The Queen had an engagement yesterday evening, leaving me with the house all to myself. So I did what any wild-at-heart, red-blooded male would do, given a night of unexpected bachelorhood:

Had Grape-Nuts and beer for dinner;
Watched Logan's Run on DVD.

Matthew Baldwin: married but not domesticated.

I was surprised by how good it was. The beer, I mean. Logan's Run was a calamity. I picked it up after a few people expressed mystification that I had never seen it. When I mentioned this to The Queen, for example, she reacted as if I had told her I was missing a lung. Everyone emphatically urged me to correct this historic oversight. "It's just so, so, so very, very, very bad," they would say. "You must rent it immediately."

And I did. And I watched it. And I learned some astounding facts about the future.

We will live in a domed city, which, judging from the opening shot of this film, will be seven inches high and surrounded by Hi-Ho Train Model trees.
Criminals will try to escape the law by going to the most public place in town and hiding behind a potted plant.
We will be so technologically advanced that, every seven minutes or so, loud "Bee Boo Boo Beep!" noises will echo throughout city.
Even the most mundane conversation will be filled with exposition:
A: I wish I knew who my seed-mother was.

B: What's wrong with the Incu-droids? And, besides, you know that even thinking thoughts like that is will get you in trouble with the Conformity Council.

A: I know. But I'm 29 years old, and since all citizens of Galatropolis are killed at the age of 30, what do I have to lose?

Apparently the whole "Death with Dignity" movement will have collapsed by 2274, since shuffling off the mortal coil in Logan's Run entails the wearing of Stupidest Costume Ever, flying into the air, and exploding.
Even the credits of this movie are bad. I mean, if you made a motion picture predicated on the idea that all people die at 30, would you put "And starring Peter Ustinov as Old Man" in the opening? Um, spoiler, dude.

And don't even get me started about The Robot Scene. Oh brother, The Robot Scene. Where did that come from? Still, I can't say that I wasn't warned. Last month some friends and I were discussing 80's Ending, and I said "my favorite part was how they stuck that robot scene in there for no reason." And then my buddy said, "You mean like The Robot Scene in Logan's Run?" After I confessed that I had never seen Run, he said "It's this bizarre scene where ... well, they must have really wanted to get a robot in there somewhere, right? So they filmed this robot sequence that doesn't have anything to do with anything? And then just spiced it on in there." I said that I though that was a pretty good idea for any movie, frankly, and that I know wanted to start a business that took mainstream movies and turned them into movies about robots. Like, you know how porn movie guys take popular films and remake them into adult pictures like Terms of Inrearment and For Your Thighs Only and E-3: The Extra-Testicle, where they use the plot outline from the original movie to string together a bunch of sex scenes? Those are the kind of movies I would make, except that instead of sex scenes it would have robot scenes, and the movies would have titles like My Big Fat Greek Robot or 2 Fast 2 Robots or West Cyborg Story or Saving Private Ryan's Robot or whatever.

ANYway! I did like the ending of Logan's Run, simply because it was exactly the same as every 70's-era science-fiction movie ending: somebody blows up the computer by making illogical statements. You can't beat the classics. It's a shame they don't use that any more. Wouldn't it be awesome if that's how the Wachowski brothers ended Matrix Revolutions?

The Source: Your journey ends here, Neo. I am The Source, the self-aware synthetic intelligence that controls the Matrix and all of mankind.

Keanu: Up is down! Black is white! Cats are squirrels! I can act!

The Source: D0ES N0T C0MPUTE

I'd pay nine bucks to see that.