angeles — and, as the four semester president of the Venice High Science Club and, before that, the one term prexy of the Junior Count Dracula Society (an even odder story than it sounds), boy, did I ever — you could not avoid the man everyone knew as “Forry.” For those of you unfamiliar with Mr. Ackerman’s work, he was basically the ultimate fan — “Mr. Sci-Fi” he was dubbed, for he apparently coined the name that many an SF geek with literary pretentions refused to use but that everyone else has taken up ever since. (Even though I haven’t been anything resembling a rabid science fiction purist for decades, I still can’t bring myself to call it that.)

He started his career as a literary agent, whose clients included, among many others, Isaac Asimov, his longtime friend Ray Bradbury, and (I’m pretty sure) the great pulp writer and screenplay collaborator Leigh Brackett (Rio Bravo, The Long Goodbye, The Empire Strikes Back). At the other end of the scale, his Wikipedia entry reminds me that he was also the “illiterary” agent to, you read it here, Ed Wood.

Despite what appears to have been some definite financial success on that account, however, his greatest professional achievement was probably as the editor of Famous Monsters of Filmland, the backbone of Jim Warren’s crude publishing empire that later branched off into semi-adult black and white comic books — also led by another creation of Forry’s, Vampirella. He was also one of the primary founders of the LASFS – the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society (as per its website “this world’s oldest continuously-meeting science-fiction and fantasy club”) which just had a convention over Thanksgiving weekend and which I hope he was able to attend.

Still, at least in these parts, he was best known and loved as the owner of the Ackermansion, his own home and the setting for easily the most impressive collection of horror and…okay…sci-fi related memorabilia and antiquities known to man. When, he moved to smaller quarters in 2002, a collective sigh was heard throughout L.A.’s Geek-American community.

I have two strong personal memories of Mr. Ackerman — who showed up at practically any sf/horror/genre film/comics event you could name for decades. One was when, prior to the first Westal Administration, he escorted my aforementioned high school science fiction club through the Ackermansion, showing off the original robot Maria from Metropolis and some of animator Willis O’Brien’s original models from the 1933 King Kong as well as the 1926 copy of Hugo Gernsback’s Amazing Stories that had started him on his life’s journey at the age of ten. I also remember seeing him when I was probably seventeen or so at Westercon, the largest West Coast science fiction convention that wasn’t focused on Star Trek and that upstart newbie, Star Wars. It was a late night, 16mm screening of a movie that remains a big favorite of mine, the 1973 The Wicker Man.

Just before it started, I turned around and saw the then-sixty-something Forry sprawling across several chairs for an 11:00 screening of a movie he’d probably already seen a few times. (True, it was before even VHS was all that common and it wasn’t exactly easy to see.) He smiled and gave me a wave though he could not possibly know who I was other than just another fellow enthusiast. He was just happy to be watching an obscure movie on a bad projector in a hotel ballroom. A fan through and through.

UPDATE: It’s absolutely no surprise that there’s been a great deal posted about this notable passing since I first wrote this yesterday morning. You can find most of it via good ol’ Dennis Cozzalio’s predictably remarkable post. Of course, Dennis is a true blue horror fan of the first order, and like Guillermo del Toro, accepted monsters into his heart at an early age, so he very much knows whereof…. Anyhow, along with his personal reminiscences on the importance of Famous Monsters to him and to the horror world in general, he’s also posted a three-part video epic documenting his own 1998 visit to the Ackermansion. I call that appointment online viewing if ever there was.

Dennis also links to some worthwhile posts, including one from Tim Lucas, which alludes to some controversies I was totally unaware of. The only criticisms I ever heard of Forry or his magazines had to do with his coinage of “sci-fi,” and the crude writing and bad puns in his magazines. (As a blogger with a love of borsht belt humor, I’m hardly in a position to criticize on either score). Otherwise, everyone seemed to love him personally and respect his work as the ultimate fan and his friendliness to true geeks of all levels was legendary. At least on the most public level, what was there not to like?

Admittedly, the current version of the Famous Monsters wikipedia entry (which I’m not linking to because I’m somewhat suspicious of some of what’s in it right now) seems if not perhaps one-sided, more than a little strange, in its discussion of a lawsuit that, along with our barbaric health care system, reportedly had a lot to do with so tragically draining Ackerman’s resources and forcing him to sell off large chunks of his collection. But, hey, it’s Mr. Sci-Fi/Monsters, we’re talking about, so a little strangeness seems apt.

On a much more positive note, Dennis also links to Glenn Kenny and some extremely worthwhile comments. And it was via Kenny, I stumbled upon this really poignant 2003 Los Angeles Times article by Hillary MacGregor, who apparently tolerated a bit of flirtation from the late octogenarian with very good humor, reposted on their Daily Mirror blog. I was especially taken by a section discussing one of Forry’s lesser known passions…. the long-ago attempt at a one-world language designed to bring on world peace.

….In a mishmash of what sounds like French, Spanish and Italian that is somehow comprehensible to any liberal arts graduate, he tells a visitor her eyes are beautiful, her height striking. He is speaking Esperanto. “In the 20s and 30s, some science fiction stories of the future mentioned that everyone would one day speak Esperanto,” he says. “For me it was like time travel. It was like going 100 years into the future. And if I could bring back a bottle of something, I would be thrilled. At least I could bring back the language everyone would be speaking.”

Something about Ackerman’s snippet of Esperanto seems to capture the soul of science fiction, and of Ackerman himself. It speaks to a utopian vision cherished by people who fantasize about a world where Martians and Klingons and humans can all speak the same language and get along. It is the view of an optimist, the view of a man whose slogan is “Save humanity with science and sanity.”"

Again, what’s not to like?

This one’s pretty much for film geeks only (though the video below is recommended for all music fans)….

So, some time back, my highly esteemed blog-friend Brian Doan tagged me with the “12 Films” meme, which basically calls for the taggee to name 12 films he or she really wants to see, but hasn’t. Though I making any kind of selection found it a daunting task — I have two DVRs filled with movies I “really need to see” plus a NetFlix queue which is, I think, about 350 films long (a few are repeats of favorites or movies I want to take a new look at that I’ve seen before, but mostly not). I responded (eventually) with six films, with the other six to come…eventually.

But now, Brian has again tagged me again, with the dreaded “Alphabet” meme, calling for a listing of 26 films, one for each letter of the alphabet (”the” and “a”, etc., don’t count) we like or feel some personal connection or are favorites, or whatever. Since I still had a deficit of six films as yet to list in the original films-I-want-to-see meme, and to prove my point about the infinite nature of the first (especially considering my pretty omnivorous tastes), I have decided that I’m going to mutate this here ‘net virus and make it a list of 26 films I really want to see, but haven’t, in alphabetical order. I won’t be tagging anyone else with this, for I fear the viral responsibility. However, of course, anyone who wants to play is more than welcome.

The only trend I noticed here is a few notable films I’ve yet to see from directors I’m supposed to be sorta kinda expert on like Billy Wilder and Alfred Hitchcock.

I should add that this was especially challenging for those less popular alphabet letter, as I’ve actually seen both Xanadu and Z (and wouldn’t even think of listing the former unless it was cut down to the one nice dance number with Gene Kelly and Olivia Neutron Bo…I mean Olivia Newton John — I love musicals too much to give it a pass and, while I’m not wholly immune to camp, my love of bad movies knows bounds, lots and lots of bounds). But okay, I admit the idea was born when I realized I’ve had Louis Malle’s Zazie dans le Metro on my DVR for a couple of years now. My musical tastes saved me elsewhere….

I have put asterisks next to films whose unseen status may be questioned by some (including me) or where I have a comment.

So, here goes….

Avanti
Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia*
Cockfighter**
Diabolik
The Emperor of the North
Five Graves to Cairo
Green for Danger
Hallelujah, I’m a Bum
I Am Trying To Break Your Heart
Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten
Kagemusha***
Lifeboat
Mississippi Mermaid
Night of the Generals
One of Our Aircraft is Missing
Pistol Opera
Quo Vadis
Robin and the Seven Hoods****
The Spook Who Sat by the Door
Two for the Road
Used Cars
Verboten!
Wee Willie Winkie*****
X: The Unheard Music
YiYi
Zazie dans le Metro

And now, by way of thanking L.A.’s greatest all-time punk rock band for saving me….and, by the way, this is the first time I’ve seen this piece of film, which may or may not be in the X doc listed above. Why can’t more rock videos be this simple? Great stuff.

See asterisks below the fold…

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