Amy Adams has been cast as Lois Lane in Zack Synder's new Superman film.

For the past few weeks, everyone has been asking my opinion on the latest casting rumors for Zack Snyder’s Superman film.

Among my friends and family, I am considered the expert on all things Kryptonian. I have been reading Superman comics since my youth. I even wrote my master’s thesis on the dual nature of the Clark Kent / Superman persona. (True story.) I have Superman statues in my home, a Superman action figure on my desk at work, and I have seen nearly every Superman film and television series made.

Now Snyder is planning to reboot the series, much as Christopher Nolan did with the Batman franchise in 2005. He’s pretending that all the previous films are not there, and building a new Superman story for moviegoers.

He’s starting from scratch. That means a brand new cast. And with every announcement, someone is pontificating about how the actor or actress selected will affect the film.

But I don’t think it’s fair to judge a film by its casting (or its choice of director for that matter). It’s like trying to judge a meal based on the ingredients in the kitchen. Sure, I may hate mushrooms, but if you do it right I might love the sauce.

So it is with the Superman reboot. And I’ve kept relatively quiet about the casting choices.

Sure, I twitched when I heard they were casting a Brit in the iconic superhero role. But aside from Stardust and The Tudors, I haven’t seen much of Henry Cavill. So I’m willing to cut him some slack. After all, until this year’s Academy Awards, I had no idea that Christian Bale (The Dark Knight) is from Australia. And he apparently has a heck of an accent when he’s not playing an American.

For the casting of Jonathan and Martha Kent, my opinions are split. Diane Lane is (in my opinion) too young — and way too hot — to play Ma Kent. I keep thinking of her 20 years ago as a rock singer in Streets of Fire. She was amazing. I can’t imagine her as Martha. Casting Kevin Costner as Pa Kent, however, seems pretty spot-on. You can’t get a more American-Heartland-homespun-type than Costner.

Then, this weekend, news came out that Snyder had picked three-time Academy Award nominee Amy Adams to play Lois Lane. I love her work, and I have enjoyed her in everything from Enchanted to Julie & Julia to Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian.

She’s (pardon the pun) super. But is she Lois Lane?

I’ll ignore the physical here. After all, makeup can make anyone look like anything. So, I’ll forget the fact that her red hair and fair complexion don’t match the traditional look of the character.

She certainly has some acting chops, and she’s always a delight to see on screen. But every film I’ve seen her in she has been cheerful and perky. Granted, I haven’t seen some of her more serious work. So I’m going to say… maybe. It might work.

Actually, that’s been my reaction to most of the news coming out of Snyder’s Superman reboot. It’s all so… maybe. It could be good. But I refuse to get my hopes up.

And now word has come through that actors Michael Shannon and Edgar Ramirez are being considered as villains in the film. I’m not sure what to think of either of them, as I have no idea which parts they might play. People keep guessing Zod as a villain, but Snyder flatly denied that. So my guess is either Bizarro or Brainiac.

At the end of the day, I don’t think it’s fair to judge Snyder’s Superman film until we see it in context. Who knows? He might have a great new take on the characters.

Whatever Snyder decides to do, I hope he brings something new to the story without throwing out the decades of Superman canon.

If he does it well, I’ll be willing to admit that all my fears were for nothing.

Back in my younger days — and I’m dating myself by saying this — I was one of those kids who saw Star Wars over and over again in the theater.

Star Wars? Really? Do we have to listen to another rant about how much the prequels sucked?

I hear you. And the answer is no.

In the alternate universe on FOX's Fringe, the sequel Star Wars: Legion of the Droids was a big hit in 1985.

I’m not going to rant about how great the original trilogy — Ewoks not withstanding — was, or how the prequel was a fair (but fun) imitation of the original.

Instead, I’m going to talk about the sequels to the original trilogy. I’m going to talk about Episodes VII – IX, the sequels that were promised to us but now only exist in the Fringe universe.

These are the sequels that George Lucas promised us back in the 1980s but — for reasons unbeknownst to anyone but the man himself — we never received. For those of you too young to understand, let me elucidate.

The year was 1980. In a review of The Empire Strikes Back, Time magazine reported:

The very first surprise in The Empire Strikes Back comes in the opening credits: the movie is identified as Episode V. … Lucas has begun his space saga in the middle, and both pictures are the centerpieces of a projected nine-part series. The remaining movies, fore and aft, have not yet been laid out in detail, but Lucas has the framework, a kind of history of what happened in that galaxy long ago and far away.

If that’s not enough to convince you, how about hearing it from Lucas? In the foreword of the special edition of Splinter of the Mind’s Eye, he wrote:

As the saga of the Skywalkers and Jedi Knights unfolded, I began to see it as a tale that could take at least nine films to tell — three trilogies.

So, where are the sequels? What happened to the further adventures of the Skywalkers and Han Solo? For the most part, they were continued in the Star Wars books, beginning with Timothy Zahn’s Thrawn trilogy (Heir to the Empire, Dark Force Rising, and The Last Command). Other than the books, not much has been done to create a sequel trilogy.

Now, I know you probably expect me to invoke the name of George Lucas as a god of cinema and demand that he start work on the sequel trilogy as his next project. In fact, there have been numerous rumors floating around the Internet that he is doing just that. Or not.

But here’s the thing. Are you ready for the thing?

I don’t want Lucas to make these films. Even though I loved the first Star Wars trilogy, I will be the first to admit that the films have wonderful characters, but are poorly written. The prequels have shown me that even though I love the Star Wars franchise, Lucas is not the best person to handle it. He’s too close to it, and THINKS he understands it best.

Instead, I would like to see Lucas hand over the reins of the sequels to another team of writers, directors, and artists who could reboot the series and make it something great again, instead of the obsessive self-involved subgenre it has become.

How would the Star Wars saga be different if it were written by David S. Goyer, Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman, Frank Darabont, the Wachowski brothers, or the Coen brothers?

I’d love to see what a younger, more invigorated director like J.J. Abrams, Christopher Nolan, Sam Raimi, Joss Whedon, Jon Favreau or even (God help us) Michael Bay might do.

The point here — and I do have one — is not all remakes are a bad thing. Just as Abrams rebooted the Star Trek franchise in 2009, I believe a talented writer and a director with vision could reboot the Star Wars franchise in dramatic fashion. I would love to see a sequel trilogy with some fresh blood behind the camera.

Yes, I’m not above the fanboy frenzy. I would love to see the original cast making cameos as older, wiser heroes from my youth.

And maybe we could squeeze in a cameo for Lucas too.

In the first post of this series, we discussed the many different kinds of remakes, and how (for better or worse) they have become a staple of Hollywood studios. Today, we’re going to focus on the times when it’s good to make a remake.

A fresh perspective or new vision is not always bad.

For instance, every new actor who is chosen to take up the mantle of 007 is expected to bring new life to the James Bond franchise. When Daniel Craig stepped into the role in Casino Royale (2006), he took the franchise away from the suave, super spy we had been given for 40 years and introduced a tough bruiser who (thankfully) still looked good in a tux.

When Christopher Nolan took over the Batman franchise with Batman Begins, he brought a gritty realism to the comic book narrative. In doing so, he elevated the comic book subgenre. With The Dark Knight, the second movie in his trilogy, he gave us a film that raised the bar so high that most superhero films are scrambling to beat it.

A good reboot can also be a shot in the arm for a franchise and the studio. Look at Paramount. With an ever-decreasing interest in the Star Trek franchise, the studio handed over the reigns to director J.J. Abrams. Not only did he reinvigorate the beloved franchise, he managed to do two important things: 1) he didn’t upset most of the existing fans, and 2) he created a new, younger fan base for the series.

Of course, not everyone was pleased with the 2009 reboot of Star Trek. Some fans complained about Abram’s signature directing style and the way his reboot rewrites the history of the series. Even so, the film holds a 94% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Not too shabby.

But then there’s Marc Webb’s upcoming Spider-Man reboot. Less than four years after the last film in Sam Raimi’s ground-breaking series, the studio has decided to restart the franchise with a new director, new star and new costume.

Why? Have computer effects come so far in the past four years that we can do Spider-Man better than before? Is the movie-going public clamoring for new Spider-Man film, when the theaters are now glutted with superhero movies? And with a pantheon of Marvel heroes to choose from, why has Columbia Pictures chosen to mess with (and possibly kill) its greatest franchise?

How do you feel about film franchises? Do they need a reboot now and then, or should a film story get a set number of pictures before it’s put in the studio vault for a few decades?

Tomorrow we’ll discuss the one reboot that hasn’t — and needs to — happen in my lifetime.

If you’ve been to a movie theater in the past ten years, chances are you’ve seen a remake: a film that has rebooted, reimagined or reinvented a popular film or television series. From Tim Burton’s reimagining of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to last year’s Oscar-worthy True Grit, it seems Hollywood is always eager to tinker with the classics.

This is nothing new. For years, directors and screenwriters have been creating remakes. Not even counting sequels and prequels, the list is long. Remakes are based on one of the following:

• Foreign film — The Eye (2008), based on the Pang brothers’ The Eye (a.k.a. Seeing Ghosts) (2002)
• Classic Hollywood film —Ocean’s Eleven (2001), based on Ocean’s Eleven (1960)
• Largely forgotten Hollywood film — The Bachelor (1999), based on Buster Keaton’s Seven Chances (1925)
• Any film based on a novel — Planet of the Apes (2001), based on Planet of the Apes (1968) from the novel by Pierre Boulle
• Television show — The Addams Family (1991), based on the television series The Addams Family (1964-1966)

We’ve become accustomed to the notion that Hollywood may out of new ideas. It seems each year there’s at least one classic film being retooled for modern audiences. War of the Worlds, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Clash of the Titans… the list goes on.

Much of the time it’s science fiction, fantasy, and horror that gets Hollywood’s extreme makeover. Hollywood seems to think that the ability to do amazing new special effects is reason enough to remake a science fiction film. But after seeing Jack Black in the 2005 remake of King Kong, I’d rather watch the original.

These attempts to upgrade a classic are often met with derision by movie purists, even as the unwary masses fork over their hard-earned bucks for a film that can’t compare to the original.

One wonders why people don’t save the money and rent the DVD or stream it via Netflix. Many of the classics withstand the test of time. Most of the foreign films are far superior to the American remakes.

Are movie audiences afraid of black and while films? Do they hate subtitles? Why do remakes reign supreme?

I don’t think people are afraid of old movies (or foreign films). I think they just don’t know where to look. You would think that studios would put more money into re-releasing classics into the theaters.

I know, I know… you think that with DVDs and Internet streaming that no one would go. But I remember seeing The Godfather on the big screen when it was re-released for its 25th anniversary. It was beautiful. I also took my wife to the theater on Valentine’s Day so we could see Casablanca (one of the most romantic movies of all time) on the big screen.

So what do you think? Are reboots a good way to reintroduce old stories to modern audiences? Or are they destroying our memories of the great films on which they stand?

Tomorrow we’ll discuss the times when remakes get it right.

No Ordinary Family has been a fun departure from the superhero formula. The Powells are a typical American family growing steadily more distant. But after a plane crash in the Amazon, they gain amazing super powers. While Jim Powell (Michael Chiklis) tries to use his powers to stop crime, the rest of the family are trying to cope with their new abilities and maintain a “normal” life.

The Cape, on the other hand, does the opposite. It follows a cop named Vince Faraday (David Lyons) who is framed for the crimes of a master-criminal known only as Chess. When Faraday is apparently blown up on live television, he goes underground. With the help of a circus of criminals, he learns to fight back using a cape that can be used as a weapon. Like the hero in his son’s favorite comic book, he has no super powers, but he’s taking on criminals while trying to clear his name.

So, which show is the better superhero story? It may still be a bit too soon to declare a winner in the battle for prime-time superhero supremacy. But let’s take a closer look.

Powers

This is a bit of a no-brainer.

In No Ordinary Family, the dad, Jim (Chiklis) has super strength and invulnerability. Mom, Stephanie (Julie Benz) has super speed. The kids, Daphne (Kay Panabaker) and geek brother J.J. (Jimmy Bennett) are telepathic and super smart, respectively.

As The Cape, Faraday doesn’t have any powers. He has been trained by the Circus of Crime to be an escape artist, an illusionist, and a hypnotist. And, of course, he has a special cape that is “thin as spider silk but stronger than Kevlar.”

Advantage: No Ordinary Family

Villains

A hero is only as good as his or her villains. Take a look at Batman’s Rogues Gallery sometime. It’s the villains who test the mettle of a hero and define the hero by their evil actions.

In The Cape, Faraday has been framed by a criminal mastermind named Chess (James Frain). So it’s no surprise that Chess has become The Cape’s arch-nemesis. Like the Joker or Lex Luthor, Chess is the main bad guy. But there are others as well. Like The Cape, the villains don’t have super powers. With names like Chess, Scales, and Cain, they are more like caricatures of a real-world mobster.

In No Ordinary Family, the Powells abilities are the result of an accident in the Amazon jungle. So one might assume there aren’t any other similarly powered villains running around town. Unbeknownst to The Powells, Stephanie’s boss, Dr. King (Stephen Collins), has been experimenting with giving powers to test subjects. The powers are unstable and require constant injections, but the test subjects are every bit as powerful as The Powells.

Advantage: No Ordinary Family

Sidekicks

Every hero needs a sidekick, someone with whom they can share their secret and turn to for help now and then.

The Cape not only has the Circus of Crime to help train him, he has Max (Keith David) to act as mentor and guide. He also has a high-tech hacker named Orwell (Summer Glau) to help him track Chess’s movements and keep him connected to what’s going on.

In No Ordinary Family, Jim has his best friend George St. Cloud (Romany Malco), who works in the district attorney’s office and has a state-of-the-art surveillance “lair” in his garage. Stephanie’s lab assistant, Katie (Autumn Reeser), is not only her go-to helper, but she also has a head filled with superhero trivia.

Advantage: Tie

Costumes

Everyone knows a superhero needs a disguise to help hide his or her true identity.

So, it’s a bit surprising that Jim Powell hasn’t really caught on to this concept yet. He was working under the cover of darkness for a few episodes. But now he’s taken to leaping across town in broad daylight without so much as a bandanna to cover his face. It’s a wonder no one has snapped a picture yet.

The Cape, of course, has the the whole costume thing down. Naming himself after his son’s favorite comic book hero, Faraday knows how important it is to conceal his identity. Even when Max took away his cape for an episode, he had the presence of mind to fashion a mask for himself. Of course, calling yourself “The Cape” when you don’t have a cape is kind of stupid, but funny.

Advantage: The Cape

Tone

Tone is probably the biggest difference between The Cape and No Ordinary Family. Unfortunately, this is a bit like judging a flavor of ice cream. I may love chocolate, while you prefer strawberry. One isn’t necessarily better than the other. It’s just a question of taste.

The tone of The Cape is both serious and light-hearted. The world of Palm City and its problems are very realistic. This is basically a story of organized crime and one man’s quest to bring justice to his city. As a result, the story has some light-hearted moments to break up the tension. For me, the tone is almost perfect. If it has one failing, it’s the weekly subplots with Faraday’s estranged family. They slow down what otherwise would be a fast-paced adventure.

No Ordinary Family feels more like a situation comedy with superheroes thrown in for good measure. It’s not always funny, but it isn’t serious. When I saw the first couple of episodes, I kept describing it as “fluff.” It is, but I mean that in a good way. The story revolves around family drama more than crime fighting, as if this were a surreal deconstruction of a post-nuclear family. I know the fan community has been very vocal about the tone of this show not taking itself seriously. I don’t have a problem with it. But I would like to see the family come together more often to use their powers against a real villain.

Advantage: The Cape

Summary

So, if you’re counting, that’s 2 points for No Ordinary Family, 2 points for The Cape, and one tie. Both shows offer superhero drama, but they are doing it from opposite ends of the spectrum. But, if I had to make a guess, I think No Ordinary Family has the best chance to survive. As I said, it’s more of a family drama with superheroics thrown in. As such, I think it will reach a wider audience.

My recommendation is to try them both. Give each one a few weeks to grow on you. And if you like them, tell the networks. Maybe we’ll see more comic book-inspired television in the future.

The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger

I’m about to stick my nose into a question that is likely to polarize readers. I know that everyone has an opinion when it comes to casting literary characters in film, so I might as well put in my two cents, right?

Lately, Ron Howard has been talking up his proposed adaptation of Stephen King’s magnum opus, The Dark Tower. Howard and screenwriter Akiva Goldsman want to adapt the seven-book series into a movie trilogy and a television series. How that will work is anyone’s guess. But if anyone is likely to pull it off, I think Howard has the Hollywood cache to do it.

Of course, the big question on everyone’s mind is who will play the pivotal role of the gunslinger, Roland Deschain. Now the New York Post is reporting that Javier Bardem (No Country for Old Men) is the frontrunner for the role, with Viggo Mortensen (The Lord of the Rings trilogy) a close second.

Looking at these pictures, I have to admit that either one might be good. But I’ve always pictured Roland as an older — even ancient — gunslinger who has outlived his world. When I read the book series, my mind often turned to Clint Eastwood. But at 80 years old, I don’t think Eastwood has it in him to do a trilogy. I also think Harrison Ford might have pulled it off 20 years ago.

Now, I think Bardem is a good choice, but looking at his picture made me think of someone else whom I would like to recommend: Jeffrey Dean Morgan.

Javier Bardem (left), Viggo Mortensen, and Jeffrey Dean Morgan

He’s been a favorite of mine since seeing him in the CW television series Supernatural. I almost didn’t recognize him as The Comedian in Watchmen. And I think he’s about the right age to play a middle-aged gunslinger.

Most important of all, Morgan isn’t really well known. When we see him, we see his characters not the actor. And this is key. When bringing The Gunslinger to the big screen, it’s essential that we see Roland Deschain, not the actor playing him.

What do you think?

“People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect. But actually, from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it’s more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly… timey-wimey… stuff.” – David Tennant, Doctor Who (2007)

Matt Smith as the new Doctor.

For generations, time travel has engaged science fiction writers and led to some great books, film and television. Since my youth, I have been fascinated by time travel, and I make a point to see nearly every television show and movie that deals with the subject.

Almost every science fiction or fantasy series, from Star Trek to Charmed to Lost, has dabbled in time travel for an episode or two. But my favorite shows are those that deal with time travel itself, where every week characters are flung through time to deal with a new crisis.

To commemorate the latest season of Doctor Who, premiering on BBC America on Saturday, April 17th, I’ve come up with a list of my favorites.

While this list is by no means definitive, here are The FilmGuru’s Time Travel Television Top Ten:

Scott Bakula (right) and Dean Stockwell paired up for one of the great time travel stories in Quantum Leap.

1. Doctor Who (BBC: 1963-1989, 2005-Present) – This is where it all begins. Since 1963, Doctor Who has engaged viewers with stories of the Time Lord and his companions. Utilizing his TARDIS (Time And Relative Dimensions In Space) time ship, the Doctor can travel from the Big Bang to the ends of the universe and back again – and yet, he seems to love England most of all. The show ended its initial run in 1989, but returned in a big budget remake on BBC in 2005. His list of adversaries has grown over the years, but he is probably best well known for fighting Daleks and Cybermen, as well as his fellow Time Lord nemesis, the Master. Over the past 40+ years, we have seen 10 different actors play the Doctor on television. Matt Smith is now the 11th incarnation of the Doctor.

2. Quantum Leap (NBC: 1989-1993) – Theorizing that one could time travel within his own lifetime, Dr. Sam Beckett (Scott Bakula) stepped into a machine of his own creation and vanished into the past. The experiment didn’t quite work as planned however. Sam awoke in someone else’s body, in the middle of a strange life and (as was often the case) an awkward situation. Every week, Sam would leap into a new life, in a new point in time in a period that spanned 40 years. He experienced everything from segregation to the fight for women’s rights – all from a front row seat. With the aid of his best friend, Al (Dean Stockwell), Sam would try to help those whose lives he has leaped into. Hoping each time that his next leap… would be the leap home.

Eliza Dushku is a morgue worker with a side job in Tru Calling.

3. Tru Calling (FOX: 2003-2005) – Time is not always on your side, as Tru Davies (Eliza Dushku) found out. For reasons she did not understand, she had the ability to travel back in time to help the recently deceased. But her power only allowed her to go back one day (repeatedly, if necessary). And she soon discovered there was a price to pay for saving lives. This excellent series not only died too soon, it was yanked from the air just as its complex mythology was dialing it up a notch. Not only did we find out that Tru’s dead mother had her gift, we were just beginning to discover the connection her father had to her counterpart Jack Harper (Jason Priestly), who used his power to make sure people died as fate decided.

4. Journeyman (NBC: 2007) – This short-lived series (13 episodes) followed a similar concept to Tru Calling. Kevin McKidd played Dan Vasser, a San Francisco reporter, who inexplicably found would find himself yanked into the past. Using his knowledge gained from one trip into the past, he would try to fix things on subsequent jumps. As his “disappearances” took his toll on his family life and his career, he discovered that his former fiancée (thought dead) was also jumping through time.

5. Time Trax (Syndicated: 1993-1994) – In this inventive series, police officer Darien Lambert (Dale Midkiff) traveled back in time from the 22nd century to recover criminals who had escaped through time to the 1990s. Darien had to “tag” criminals and send them home, but he himself could not return until his mission was finished. His only connection to the future was his credit card-sized computer, SELMA, which briefed him on cases and certain aspects of life and culture in the 1990s.

Ted King as Jack Logan in Timecop.

6. Timecop (ABC: 1997) – This VERY short-lived series (9 episodes) was based on the world created in the 1994 Jean-Claude Van Damme movie of the same name. In it, members of the Time Enforcement Commission monitored the timestream for possible tampering. Lt. Jack Logan (Ted King) worked with his partner to keep criminals from interfering with history. While the show was a bit formulaic, it offered one nice wrinkle to the plot. A villain used time travel to become Jack the Ripper and then created some of the greatest disasters in history – from the Titanic to the Hindenburg.

7. Seven Days (UPN: 1998-2001) – Using a time sphere engineered from salvaged wreckage of the UFO crash at Roswell, a top-secret government agency sent Frank Parker (Jonathan LaPaglia) back in time to stop unstoppable disasters. The only limit with the technology was that it could only send someone back seven days. As a result, Frank was always racing the clock to discover the cause of each crisis and the means to stop it.

Jon-Erik Hexum (right) and Meeno Peluce are a time-traveling duo in Voyagers!

8. Voyagers! (NBC: 1982-1983) – This series from my childhood is one of my favorite memories. The story followed Phineas Bogg (Jon-Erik Hexum), a traveler through time who helped give history a nudge in the right direction now and then. With the help of his Omnichron device, he could travel through time and tell when history has been altered. But when he saved a young boy, Jeffrey Jones (Meeno Peluce), he lost his guidebook and was forced to rely on Jeffrey’s knowledge of history to fix things. The series, while not great, was a nice adventure series and a fun look at history.

9. Primeval (BBC: 2007-Present) – My love of combining time travel stories with dinosaurs has been around since Land of the Lost aired on Saturday morning television. With this series, time travel took center stage and dinosaurs came to our world. Nick Cutter (Douglas Henshall) lead a band of scientists investigating temporal anomalies popping up all over the U.K. These holes in time, to both the past and the future, resulted in dinosaurs and other creatures rampaging through the streets of London. While the overarching story about Nick and his wife Helen (Juliet Aubrey) was at the center of the series, the apparent death of Nick didn’t stop the series from continuing. Even after it was cancelled in 2009, it was been revived for a fourth season (to air in 2011).

Even the concept of time travel took on a "groovy" look during the '60s in The Time Tunnel.

10. The Time Tunnel (ABC: 1966-1967) – No list of time travel television would be complete without this classic from the mind of Irwin Allen. When a government project in time travel was on the verge of being shut down, Dr. Tony Newman (James Darren) leaped through the time tunnel to prove it worked. Lost in the past aboard the doomed Titanic, he couldn’t get home. So, Dr. Doug Phillips (Robert Colbert) entered the time tunnel as well. Each week, the two men found themselves in a different time, often in conjunction with historical events. Though they tried to warn people of pending disasters, no one would listen. History always proceeded as it did originally. Although the show was simplistic, it dared to bring time travel to mainstream television in the U.S. only a few years after Doctor Who aired in the U.K.

Carl (right, voiced by Ed Asner) unwillingly leads Russell (Jordan Nagai) through the wilderness of Venezuela to Paradise Falls in Disney/Pixar's feature animated film Up.

This past weekend, my family received the DVD of Up from the Disney Movie Club. We watched again the heart-warming story of Carl, the lonely old man who in the twilight of his years decides to fulfill his wife’s life-long dream of adventure. By tying their home to a thousand balloons, he uproots from the urban sprawl and heads to South America.

The film is a masterpiece of animation and storytelling, with some of the most endearing characters you will ever see. It is also perhaps the most moving film – animated or otherwise – to be created since Jimmy Stewart stopped making movies. If you can watch the first ten minutes of the film without crying, you have no soul.

Naturally, the beauty of this film started me thinking about the Academy Awards. In the history of film, only one animated feature has ever been nominated for best picture, and it didn’t win.

When the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) announced in 2001 that it would create an Oscar category specifically for animated features, it was about a decade too late. Beauty and the Beast had earned a Best Picture nomination in 1991 (and remains the only animated feature to do so). But it didn’t receive the recognition it deserved.

Fast forward to 2009. This year, the AMPAS announced that the Oscars will include 10 nominees in the Best Picture category, returning the Academy Awards to the heady days of yesteryear when television program length wasn’t a factor. (The last year to host 10 nominees was 1943, when Casablanca won for Best Picture.)

Since 2001, animated features have certainly been given their due. Beginning with Shrek in 2001, the AMPAS has recognized some truly noteworthy films. Four of the eight winners so far have been Disney/Pixar features (Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Ratatouille, and WALL-E).

While this is certainly something to be proud of, it is also a bit like saying “You’re the smartest kid… in your class.” It’s great that animated film is finally being recognized in some way, but it isn’t enough. This category should showcase animated features, not become their prison.

This year, the front-runner to be nominated and win Best Animated Feature seems to be the Disney/Pixar film Up. This wonderful film has captured the hearts of people everywhere, and is already considered a favorite of many Disney/Pixar fans. For the first time since Beauty and the Beast, we have an animated film that is worthy of the title Best Picture. And for the first time in more than 60 years, we have a wider list for nominations.

For these reasons, I contend that it is not enough to nominate Up for Best Animated Feature. It is time to once again nominate an animated film for Best Picture. I call on the voters of the Academy to make Up a nominee in the Best Picture and Best Animated Feature categories. Show your support for animated film by placing it alongside the other great films of 2009.

The 82nd Academy Awards nominations will be announced on Tuesday, February 2, 2010, at 5:30 a.m. PT in the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater.

Academy Awards for outstanding film achievements of 2009 will be presented on Sunday, March 7, 2010, at the Kodak Theatre at Hollywood & Highland Center®, and televised live by the ABC Television Network. The Oscar presentation also will be televised live in more than 200 countries worldwide.

Maybe I have been blinded by the beauty of Walt Disney and Pixar films over the years. But not once have I stopped to question whether a film could be better served by making a leading role a female character instead of a male (or vice versa).

Finding Nemo was not a story about a father looking for his son, but rather a parent looking for a missing child. Toy Story was not about two “boy” toys, it was about all toys. Wall-E and Eve had a male/female dynamic, but they were (in fact) robots first.

And as for Up, it was about love and adventure. Even though Ellie isn’t in much of the movie, her soul is the entire movie. In hindsight, I don’t think the film would have worked any other way.

As a writer, I have been told over and over to write what I know. It is clear that the writers at Pixar know and understand children. They see the world through those eyes. If the writers of Finding Nemo or Up couched their stories in male terms, perhaps that is an unintentional bias. I am fairly certain that they are writing what they know, as former boys and dads.

I have no idea what Pixar does to solicit scripts or how many women are on its staff. Maybe they need to hire more women writers to develop concepts. Maybe they already have several who are striving to get their scripts accepted. I don’t pretend to know.

But asking a writer to change a character from male to female for the sake of some arbitrary — but well-intentioned — mandate is just sad. Creativity should come from the soul, not a marketing focus group.

Don’t ask Pixar to change its creative process. So far, the company has a perfect record making films that children and adults (boys and girls) love to see.

This is the third time in the past few years that Lawrence has received mention on a prime-time series. In the CW series Supernatural, the main characters Sam and Dean Winchester are from Lawrence and have visited home on occasion. In the short-lived CBS series Jericho, Lawrence was destroyed by a nuclear blast (echoes of the 1983 post-apocalyptic mini-series The Day After).

While I am thrilled that the town where I live is receiving this kind of attention, I am continually dismayed by Hollywood’s ignorance of the Heartland. In Jericho, a series set in Western Kansas, the pilot episode included an iconic shot of a boy standing on the roof of his house and watching a mushroom cloud as a nuclear bomb obliterated Denver, Colorado.

Psst! Come closer. I have a secret: Even if you’re on the Kansas/Colorado border on a crystal clear day, you cannot see Denver. You can’t even see mountains. There are no mountains visible from Kansas.

We have foothills. Not mountains. This bears repeating: “There are no mountains visible from Kansas!”

I feel the need to repeat this little nugget of wisdom because most television shows are shot in California or Canada, not on location in Kansas. Location scouts probably don’t even think about it, because mountains in a background shot are probably second nature. If you’re trying to achieve realism, however, you should probably look for a location without mountains.

Which brings me back to last night’s episode of Heroes. Now, I love Heroes. It’s a favorite television show in our house. And when I heard the characters mention Lawrence, Kansas, the wife and I high-fived each other. My happiness melted into disillusionment, however, when Hiro teleported the trio to Daphne’s house… in a cornfield.

A cornfield? In Lawrence? No, no, no. You just don’t get it, do you? First of all, Lawrence is a city, not farmland. Yes, there are some houses past the city limits that have some acreage. Some might even raise corn (although Kansas is better known for wheat). If she lived “near Lawrence” or “outside of Lawrence” this farm might have been acceptable. But not “in Lawrence.”

Oh, and yes, there were mountains in the background. But I digress. The point here is that not all of Kansas is farmland. That’s so cliche! Lawrence is a city of 80,000+ people. It’s not exactly New York City or Los Angeles, but it’s not Little House on the Prairie, either.

Lawrence is home to the University of Kansas. If you’re a fan of college basketball, you might have heard of it. The downtown area on Massachusetts Street (affectionately known around here as Mass St.) has a variety of restaurants that offer everything from buffalo wings to Thai food. We also have two microbreweries and more than our share of coffeehouses. In 2005, The New York Times said Lawrence had “the most vital music scene between Chicago and Denver.”

All of this would be apparent to anyone who had done even a little bit of homework. I know shooting schedules are tight, but that’s no reason to be sloppy. If you want to put Daphne in Lawrence, Kansas, find a nice tree-lined neighborhood. If the cornfield was crucial to the shot, then give her a home somewhere in rural Nebraska or Iowa.

As a service to Hollywood writers and location scouts, I offer the following links for your research:

• http://www.lawrence.com/
• http://www.visitlawrence.com/
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence,_Kansas

I think they may help you get the Lawrence vibe. If you need any additional research, drop me a line.

Finally, let me say that Supernatural gets it right. On the few episodes that we have seen Sam and Dean visit Lawrence, they treat it as a quintessential medium-sized Kansas town. We see homes and neighborhoods that could be Lawrence, even if the show misses the opportunity for some establishing shots of the city’s landmarks.

I’m still waiting for Sam and Dean to visit the real Lawrence for a week or two of on-location shooting. Maybe a ghost story set at the Kansas river, kind of a Carnival of Souls meets Supernatural thing.

If you need a script, let me know. I’d be happy to write it.