The Ongoing Failure of the PG-13 Rating: The Movie

In perhaps the strangest milestone of my I-guess-you-could-call-it-a-career, The Dissolve has adapted an essay of mine that they published back in December into a very clever two-and-a-half-minute animated short. Keith Phipps, who edited the original essay, wrote the script.

I'm honored. The original piece is here. Please note that it cites Guardians of the Galaxy as the top-grossing picture of 2014 in the U.S., which it was at the time of publication; Guardians was subsequently out-earned by The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 1 and American Sniper. Anyway, my thanks to Keith and to animators Mack Williams and Benji Williams and their team for doing such a beautiful job with this. I've embedded the video above, but please go watch it on The Dissolve, where it's accompanied by a behind-the-scenes video wherein Mack Williams pulls back the curtain on how he turned a script into a cartoon.

What the Movies Taught Us About World War II Aviation

I wrote this fun piece for my day job. It appears in our May 2015 issue of Air & Space / Smithsonian, now on sale at Barnes & Noble and other fine booksellers and newsstands, as well as the National Air & Space Museum. It's our 70th anniversary of V-E Day issue, which – because it'll be out in time for the Arsenal of Democracy Flyover on Friday, May 8th (the actual anniversary) – includes pull-out Spotter Cards you can use to identify the silhouettes of the two dozen vintage warbirds that'll be buzzing over your head a few minutes past noon if you come down to the National Mall on that day.

For the record, I do think William Wyler's The Best Years of Our Lives is the greatest of the films I surveyed – if not the greatest flying movie – save for Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's 1943 masterpiece The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, which I had occasion to mention only fleetingly. (The photo at the top of this post is of Roger Livesey and Anton Walbrook in that film.)

Mark Harris's book Five Came Back was an invaluable resource for me while writing this story.

The Dissolve Podcast #32: The "Ecstatic Truth" Just Means "Lie" Edition

I haven't seen Alex Garland's Ex Machina yet, but I can't wait.

I was honored to be invited to join Tasha Robinson and Keith Phipps to discuss The State of Science Fiction in the movies on this week's episode of The Dissolve podcast. The also includes a discussion of documentaries and is thus named for a Werner Herzog phrase I love. A lot of ums from me, a lot of insight from Tasha and Keith. Listen here.

Prose and Retcons, or Don't Fear the Rewind, or Mulligans' Wake

"Well, everyone knows Ripley died on Fiornia-161. What this ALIEN movie presupposes is... maybe she didn't?"

I have a long, long "Exposition" essay up at The Dissolve today inspired by (uncertain) reports that District 9 director Neill Blomkamp's upcoming Alien movie may be a ret-con scenario that undoes the events of 1992's Alien-little-three, or Alien Cubed – anyway, the one where Ripley died. The piece is about retconning in fiction in general, and why it doesn't much impair my ability or inclination to suspend my disbelief at all.

If you're quite comfortable in your chair, and you're stout of heart and nerdy of temperament... Onward!

What's It All About, Chappie?

So Die Antwoord won't be releasing a cover of "Alfie" with the lyrics updated to promote their surprisingly substantial parts in Neill Blomkamp's new RoboCop / Short Circuit hybrid, Chappie? Disappointing.

But so's the movie. My NPR review is here.

Enter the Drag: Kung Fu Elliot, reviewed.

Elliot Scott is the delusional subject of a documentary by Matthew Bauckman & Jaret Belliveau.

Kung Fu Elliot, a documentary about a man who aspires to be the Canadian Chuck Norris, turns nasty enough quickly enough to call its makers' intentions into question. I reviewed the 2014 Slamdance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize-winner for Documentary Feature for The Dissolve.

Pop Culture Happy Hour #230: Jupiter Ascending and Chemistry

Channing Tatum and Mila Kunis in Jupiter Ascending (Murray Close/Warner Bros.)

I was happy as always to join my buddies Linda Holmes, Stephen Thompson, and Glen Weldon on this week's Pop Culture Happy Hour, wherein we dissect Jupiter Ascending, the "original" sci-fi epic from auteur siblings Lana and Andy Wachowski from which audiences flocked away in droves last weekend. (I reviewed the film for The Dissolve.) We also try to figure out what people mean when they talk about "chemistry" among performers onscreen.

As always, I thought of more stuff I could've mentioned after we taped. I must disagree with my Pal-for-Life Glen we he praises Jupiter Ascending as being light on exposition, wherein stuff is "asserted, not explained," but I do believe in leaving some stuff on the table vis-a-vis world building.

One of the consequences of having sequels and prequels and reboots to almost everything now is that it's very difficult to sustain any sense of wonder or mystery. (We really didn't want to know about the Midichlorians, did we?) But the Matrix spinoff The Animatrix – shorts written and directed by animators handpicked by the Wachowskis – builds out the world of The Matrix much more satisfyingly than its own feature sequels do. These shorts are on DVD; they were released online for free in the run-up to the release of The Matrix Reloaded in May 2003, and you can still watch four of them gratis – including the best one, Mahiro Maeda's "The Second Renaissance."

For our chemistry experiment, I brought in a few more clips than we could use. This is an inexhaustible topic, but these are the ones I thought I might have something to say about on this particular day.

William Powell and Myrna Loy as Nick & Nora Charles in 1934's The Thin Man and its five sequels. File under: Chemistry, romantic and spousal.

Patrick MacNee and Diana Rigg as Steed & Mrs. Peel, from The Avengers, circa 1965-7. The show ran from '61 to '69, giving MacNee a succession of partners during that span, but the Rigg Era seems to be the most fondly remembered. It's certainly my favorite. File under Chemistry, Professional and Sexual.

And of course, the Riggs & Murtaugh of film criticism, Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert. File under Chemistry, Professional and Adversarial.

Finally, I can't believe I misidentified my own Justified viewing club, The Justified League of America, as the Justified Society of America. We're Silver Age, not Golden Age. Chalk it up to nerves.