After watching Alphas on SyFy last night, I feel like it’s a show that makes a lot of sense to watch alongside Misfits. They’re both shows about people with powers that are as inconvenient as they are helpful. And as Rowan Kaiser pointed out yesterday, Misfits is a show that reverses the polarity on traditional heroes and villains, because in the absence of people who will believe in the main characters’ powers, they seem dangerous and crazy. Alphas is the reverse of that, a show about people with superpowers that would be disastrous if they weren’t managed and protected by someone who can advocate for them within conventional heirarchies. Without someone to mediate between the human and the superpowered world, both shows suggest that things could get ugly, Misfits by showing that reality, Alphas by suggesting it.

Whereas the kids from Misfits face off with probation workers with good intentions and frightening levels of committment, the characters on Alphas are watched over by David Strathairn as Dr. Lee Rosen, a kindly psychiatrist and neurologist who mediates between his charges, swims a lot, eats “Asian pennywort. It increases the blood flow of oxygen to the brain,” and speculates about the skiffle origins of his favorite musicians. Both shows get that superpowers may interfere with characters’ abilities to function in the real world: Alisha on Misfits might not be able to have a regular sex life, Rachel on Alphas has parents who assume she’s unmarriageable because of her sensitivities (though they don’t know she knows they think that), and Alphas‘ Gary clearly is somewhere on the autism spectrum. And both shows get that superpowers make for an awfully tetchy group environment. On Alphas, Rosen is an escape valve for that pressure. In the five episodes of Misfits I’ve seen so far, it’s not so clear that the group will be able to stand together.

I tend to think that these kinds of shows in conjunction with efforts like FX’s adaptation of Powers, and things like the rise of the human characters in S.H.I.E.L.D. in the Marvel movies, we’re reaching the second phase of superhero stories beyond the pages of comic books. The first was about how superheroes learn to live with themselves once they’ve attained great power or, in the case of Batman and Thor, taken on great quests. The second is how the rest of us learn to live with them in a society profoundly altered by their presence.

A week ago today, I complained that we don’t have enough movies about the Founding Fathers. Today, I get news that Johnny Depp is producing, and may star in, a movie about Paul Revere and the Battle of Lexington and Concord.

I suspect that no matter how this comes to pass, it will be more Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s version, less David Hackett Fischer’s (if you haven’t read Paul Revere’s Ride, I recommend it highly). The thing that’s always impressed me about Revere’s ride is not that he made it all the way, because he didn’t, but that once he was out of British custody, he came back to Lexington and snuck a bunch of John Hancock’s papers out of Buckman Tavern — while the battle was still going on behind him. It’s an act of rather stupendous badassery enabled by the general confusion about everything that was going on at the time.

But then, the whole Battle of Lexington and Concord, despite the fact that the Colonials got badly beaten at Lexington, is really kind of astonishing. That the Colonial forces activated this theoretical plan based on disused defense practices from times when clashes with Native Americans were more frequent, and that it worked, is tremendous and exciting and moving — and it should be. There are a lot of ways to tell the heroic stories of that day, including my favorite, an elderly man who basically set up a sniper station to shoot at the British as they marched past his house, was bayonetted repeatedly, survived, and went on to remarry and live another decade. Paul Revere is an easily dramatized way into the story, but a movie about it that takes a broader scope is potentially much more interesting, particularly if it deprives Depp chances to mug wildly while on horseback, and maybe do something Jack Sparrow-like, including getting knocked off said horse by a low-hanging tree limb. And given that all the relevant buildings in Lexington are still standing, it would be cool if they shot locally.

The company is splitting streaming and physical DVD subscriptions, so if you want unlimited amounts of both, the price will go up to $15.98 on Sept. 1 (if you’re already a subscriber), which, while hardly draconian, is a real increase. This, of course, comes at a time when the company is forcefully pushing back against (and probably overstating things a bit on) the idea that cell and internet providers should charge subscribers by their level of usage, rather than flat fees.

I’m loudly and crankily on the record as saying that I’m happy to pay more money for things as long as I get what I actually want for the money. And I’m not really surprised to see Netflix fees go up, particularly as they renegotiate contracts with content providers like Starz and Sony, move into producing original content, and continue to hope for deals with premium providers like HBO (which surely developed HBO GO as a way to force an eventual better deal with Netflix or a similar competitor). Folks will grumble, but I think most of them won’t quit. And between ISP warnings (about which the very wise Tim Lee is writing smart things), innovation, and slowly shifting behavior, we’ll come to new price equilibriums that will let people get what they want at prices they’re willing to pay even if they’re not overjoyed about it.

I’m a longtime Red Sox fan, but this statement by David Oritz and calls for players to boycott the All-Star Game over Arizona’s immigration policies absolutely demands to be singled out. It’s a glorious illustration of the fretful wishes of millionaires who, because they’re unaffected by laws, can fall back to hoping that things that make them feel uncomfortable will vanish without them being required to exert any effort or go to any inconvenience about it. He told the Boston Herald:

Baseball is not related at all to politics…I ain’t Jackie Robinson. Sometimes, but remember that was something massive — not only one guy can go out there and act like he knows everything. That’s something where you work as a group. MLB always comes out with the right idea and I’m pretty sure that if there’s something MLB can help out with, they will…There’s nothing baseball can do about it right now, you know what I’m saying? Everyone’s focused on going to Arizona. It’s not baseball’s fault, or MLB’s fault, that that thing is going on in Arizona. I personally think it’s not fair. You can’t really be that hard on [immigrants], so hopefully that thing goes away and everything goes back to normal.

Charming. And makes me glad I don’t have any Ortiz gear in my (rather considerable) collection.

I’m charging through A Dance With Dragons and hopefully will have a monster post later tonight or tomorrow. But if you got started before work, or are reading during lunch, or took the day off to read, I wanted to open up a space for discussion of the book. Spoilers are obviously allowed, but label by page number or Kindle location if you can as a courtesy to fellow readers. And really, I did this because I wanted to promote this awesome comment by Edwin Perello on the way women use and experience sex in A Song of Ice and Fire. There are a bunch of spoilers here, which is why it’s below the jump, but considering a number of the plotlines set up in A Feast for Crows, I think it’s a useful framework for discussion. So get reading, and let’s rock and roll!

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-I’m all for nerdy white rappers, but seriously? Also, aren’t we already set on wizard pop?

-Jack White and Black Milk make music.

-Chris Nolan really likes making skyscrapers do creepy-lookin’ things.

-Crime doesn’t pay.

-So, the Dallas reboot is about America’s struggle to move to a new energy economy?

I can never be grateful enough to my dear friend (and soon to be justifiably famous novelist) Max Gladstone for pointing me to the existence of Juan de los Muertos. Yeah, the title and concept of a regular schmo who fends off a zombie invasion are straight steals from Simon Pegg and Nick Frost’s brilliant satire Shaun of the Dead. But don’t mistake this for a mere ripoff.

Instead, what is apparently the first horror movie authorized by Cuba’s film regulators is based on the idea that the Cuban government mistakes a zombie invasion for a Bay of Pigs-like invasion by Cuban-American dissidents, and while the island collapses into chaos, ordinary Cubans — ones who have lived through the Mariel boatlift and see Cuba as paradise despite the ups and downs in the business — set themselves up in the zombie-eradication business with the jaunty tagline: “Juan of the Dead — we kill your beloved ones.”

You want proof that Cuba might change pretty quickly after Castro? This looks like it.

With arts and public broadcast issues percolating on the edge of the race for the 2012 presidential race, I thought it made sense to look at where the declared and prospective candidates for president have stood on arts issues throughout their careers. Their views on everything from arts education to intellectual property rights to support for local artistic traditions say a lot about how they value culture — but also about how they think about the role of government.

Former Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s a fairly typical Republican on issues of arts funding. Like his fellow Minnesotan Michele Bachmann, he opposed a constitutional amendment that provided a steady stream of arts funding for the state. And like former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R), he tried to spin off a state arts school to save money. But he also tried to negotiate deadlocks over broadcasts of Twins games, proposed a drug importation plan that would have undermined intellectual property regimes, and got a little friendly with the telecommunications industry over his push to expand broadband access in Minnesota:

2002: The issue of state support for renovation of the historic Guthrie Theater became an issue in the gubernatorial campaign. Gov. Jesse Ventura vetoed $24 million for the theater, and Democrats raised the issue of whether Pawlenty and other candidates would follow suit. As House Majority Leader, Pawlenty head up a budget balancing task force that proposed $750,000 in cuts to the Perpich Center for Arts Education, a Minnesota State Agency.

2003: In his first budget proposal as governor, Pawlenty proposed cutting funding for the Minnesota State Arts Board (which alone would have seen its state funding fall 40 percent) and other arts organizations by 22 percent, a larger percentage than other organizations faced as Pawlenty sought a 14 percent overall reduction in the state budget. The legislature ended up approving a 32 percent cut to the board, and funded the Guthrie’s renovations funded through bonds.

That year, in a speech to a Chamber of Commerce group, Pawlenty emphasized intellectual property as a means of revitalizing the state’s economy, rather than yearning for the days of a manufacturing economy. But his proposal to import cheap prescription drugs, including knockoff generics into Minnesota from Canada, prompted warnings from state biotech companies that the plan would rob them of profits they needed to do research and employ local scientists.

2004: Pawlenty tried to intervene in a fight over what fees cable providers would have to pay to air Twins games. The channel the team owned wanted $2.20 per subscriber from cable companies, a fairly high fee, and the failure to negotiate contracts kept the beginning of the 2004 season off a number of networks. The network never quite developed into a channel like YES, which is owned by the Yankees, but it did garner revenue increases. Pawlenty had proposed that networks would get the games for free as long as they agreed to enter into binding mediation that would set the prices they’d eventually have to pay.

2005: In this budget cycle, Pawlenty proposed keeping arts funding flat after the 2003 cuts.

2006: As Minnesota geared up for a fight over a constitutional amendment that would have increased the sales tax by 3/8ths of 1 percent to ensure a revenue stream for parks, water preservation, and arts projects, Pawlenty, like Bachmann, then in the MInnesota legislature, opposed the amendment. “While the arts and public broadcasting are important, they do not rise to the level of being in need of dedicated constitutional support,” Pawlenty said, according to the Grand Forks Herald. Though it was a tough fight, the amendment eventually passed in 2007.

That same year, Pawlenty announced a push to expand broadband access in Minnesota, signing on to a proposal by a board made up of telecom executives, government, business, and rural leaders. He’d suggested that broadband was key to Minnesota’s economic development in a 2005 speech in Hong Kong.

2009: Pawlenty proposed turning the Perpich Center into a charter school in the name of saving the state $4.5 million annually. The proposal would have dramatically decreased the amount of research and teacher training the center was able to do, but the proposal was eventually defeated.

This same year, Pawlenty also put together a task force to get Minnesota to universal broadband access by 2015. But Pawlenty and his administration recommended a non-profit with strong ties to the telecommunications industry for a contract to map existing broadband connections, prompting ire from some stakeholders. And they also made certain documents about state broadband funding private, rather than treating them as public documents.

2010: This year, Pawlenty signed a bill meant to reach that 2015 goal, and setting standards for dowload speeds, but the bill didn’t have a funding mechanism for reaching that goal. It’s not clear the state is on pace to meet it.

I’m all for big, expansive science fiction movies that put humans on other planets, and there’s a lot of interesting stuff in Meredith Woerner’s piece on Wall-E director Andrew Stanton’s hugely ambitious adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ A Princess of Mars, now titled John Carter. But there’s one question that her set visit doesn’t answer. Is John Carter going to be a former Confederate soldier like he is in Burroughs’ original?

The Disney summary of the plot suggests he’s mustered out of an unnamed military conflict, and I wonder if they just might leave it vague. There’s obviously a strong connection between the Civil War and Westerns — the frontier gives folks a chance to refight lost wars. And while it could be convenient, from a plot perspective, to explain that a human who has ended up on a strange planet would be good at organizing an alien insurgency because he developed his skills in a specific, analogous conflict. But it’s probably better to make it almost any other conflict than the Civil War. The Confederacy doesn’t get retroactive points just because fighting in it helps someone achieve justice for another species down the road.