Remember, remember, the seventh of the... er... Heinlein?

Just for the record, my lucky number's 13.

Maybe this'll just be a chattier warm-up than intended, but it's quite interesting to see the hoopla around 7/7/7. There's been a few reports over the years about these sorts of triple-threat dates (I think I read that next year's 8/8/8 will be bigger for marriages, but hey) but it seems that it's also a day for centennials. The Globe and Mail reported today that it's Freida Kahlo's, but the one that I had in mind was Robert A. Heinlein's - since he's a major portion of the dissertation as it's been designed.

Oddly, my recon trips to the used bookstores in Vernon have revealed very little of note for used Heinlein. (One book with three novels, but none that really stood out as key Heinlein.) There's been lots of Asimov (not necessarily those which are needed, though I suppose that the first Foundation trilogy's pretty essential in spite of pre-dating 1957) and even a fair amount of Dune and its sequels to be had, but fairly little Heinlein.

As I've been told by some who love the guy - Adam, I'm looking at you - that he's contributed plenty to the development of SF and to thought about what our futures will be. And I've read Larry Niven's take on the importance of Heinlein for the development of the genre (or the lack of development of the American military-industrial complex, take your pick). But I've read precious little of his stuff. I may have inadvertently read one of his short stories without knowing it, but the only title I can recall reading is his Have Spacesuit, Will Travel for English 8. Heck, I haven't even seen Starship Troopers (though I have seen the end of it several times on network television, I suppose).

But any plans to watch that movie or to read something of his have been shelved, since I'd forgotten that today was the day to watch Transformers with my brother. Having been fortified by several somewhat approving reviews - and an ever-fun Anthony Lane review - I'm actually somewhat looking forward to it. Anyone who knows me well knows that's high praise indeed for a Bay film. And considering that I'm investigating the civic impulses of my parents' generation's science fictional pop culture as preparation for an eventual study of the (more?) militaristic impulses of my own childhood, it should be fun to see how mine is repackaged for this next generation. (Now that I write this, I'd really rather see how Transformers would be repackaged for Heinlein's generation - or for my parents' generation - but I shudder to think of the steampunk Transformers that someone's undoubtedly created...)

Postscript: Well, that certainly was a Michael Bay movie.

There were a few times where I couldn't help but think, "That's some pretty good narrative editing right there" - such as when the Air Force was prepping their strike on Scorpinox in the Qatar desert, regardless of how common a filmic trope that sort of sequence may be - and many, many times when I couldn't help but think, "Does the editor know or care what sort of movie is being made here?" As others have noted, the film has a solid hour-long homage to '80s comedies built into it which was either tedious or superfluous.

[Spoiler: also, there's something pretty creepy about having Witwicky and his love interest gettin' it on on the hood of Bumblebee at the end - after they've fought and won and all that. On top of that, you have the rest of the Autobots idling around while Optimus Prime's voiceover intones, "We live among its people now in plain sight, but watching over them in secret, waiting, protecting." Watching over them in secret? So... they're just voyeurs now?]

Still, it was pretty good popcorn fare (even though the popcorn was terrible) and it'll make fantastic MST3K-style fodder soon enough.

Much, much better was "Ratatouille" - the first Pixar movie I've seen in the theatres since "Finding Nemo." Actually, I still haven't watched "The Incredibles" or "Cars," though I'm only interested in the former. Out of all the characters in the two films, the rat protagonist here was easily the most human. That's one which is pretty close to "Monsters, Inc." for me.