The “First Lady of Trek.”

My mother truly acknowledged and appreciated the fact that ‘Star Trek’ fans played a vital role in keeping the Roddenberry dream alive for the past 42 years. It was her love for the fans, and their love in return, that kept her going for so long after my father passed away.Majel Barrett-Roddenberry, 1932-2008.

Stop-Motion Alphabet.

As part of the launch of the official site (and taking a page from Edward Gorey’s Gashlycrumb Tinies), twenty-six unique alphabet-themed posters are released across the web for Henry Selick’s version of Neil Gaiman’s Coraline (in stop-motion and 3D, no less), coming February 6, 2009. If, like me, you haven’t read the book, “it’s about a girl that walks through a secret door in her home and discovers an alternate version of her life. On the surface, this parallel reality is eerily similar to her real life – only much better. But when the new world turns dangerous, and her counterfeit parents try to keep her forever, Coraline must find a way to get home and save her real family.

The Ambient Bones.

As discovered while tracking down the first three Coraline posters above: In an intriguing meeting of the minds, it seems Peter Jackson has locked down the very talented Brian Eno to score The Lovely Bones for him.

For a possible taste of things to come, you really can’t go wrong with “By this River” (or anything off of 1977’s Before and After Science, for that matter) or “And Then So Clear,” from 2005’s Another Day on Earth.) As these two songs suggest, Eno will no doubt come up with something appropriately ethereal, evocative, otherworldly, and beautiful for Jackson’s long-awaited adaptation.

The Conchords Fly Again.

Bret? Present. Jemaine? Present. Murray and Mel? Present. Figwit? Present. Ziggy-era Bowie? Present. The novelty-music paparazzi? Present. All the ladies in the world? Present. It sounds like everyone who’s anyone is present and accounted for, so cue the second season premiere of Flight of the Conchords, now on FunnyorDie through the 21st (and appearing on HBO beginning January 18.) I haven’t watched it yet, but i believe I’ll do so directly.

The Man of the Hour.

So, can you guess who TIME’s Person of the Year for 2008 turned out to be?

Not a huge surprise of course. Regardless, in honor of the occasion, and since now seems as good a time as any to fire up the 2008-in-retrospect train, below are some of the longer GitM essays on President-elect Obama over the past year and change. (And if you’re really a glutton for punishment, and want to relive all the debate coverage or somesuch, there’s always the election 2008 archives.)

  • Progressivism, a Born Loser?, “Progressivism Continued” — November 2007. Wherein the case is made that [a] Obama is more progressive than he is liberal and that [b], contra friend and colleague David Greenberg, that’s exactly what America needs right now.
  • IA-Day | GitM for Obama” — January 2008. An overview of the Democratic field as it stood the morning of the Iowa caucus, and an endorsement of Barack Obama.
  • The Future Begins Now,” “Iowa By the Numbers” — January 2008. On Senator Obama’s victory in the Iowa caucuses.
  • Barack Obama and the Generation Gap” — January 2008 — A plea to Baby Boom voters, borrowing heavily from my man Bob Dylan, to get behind Sen. Obama.
  • Greenberg: Missing the Thread” — January 2008. Arguing, again with friend David Greenberg, that there is much more to Obama’s candidacy than just the “Great White Hope.”
  • The Great Need of the Hour” — January 2008. An excerpt from then-Senator Obama’s MLK day speech.
  • Yes, We Can,” “Oh Carolina!” — January 2008. Excerpts from Sen. Obama’s speech, and parsing Obama’s victory, in my home state of South Carolina.
  • A President Like My Father,” It is Time Now for Barack Obama” — January 2008. Excerpts from Caroline and Ted Kennedy’s respective endorsements of the Senator.
  • “Empty Suit…with a Stovepipe Hat” — January 2008. The Tribune‘s Eric Zorn makes the Lincoln v. Seward comparison explicit.
  • Lakoff on the Dem Divide” — January 2008. Linguist and political theorist George Lakoff endorses Obama.
  • Showtime | Barack Obama for President” — February 2008. A round-up of Obama endorsements, and primary news thus far, on Super Tuesday.
  • We’re Going the Distance” — February 2008. Parsing the Super Tuesday results.
  • Obama Endorses La Follette” — February 2008. In Wisconsin, Obama rhetorically tips his hat to the progressives of yesteryear.
  • Dodd Comes Forward” — February 2008. Senator Chris Dodd becomes the first former primary opponent to endorse Obama.
  • We are Hope Despite the Times” — March 2008. Michael Stipe endorses Obama.
  • Stepping Back for the Big Picture” — March 2008. On the state of the race during the six-week Pennsylvania lull.
  • A More Perfect Union” — March 2008. On Senator Obama’s “Race in America” speech.
  • Our Five Year Mission” — May 2008. Barack Obama and others respond to the fifth anniversary of “Mission Accomplished” in Iraq.
  • So Happy Together… | It’s On.” — May 2008. The McCain-Obama general election unofficially begins.
  • The Lesson of the Ring” — June 2008. Some closing thoughts on the seemingly never-ending 2008 Democratic primary.
  • The Nominee” — June 2008. Excerpt from Sen. Obama’s nomination-clinching victory speech.
  • The Bygones are Bygones” — June 2008. Senators Obama and Clinton make peace.
  • Obama: Don’t Tread on Me” — June 2008. Thought on and excerpts from Sen. Obama’s “patriotism” speech in Independence, MO.
  • Wir sind alle Berliners” — July 2008. On Sen. Obama’s summer world tour and speech in Berlin.
  • That’s Me in the Corner…” — August 2008. On Sen. Obama’s visit to Chesapeake, VA, which I attended.
  • The Ticket” — August 2008. Sen. Obama chooses Joe Biden as his running mate.
  • Wow,” “Obama: The Main Event” — August 2008. Reflections on my visit to Denver, and Sen. Obama’s nomination speech.
  • Astride the Mad Elephant” — October 2008. On the sad turn taken by the McCain campaign.
  • Barack Obama for President” — November 2008. The closing argument for Sen Obama, on election day.
  • 44,” “Thoughts after the Quake” — November 2008. Early reflections on the election of Barack Obama.
    Phew, what a long, strange trip it’s been! Of course, in all the important ways, we’re only just getting started.

  • My (Vampire) Bodyguard.

    If you’re looking for a quality film before the coming holiday deluge (or, if you’re like me, and can pretty much tell from afar that Twilight likely won’t be your bag), look no further than Tomas Alfredson’s taut, eerie vampire flick Let the Right One In, which I caught over last weekend. A Swedish import that combines elements of the age-old vampire mythos with My Girl, My Bodyguard, and Morrissey (hence the title), Let the Right One In moves and feels like a particularly well-crafted Stephen King short story (or perhaps a bleaker version of one of Guillermo del Toro’s Spanish Civil War fairy tales), and definitely makes for a compelling nightmare before Christmas if you’re in the mood for it. Just make sure you’re nice — but not too nice — to any kids you meet along the way to the theater.

    As Let the Right One In opens, we find ourselves in a run-down apartment complex in deepest, darkest seventies Sweden, where dreams die hard amid the endless snowdrifts, there’s never enough vodka to go around, and even the very occasional blood-red flower can’t enliven the grim and ubiquitous combination of freezing winter weather and cookie-cutter architecture. Here we meet Oskar (Kare Hedebrant), a lonely, preternaturally blonde young lad from a broken home, who spends his days getting picked on by the school bullies and his nights playing with a knife and plotting revenge. It’s on one of these nocturnal escapades that Oskar encounters Eli (Lina Leandersson), a lissome 12-year-old girl (“more or less“) who’s just moved in from parts unknown, on the complex jungle gym. Pleasanties are exchanged, a Rubik’s Cube is passed back and forth, and, by that innocent alchemy of childhood, a strong friendship forms between these two outsiders.

    But, as you probably guessed, there is more to Eli than meets the eye, much more. She’s only out at night. She’s astonishingly agile at times. She’s always underdressed for the unforgiving Swedish cold. Oh, and she occasionally dispatches her “father” Hakan (Per Ragnar) to retrieve gallon-buckets of warm human blood from unsuspecting victims. (Hakan’s role — is he really Eli’s dad, or her Renfield, or is he just suffering from [rimshot] “Stockholm Syndrome”? — is never fully spelled out, but the story takes on a darker cast if you go in one particular direction with it.) So, yes, Eli, we discover, is a nightfeeder, a Nosferatu, a vampyrer, as the Svenska say. But, really, when you get right down to it, who is Oskar to judge? Everybody’s got problems.

    I don’t want to say too much more about Let the Right One In, as there’s not a lot of story there, to be honest. (In fact, if anything, the movie could’ve benefited from more of a third act — I think most people will expect the jag it takes then to have happened a good hour beforehand.) Where the film really succeeds is as a mood piece. On one hand, like that flower budding in the dead of winter, Let the Right One In tells the story of an impossible friendship blooming in seemingly the deadest of dead-ends. At the same time, bad things seem to happen to anyone — be it Hakan or the woman who survives one desperate attack (two, if you count cats) or the gaggle of alcoholics and losers usually fed upon — caught up in Eli’s wake, so why should Oskar’s fate be any different?

    The film is an adaptation of a book by John Ajvide Lindqvist, and at times it feels as naturalistic, character-driven, and hyperliterary an endeavor as In the Bedroom or Little Children. There’s definitely some gore here and there, but as with the best horror stories, Let the Right One In is most frightening in the realm of ideas, and for what it doesn’t ultimately show or explain. (And, while I can’t be entirely sure, I have strong suspicion that it’s considerably more suspenseful — and undoubtedly less hormonal — than the recent Stephenie Meyer adaptation currently in a theater near you.)

    A Measure of Darkness.

    “‘We’ve discovered this incredible dark energy, we don’t understand what the hell it is,’ said Lawrence Krauss, a physicist at Arizona State University. ‘It’s extremely small, extremely weak, and it’s so close to being zero, it’s just a total mystery why it should have this small value and not be zero.” While they’re still not entirely sure what in fact they’re looking at, Harvard-Smithsonian astrophysicists announce they’ve found another way to measure and quantify “dark energy”, a.k.a. the repulsive “cosmological constant” force causing the universe to expand rather than contract. “This is a much-needed confirmation that the earlier work was correct, the astronomers said, comparing it to football referees examining a controversial play with multiple camera angles.

    As an added bonus, the results announced today also seem to confirm Einstein’s general theory of relativity. “‘It’s never been proved right on the scale of the observable universe,’ Spergel said.

    Wilde and Garrett Log On.

    Best start working on your frisbee skills: Casting for Joseph Kosinski’s Tron 2.0 or (TR2N) begins, with Olivia WIlde of House and Beau Garrett of Turistas joining the returning Jeff Bridges back in the original matrix. “Wilde will play a worker in the virtual world who tries to help fight Master Control Program, the villainous intelligence protocol that was the nemesis in the original film. Garrett will play a siren in the virtual world.” Hmm, ok. Can we get David Warner in here somewhere? I know Sark is dead and all, but it seems like Ed Dillinger, the big bad of the first film, might well’ve made a backup, and Warner always adds a touch of class to the proceedings.

    A Shoe of Contempt.

    “I didn’t know what the guy said, but I saw his sole.” Say what you will about the 43rd president — and, no doubt, the history books will — the man has cat-like reflexes for his age. The story of the weekend was, of course, the shoe incident in Baghdad, which ended up clearly overshadowing Dubya’s remarks and reason for his visit — the signing of a Status of Forces agreement — and serving as an exclamation point of sorts for the president’s, shall we say, fraught relationship with the nation and people of Iraq. I have to give him credit, tho’ — Bush not only handled the incident with agility, aplomb and a surprising amount of sang-froid, but generally struck the right tone about it afterward. “Okay, everybody calm down for a minute. First of all thank you for apologizing on behalf of the Iraqi people. It doesn’t bother me. And if you want some — if you want the facts, it’s a size 10 shoe that he threw. (Laughter.) Thank you for your concern, do not worry about it.”

    In the wake of the biggest shoe-related world incident since Nikita Khrushchev (or perhaps Richard Reid), there’s been some discussion of late about the legitimacy of shoe-throwing as a form of political protest. (Throwing shoes into machines, a.k.a. “sabot-age,” is already generally considered a no-no.) It’s not hard to understand, or even empathize with, the anger that drove Muntadar al-Zaidi to this act of protest. Here’s a journalist who’s been covering airstrikes and Abu Ghraib, who has seen the “collateral damage” of this war-of-choice firsthand, and who himself was briefly arrested by American security forces at one point. That being said, to my mind, any attempted act of physical violence against the president — even something as seemingly innocuous as shoe-throwing — cannot be countenanced. Now, I’m not saying the guy needs to rot in jail for the rest of his life — far from it — but let’s not start pretending that that this form of protest is “ok.” It’s not. End of story.

    Plus, keep in mind that a horrible situation was averted by Bush here just by his underreacting estimably to the incident. I don’t think it’s a stretch to think that al-Zaidi may have put his life in danger by making a threatening lunge at the president. The Secret Service are — and have to be — a hair-trigger bunch. Ok, al-Zaidi was only armed with a shoe…anybody ever heard of Amadou Diallo? All too often, tragedy results from a simple misunderstanding of intentions. Mr. al-Zaidi made his point, no doubt…but it was still a stupid and dangerous stunt, by any reckoning.

    And besides, It’s all fun and games until somebody loses an eye.