Matt’s Week in Dork! (10/20/13-10/26/13)

    I’ve been trying to get a lot of reading done, and I have.  But I’m not finishing a lot.  Too many things going at once.  Still, when it comes to geeky stuff, this was a pretty good week for this Dork.  And as I've given it more of a listen, I've been really digging that new Devo CD I picked up.  Which is handy, as it plays right into some of the reading I'm doing about AI and robotics.

In the Mouth of Madness:  “God’s not supposed to be a hack horror writer.”  The last great John Carpenter movie, this Lovecraft inspired journey into madness is fantastic.  It’s just the right mix of creepy, weird, and pulpy, with a great Lovecraftian hero in insurance investigator John Trent.  Nobody pulls his strings.  And he’s on the trail of Stephen King type bestselling horror writer Sutter Cane.  Cane’s writing seems to be having an effect on his readers, and that effect is becoming more pronounced and more violent.  Can Trent find him, find his last manuscript, and get back to civilization?  Or is the Door about to open, letting the Old Ones spill back into our world?

Niagara:  Joseph Cotton and Marilyn Monroe play a horribly dysfunctional couple who seem to be falling apart in their hotel room by the famous titular falls.  When a happy young couple shows up, their worlds collide.  I can see why this movie isn’t necessarily talked about a lot, but it’s pretty good.  It’s got a kind of second rate (and I don’t mean that in a bad way) Hitchcock vibe to it.  Not up to snuff with Hitch’s best, but in that spirit.

The Wall (Die Wand):  Oh, my gosh.  This is a danged sad, danged depressing, and danged fine film.  There are elements of those ‘man alone’ films like Jeremiah Johnson or Omega Man.  But it goes so, so much further.  A grim meditation on profound loneliness, it’s also a sort of love letter to the natural setting of rural Europe.  A woman wakes up to find herself the only living human, locked within a mysterious invisible bubble.  Her only companion is a skittish dog.  It’s a heck of a fascinating movie, and worth seeking out.  Beautifully shot, well acted, and fascinating to see.  And brutally, emotionally devastating.

Gun Crazy:  Two young people go on a bullet flinging crime spree.  A guy with a love of guns and a dame with a taste for money are a match made in Noir heaven.  I really like the way this film is shot.  The sequences where the camera sits in the back seat and just lets them talk as they head into or flee a crime scene are quite good.

    Read volume 1 of the New 52 series Shazam!  I definitely did not find myself as into it as co-Dork Brad.  I think something in the air or water has simply soured me to DC and Marvel.  Could it be the high frequency of terrible stuff they seem to put out?  I’m not sure.  But I’m feeling less forgiving toward them.  If I’d read it a year ago, I’d probably have enjoyed it.  Right now, however, they’d have to be writing some mighty fine stuff for me to give two shakes, and this isn’t it.  I also read (or skimmed, anyway) volume 2 of Aquaman, which saw a drastic drop in quality from The Trench.  It became scattered, confusing, and ultimately, boring.  Sad, as volume 1 was one of the big surprises from the New 52.

Neither the Sea Nor the Sand:  There’s some lovely footage of the UK coast.  Otherwise, it’s a bunch of unlikable, unrelatable characters in weird relationships.  It feels like a student film that got a big budget for reasons I don’t understand.  While well made, it’s quite grating.

    On Thursday night, Robert hosted Triple Horror Movie Night, an annual celebration of October.  Each year, he, Brad and I choose a movie each; one fabulous (Robert), one classic (me), and one scary (Brad).  This year, we changed it up a bit, and I brought the scary (or sleazy) movie, while Brad brought the classic.  A few others joined us, and while I think everyone enjoyed the social aspect, I don’t know if everyone was prepared for just what it is that we were going to be watching.

Brad’s Pick

Macabre:  The plot for this film is just too danged complicated, with too many characters, too many previously dead people, and too many cooks in the kitchen.  It’s also not very scary, even looking at it from the 50s horror movie perspective.  There are flashbacks where you’re not quite sure it’s a flashback, cuts to other scenes where it seems like it might be a flashback…but isn’t.  It’s weird.  Not great.  But worth a watch if you like William Castle movies.

Robert’s Pick

Vampire Boys 2:  If you thought Vampire Boys was poorly made and featured lots of bad acting, you haven’t seen anything yet.  This crappy sequel looks like it was 'filmed' in someone’s basement.  And that’s probably the best thing about it.  Everyone is shot in close-up and nobody has the face for it.  When anyone tries to act, it’s hammy.  And the story is dumb, dumb, dumb.

Matt’s Pick

Cat People:  I absolutely love this movie.  The longer I live with it, the more I enjoy it.  I love the cast and all the characters they play.  I love the kinky love story and the even kinkier obsession story.  New Orleans has never looked better or more like somewhere I’d actually think about visiting.  The slow build takes it to some powerfully strange places.  And the ending is so crazy.

    Then Friday night was the latest meeting of the graphic novel club.  We read the New 52 Aquaman (first two volumes) this month.  The reactions were mixed.  I liked the first volume, but not the second.  Lisa didn’t like the 4th wall break in the first volume (blogger talking about how much Aquaman sucks).  Many found the second volume needlessly complicated and scattered.  But many also came away with a new appreciation of the character.

    After an extremely stressful week (and last couple months), I decided to do a sort of Horror movie day.  I sat on my couch, ate Boo Barry cereal (thanks to Robert), had some snacks, grabbed a Firehouse sub while I was out for a walk in the middle of the day, and enjoyed a day of watching various horror films.  A nice way to spend a Saturday.

Taste the Blood of Dracula:  Three bored rich guys looking for kicks get way more than they bargained for in this Hammer Dracula film.  Overall, it’s not bad, though not especially interesting.  I like that the tale has an unusual plot progression, though the atmosphere is still mainline Hammer.  Fans of the studio’s Gothic thrillers should certainly watch it, but it’s not one of those ‘rush right out and get it’ titles.

Doctor Who: The Talons of Weng-Chiang:  Victorian London is the scene of some sinister goings-on involving a shadowy Chinese cult and a horrible little thing.  It’s a cool story, rooted in Sherlock Holmes tales and that sort of thing, but with plenty of the usual Doctor Who madness.  You would not be wrong to say that there is some outright racism on display.  In part this is reflective of the time the story is set within, but of course, Li H’sen Chang being portrayed by a guy in ‘yellow face’ makes things pretty awkward.  Still, this is the kind of ‘historic’ story that worked best on Doctor Who.  I usually prefer the more out-there science fictiony tales, but the horror themed histories work fairly well.

The Fly:  A reclusive scientist falls for a plucky reporter, then has dirty, unsafe sex with his own genes, getting pumped through of inhuman DNA.  Jeff Goldblum is do danged awkward, and things get really nasty pretty quick.  Watching it, I was struck by how danged weird it was, and how a lot of pretty out-there stuff was made for mainstream audiences in the 80s that would likely not fly today.

Godzilla VS Destroyah:  “What radioactivity!”  Every time I watch one of these later films in the series, I can’t help but pine for the older ones.  There’s some really cool stuff, but the production feels shoddy, the ‘science’ is so extremely stupid, and the human stories are totally uninteresting.  I feel like a lot of the creature sequences would never have flown in the original run.  I like the introduction of a hoard of little creatures, more human sized problems in this one.  Of course, by the end, it’s a giant monster that has to go up against Godzilla.  But it makes me want to see a better Godzilla film that features little things for people to deal with, too.  There have been hints of that before, with radiated parasites left behind my the big guy, but it hasn’t been very well explored.  The Godfather-like assassination of Godzilla is weird, too.

Hellraiser III:  I stalled on my attempted re-watch of the Hellraiser series a while back, in part because I knew this was the next on the list, and I remember really disliking it.  Well, things haven’t changed.  The script for this one, as well as the acting and production design all feel very made for Canadian TV.  The creepy, mysterious, and weird are replaced with awkward cheese.  Totally lacking in any kind of passion or imagination, everything feels so bland and by the numbers that at no point do I care what happens to anyone.  Lifeless.  That’s the word for this movie.  And as a side note, why the hell did Doc get turned into a Cenobite?  There was no indication that this was a path he was on.  It doesn’t just happen to random victims of Pinhead.  It happens to those who seek it out.  F’ing stupid.

Rodan:  Rodan has what I’m looking for in a Kaiju film.  It takes its time, develops a bunch of human characters and follows them through their investigation of strange events.  Then, quite a way into the film, it brings out the big guns and starts the mass destruction.  But the ‘ground level’ story is still a major part.  Rodan is a giant bird, and some kind of master of the wind.  So this movie features lots and lots of stuff getting blown to pieces, which is strange, but kind of cool.  It’s also steeped in the post-Hiroshima fears of fallout and poisoned earth.  Giant mutant grubs are the first thing that tips people off to the problem, and they’re disgusting and creepy.

     I read the first issue of The Star Wars, which is right up my ally.  It's an attempt to adapt George Lucas's original Star Wars script into comic form.  You can see a lot of similarities, but there are also some pretty big differences.  I don't know if it would have worked as well, and maybe some of those changes were needed.  But I like some of the characters more, especially Luke, who isn't a child.

-Matt

Matt’s Week in Dork! (6/2/13-6/8/13)

    More Twin Peaks helped me start the week off well.  And it carried me through, even when I was feeling down.  Dang, but I love that show.  Sad it didn’t get another season.  It goes by too fast.  And I watched a few more episodes of Space: Above & Beyond.  There is certainly potential for good in the show, as it takes on the lives of soldiers at war, drawing on WWII, Vietnam, and others for story and character cues.

After Earth:  Well, it didn’t suck.  Was it great?  No.  But it didn’t suck.  And that was a pretty big shock, truth be told.  The tech and design work were excellent and the story was fine, I guess.  Will Smith was OK.  His kid is dreadful.  There are wonky bits, to be sure.  But it was an all right sci-fi tale, probably best for kids.  Yes, there’s some violence and scary stuff, but nothing that would have been kept out of kids movies before Tipper Gore and her morality police turned everyone into hyper-sensitive wimps in the late 80s.  One thing that kind of drove me nuts was the writing around the tech.  While I loved the look and design of it, and the organic ship interiors were great, I was bothered by the environment suits.  Considering that suits with all weather capability are in the works now (one suit would work in the blazing heat of the desert or the frozen wastes of the Arctic), and that manufacturing air, water, and energy through that same suit shouldn’t be too difficult, the fact that his couldn’t do any of those things was bothersome.  But what really bugged me about it was the super advanced element that was missing…gloves.  If I travel to an alien planet, what’s the first thing I’m gonna do?  Put on some danged gloves.  When I do my gardening?  Gloves!  Still, the movie didn’t suck.

Twin Peaks Season 1:  I remember catching this during Summer re-runs and falling completely in love with the strange and magical world of demon serial killers, Zen FBI agents, mysterious woods, and haunting music.  That has never gone away.  It was also my introduction to David Lynch.  I think I’d seen Dune at some point, but it hadn’t left an impression.  This was my real doorway into his madness.  Seeing the show again for the first time in probably 10 years, it still grabs me and draws me in.  Is it for everyone?  No.  But it sure is for me.  And I’m still comfortable calling it my favorite TV show of all time (sorry, Star Trek…I do love you, though).  Agent Cooper is still my hero.

The Earth Dies Screaming:  “Oh, get on.”  Another sci-fi horror film from the UK.  It looks nice, has some interesting character tensions, and a solid premise.  The social commentary is typically heavy-handed.  Still, a worthy, if not especially great bit of creepy fun.  Though all the characters do seem a little too skilled at not running and not putting up any resistance to menace.  It is rather incorrectly titled.  The Earth actually dies rather quietly.  But I guess The Earth Dies All Mellow and Quiet-like doesn’t have the same ring.

Warm Bodies:  “Bitches, man.”  The last act is a bit wonky, but otherwise, this is a very cute and funny retelling of Romeo & Juliet, set against a zombie apocalypse.  Our hero, R, is going through something of an identity crisis.  He’s dead, and he doesn’t feel fulfilled.  When he meets a young women (and eats her boyfriend’s brains), he gets a yen for the love.  Chalk this one up in the My Boyfriend’s Back, Fido, Shawn of the Dead subgenre of zombie comedies.  It mostly works, and considering the tidal wave of zombie films that don’t, it’s a welcome change of pace.

The Vampire Lovers:  “Shall I make Gustav big and gray for you?”  Oh, that Hammer magic.  The sets.  The music.  The women.  Blah, blah; Something about a story.  Vampires, villagers, night visitors.  But who cares?  It’s about the Gothic atmosphere and the gorgeous women.  They’re nearly exploding out of their bosom baring dresses as they slink around old stately manors and darkened forests.  And it’s amazing.  Add in a great cast of staple UK character actors and you’ve got another classic.  My favorite Hammer film is probably still She, but The Vampire Lovers is up there (Twins of Evil and Vampire Circus are also must see greats from the masters of their craft).

Prince of the City:  “Go ahead and try me.  Not for a lousy $400.  At least get me for assault.”  This feels very much like an attempt to do the cop version of The Godfather.  It’s long, beautifully shot, and well acted.  However, it lacks compelling characters.  The performances are good, but I never found myself emotionally invested in the people or what they were doing.  Perhaps this was ground breaking at the time.  I don’t think there were a lot of movies about corrupt cops before this.  But having seen NYPD Blue, The Shield, Training Day, and a dozen more, little in this movie felt especially fresh.  And it is danged long.  But it’s of an era, and it’s certainly well made.  And Jerry Orbach.

Vengeance is a Golden Blade:  Twisty and curvy, the plot of this forgettable but perfectly fine Martial Arts actioner does have a few good surprises.  Everyone seems to be doing a fine job, and there are some good, if not especially memorable fights.  If you’re in the mood for a Shaw Bros. movie, and haven’t seen this one, it shouldn’t disappoint, but don’t expect too much.

    I read All Star Superman for the next book club meeting, and Phantom Stranger for my own edification.  And I read more of Boom! Studios’ Hellraiser comics, which I find myself enjoying quite a bit.

-Matt

Matt’s Week in Dork! (10/28/12-11/3/12)

    By Sunday, the news was full of fear in the build-up to the media’s Frankenstorm.  They’re nearly orgasmic as they describe the potential damage and the various expectations of where it might hit hardest.  After several years of good weather when I first moved here, I will admit that the last couple of years have started to wear on me.  I’m feeling a bit like I’m back home.  Power outages, closed roads, cancellations, and hand ringing.  Nobody’s willing to do anything about building up the infrastructure to deal with inclement weather, but everyone’s more than willing to try passing the buck when things fail.

    And, to the movies…


The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor:  Hands down, this is the best movie of this franchise.  It’s still a pretty silly adventure movie.  But it’s well made, action packed, and has a pretty good story.  The script isn’t amazing, but it doesn’t suck.  And while I miss Rachel Weisz (and don’t care for having actors change for characters, generally), Maria Bello is still pretty good.  Plus, I genuinely do like the loving relationship between the O’Connells.  The post WWII race across Asia is fun.  Michelle Yeoh, Russell Wong, and Jet Li are all cool.  And I gotta get me some Yeti friends.

The Witches Mountain:  “The only thing I care about is my Jeep.”  A groovy dude with a sweetass mustache takes a trip into the mountains with a spaced out chick…to get away from a clingy chick who was attacked by a doll killing little girl…or something.  The editing and ‘plot’ progression make it more confusing than anything.  But I guess there’s a town full of witches or something.  Why does anything that happens in this movie happen?  No idea.  The locations are awesome, though.  And I’d love to see a good movie filmed there.  This is also another movie that keeps setting up for nudity, but never delivers, to the point where it becomes a bit conspicuous.  Was this severely edited?  It might explain, in part, why so much happens seemingly without reason.

Count Dracula and His Vampire Bride:  I’ve also seen this under the name ‘Satanic Rights of Dracula’ and I think it’s sometimes released under other names.  It’s certainly from the end times of Hammer Studios.  It’s boring, pretty shoddy, and just doesn’t work.  And one of my least favorite, somehow successful UK genre actresses Joanna Lumley is hardly a memorable Hammer Girl.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon:  At the height of my love of martial arts films and Hong Kong melodrama, Ang Lee’s historic/fantastic epic came out and blew me away.  An old hero looks to retire.  His great love may finally be ready to let go of the past.  A young noblewoman yearns for a life of freedom.  A sinister assassin is on the loose.  A bandit king will give it all up for love.  And a powerful sword, the Green Destiny will bring them all together in blood and tears.  Sweeping vistas, intense fights, and beautiful music.  The actors are all in top form and the multi-layered story is captivating.  It took the insanity of wire-fu and meshed it with romantic grandeur.  One of my all time favorite films.

The Stepmother:  “My life’s empty without Dick.”  Murder, rape, and partying.  I guess that’s what men do.  If you’re hungry for random freeze-frames (and I know you are), this is the movie for you.   If you kill a guy in a blue suit jacket and white turtleneck, you just better be prepared for him to run at you romantically with one of those camera filters they used when shooting women on Star Trek.  But once you kill one dude, you gotta kill more (and then freeze-frame!).  The name is a bit confusing.  Heck, it’s almost an hour in before you even find out one of the characters is a stepmother at all.  Also, it’s just bad form to get your wife all revved up and then bail for a trip to Mexico.  It’s just not done.  It’s always weird when a movie totally changes tone and direction half way through.

The Madmen of Mandoras:  Nestor Paiva!!!  Kidnapping, murder, and poison gas brings two gringos (is that Stone Philips and Brian Williams’ lovechild?) to the mysterious Latin nation Mandoras, where everyone knows their name.  That’s where they discover the final act of those clever Nazi bastards.  Is this the first ‘Hitler’s head in a jar’ movie?

Nympha:  First, this is not a good movie.  It’s choppy, disjointed, and the reveal of what’s really been going on is totally lame.  But it does build some pretty good mood.  For quite some time, I was genuinely interested in what was behind that door, what was up in that attic.  Tiffany Shepis is a solid lead who doesn’t seem to have much problem with taking her clothes off (her tacky, cliché tattoos are lame, though…seriously, if she’s got a butterfly on her ankle, I’m done).  And I kept wanting to like the film more than I was able.  What could have been a really interesting demon/Lovecraftian horror film turned into an X-Files/serial killer thing that didn’t live up to the set-up.

Doctor Who: The Mark of the Rani:  Something’s up in merry old England.  Hard working men go in to a bathhouse and come out as soccer hooligans.  I immediately like The Rani, especially because you can really compare and contrast her with The Master in this story.  She’s not an idiot.  And her Tardis is way cool.  One of the better episodes to feature The Master, I think in large part because it calls him out for being pretty silly.

Godzilla Raids Again:  “Oh!  My factory!!!”  Some amazing science sets the stage for the return of Godzilla (here called Gigantus or something) and another giant monster.  They battle, people shoot ineffective artillery, and cities burn.  It seems a bit simplistic, even for a Godzilla film.  But it’s perfectly enjoyable.

Lair of the White Worm:  Ken Russell, thy name be subtlety.  The acting is exceptionally uneven, made that much worse by awful ADR.  And yeah, we get it Ken.  PAGANS!!!  The pen is his penis!  And snakes, snakes, snakes; everything looks like snakes!  But I love this crazyass movie and all its totally over the top melodrama, weird imagery, and vague history based horror.  Amanda Donohoe is frickin’ fantastic as the ophidian lady of mystery.  Balls out nuts.  And Hugh Grant is awesomely smug as the young lord with a surprising stripe of courage.  Plus, the bagpipes, the sword, and…that strap-on.

Cloud Atlas:  I love the Matrix movies.  Yeah.  That’s right, there’s an ‘s’ at the end of ‘movie.’  Sure, the second film needs about 30 minutes mercilessly edited.  But they’re fine films (even all that crazy King Arthur stuff at the end of part 3).  Bound was great, too.  And (eat it, America), I loved Speed Racer.  Bam!  But, I’ll admit, the trailer for this film left me a bit cold.  Looked a bit too grandiose, a bit too…I don’t know.  Something not good.  However, I’ll give almost anything a try; and you know what?  It was actually really good.  Sure, sometimes the make-up is a bit creepy and I’m just not a fan of Halle Berry.  But each story in each timeline is engrossing (except the slave-trade one), and I found myself swept along with the various doings and goings on, be it the adventures of the old editor at the evil rest home, the love letters of the opportunistic young composer, the awakening of the revolutionary replicant, or the post Fall struggle of savages.  There’s a great cast, great music, some excellent visuals, and pretty grand ideas.  Plus, Jim Broadbent’s performance(s) alone is worth the price of admission.  As is Keith David in full Shaft mode.  Though I don’t believe in any kind of reincarnation or any of that mystical BS (yeah, that includes heavens and hells), I do enjoy the idea of souls and humanity’s connectivity.

Hugh Grant!!!

The Man with the Iron Fists:  “Gemini Stance!”  RZA and friends have thrown together a crazy wire-fu fantasy film with everything and the kitchen sink.  Plenty of punches, kicks, slices, bashings, stabbings, and maulings, and one unlucky inn.  It’s a love letter to the genre, and a great deal of fun.  And man, fat, sweaty Russell Crowe is wonderfully disgusting.  The climactic battles could have been a bit more climactic, but overall it was pretty good.

Doctor Who: The Deamons:  “Well that doesn’t look very traditional.”  Oh, The Master.  The more episodes I see with him, the less I like the character.  He’s just so danged silly.  I love that Doctor Who was a kids show, because this episode is super scary and weird.  It shows how different TV used to be, and especially how different British kids television was.  Like a lot from Jon Pertwee’s era especially, it doesn’t feel like it’s aimed at kids at all.  It’s a kind of clash between science and superstition as the nature of the Devil is revealed (bloody aliens!).

Doctor Who: The Two Doctors:  “Religion?!  I’m not interested in the beliefs of primitives; only in what they taste like.”  These multi-Doctor episodes are odd.  The actors from earlier time are so clearly older (much older) and forcing the different eras together is awkward.  But, it’s also fun to see people come back for another ride.  The second Doctor’s attitude on the essential nature of beings is rather disturbing and backward.  One problem (?) I have watching these Colin Baker episodes is that I can’t seem to concentrate on what’s happening, because I can’t stop staring at Nicola Bryant’s epic, almost Biblical cleavage.  It’s hypnotic, drawing in everything like a black hole.  How did anyone remember their lines?  The story is pretty good, and the location shooting in Spain is nice.  And I’m really warming to Colin Baker.

Der Fliegende Hollander:  Two gentlemen sailors meet, seemingly by chance, and find that each has what the other wants, one riches, the other a daughter for the marrying.  And amicable agreement is struck and everyone is poised to be happy.  But this is German opera, so you know s#!t’s about to go down.  It’s weird that the female lead is on screen (stage) for nearly an hour before she utters a sound.  It’s odd to say this about a two hour plus opera, but I think the problem with this one is that it’s too short.  The story feels to rushed, without giving a lot of time to the characters and relationships that need it.  Still, this 1985 staging was impressive.

Aeon Flux:  This film adaptation didn’t go anywhere near weird enough to capture the show’s essence, but sadly, it went far too strange for the general viewer.  It’s flawed.  Charlize Theron is totally miscast in the lead.  Not that she turns in a bad performance, she’s actually quite good.  She’s just wrong for the part.  There are some wonky bits to be sure.  It absolutely should have been rated R, with the creepy sex and extreme violence of the original.  But it’s still a pretty imaginative vision of a strange semi-utopian, almost post-human future.  All the crazy tech is super cool (and gross).  I wish more movies of this type were made so that this wasn’t one of the better ones.  Sadly, more extreme, more chance taking science fiction is so rare that this is above average.

Renaissance:  In a world starved for adult animation, this is a rare gem.  Animated science fiction that doesn’t come from Japan’s crap factory.  Visually striking, this neo-Noir certainly owes a lot to Blade Runner as well as Sin City.  But it stands enough on its own to be an interesting watch.  The voice acting is a mixed bag.  The story is pretty standard ‘big, evil corporation covering up dirty deeds and plans.’  But as such, it’s good.

    I read The Storyteller, an anthology based on the awesome TV show.  It was OK.  Not nearly as good as the Dark Crystal prequel from the same company.  And I read a Spider novel.  I love the old pulps, but my second Spider book was less impressive than the first, and I’m not sure if or when I’ll be reading my next few (I own six).

    After seeing Cloud Atlas this week, and because of some books I’ve been poring over, I got to thinking about science fiction film, and how to this day, with all the technology at our disposal, there is still so little good stuff out there, especially when it comes to the big idea, grand scale, high concept stuff.  Now, I’m not saying there isn’t good stuff.  Not at all.  And there’s been some excellent science fiction film in just the last few years.  But where are the really wild, imaginative stories that take place in exotic locations.  Where are the new Star Wars films.  I don’t mean sequels, but equivalent space opera.  Since Star Wars, we’ve had what, The Fifth Element, Dune, and…and…what?  Nothing I can think of right now.  They tried to do a Halo movie, but it didn’t happen.  The Foundation trilogy has been bounced around for years, but nothing has happened.  James Cameron had all the resources, but ended up making a vacuous remake of Fern Gully.  He could have done anything, and he had cat people fighting marines in a jungle.  Come on!!!  Prometheus could have been fantastic, but they forgot the script.  TV has been home to some, at least.  Farscape and Battlestar Galactica, among others.  And while not quite what I’m talking about, the new Star Trek film was a step in the right direction.  Japan churns out science fiction…but it’s pretty much all crap (OK, that’s not true.  ‘Pretty much’ implies that some of it isn’t.).  So, let’s take up the slack and start doing good stuff.  Maybe combine the will to make science fiction from Japan with the script writing and technical know-how of Hollywood (or pretty much anywhere other than Japan…or Italy.  Let’s not tell Italy what we’re up to.  Though John Saxon might need work.).

    The guy who almost did Halo (doing the pretty good Alien Nation redo District 9 instead) has a new one, Elysium.  There’s a new Star Trek.  And Marvel is working on Guardians of the Galaxy (really?!).  But the only good science fiction film people went to see this year was Looper.  Everyone skipped Dredd, Robot & Frank, and Cloud Atlas.  And of those, only Cloud Atlas is anything like what I’m talking about.  Robot & Frank is the better film, but more of the kind of near future stuff that is pretty common in the genre.  It’s also the kind of movie that has people say, “I don’t like science fiction, but I like this,” which actually means, “I don’t know what science fiction is or that I actually like many science fiction films and books, but I thought Star Wars was silly, so I’ll say I don’t like it.”

    I’m not talking gloom and doom here.  I’m not raging against the dying of the light.  More, I’d like a call to action.  Let’s stop being so passive.  Demand more.  Go see science fiction films.  Seek out more unique movies.  Read more books.  And talk about it with friends.  Don’t fall in to the unhelpful, typical, cynical mindset that simply poo-poos whatever is new, whatever is different, while complaining that nothing new or different ever comes out.   And vote with your dollars.  Go out to the movies.  Pay for tickets.  Pay for DVDs.  Tell filmmakers that we want more of the good stuff.  Skip the easy, repetitive horror films (ParanormalSinisterExorcismHauntingStrangers in a Small Town) and go see something else.

-Matt