Core Dump

Labels: movies and television

“Max Headroom” starred Matt Frewer as a reporter whose mind is downloaded into a computer to create a virtual clone who exists in the digital world. Amanda Pays, Jeffrey Tambor and W. Morgan Sheppard also star in the series, which ran for 14 episodes on Cinemax and ABC in 1987 and 1988. Set in the near future, “Max Headroom” depicted a world of television run amok.

Shout! Factory has a “Max Headroom” complete-series DVD set slated for August, according to a spokesperson. Episodes are being transferred from their original elements to provide the best quality, and Shout! Factory is planning a robust range of extras for the set. Bonus content may include the original U.K. telefilm 20 Minutes Into the Future, upon which the series is based, though nothing has been confirmed. Max Headroom also appeared in a series of Coca-Cola commercials in the 1980s, raising speculation such content may also be fodder for bonus material, but Shout! Factory said planning the extras is in the early stage.

Labels: movies and television, SF

Labels: movies and television, photography, SF, video

"Everybody now who reads Dune reads it with David Lynch's images in mind," he said. "So we have to get away from that. It's not a remake of David Lynch's movie. We're doing a re-reading, a brand new approach on the book, a very true approach to the book, the original material. So we will have to deal with trying to erase the image that David Lynch did so we can propose our image.".

Labels: movies and television, SF

Labels: movies and television, SF

Labels: movies and television, SF

Labels: movies and television, SF

As we have seen with our own Jovian planets since the days of the twin Voyager space probes, gas giant worlds do have retinues of large and dynamic moons, some of which may be homes for simple organisms. There is no reason not to think that alien gas giants might have exotic companions as well, though whether they would be like the residents of Pandora is much too early to say.

On the subject of living on the moon of a gas giant planet: Note how huge Polyphemus looms in the skies of Pandora as we are witness to throughout the film. It is certainly a very awe-inspiring and aesthetically pleasing image, enhancing the alienness of the moon and its inhabitants. However, I would think that being so close to a gas giant would cause all sorts of geological turmoil, which in turn would greatly upset the balance of life on Pandora, perhaps even to keep it from becoming complex.

To use a real-world example, note how the closest of Jupiter’s four Galilean moons, Io, is constantly pulled and churned about by the great mass of Jupiter and its fellow Galileans to the point where the moon is constantly spewing colorful sulfur across its uncratered surface. Despite the intense nature of Io’s environment, some scientists have speculated that the very geological processes that make Io such a violent place could bring about and support some kind of life, though probably nothing as complex as the creatures on Cameron’s alien moon.

Labels: movies and television, SF

Labels: movies and television, SF

Labels: movies and television, SF

Labels: movies and television, SF

MJ: Heath Ledger's character, Tony, shows Parnassus that ideas aren't enough; you have to sell them, too. Is that the part of moviemaking you find frustrating?

TG: No matter what I've done in the past, and no matter how much all the people who are in charge of the money say they love it, the new project is invariably not the thing they want to do.

MJ: It seems like you're always struggling to raise enough money.

TG: But everybody is. I just seem to have gotten the job of being the one who has to mouth off about how difficult it is all the time, and I’m really kind of bored with that job.

MJ: I suppose too much money is also a curse.

TG: Oh, yeah. The more money you have to work with, the more people you have to deal with that you probably don't want to be spending time dealing with. Munchausen and Brothers Grimm were both very big projects, and things get out of control; you're running an army, and it's harder to control the money. Invariably, what I'm trying to do is more ambitious than the budget, but we manage to do it somehow.

Labels: movies and television, SF

Much of the 2012 shtick is a light-fingered (if leaden-humored) rip-off of the late rave-culture philosopher Terence McKenna’s stand-up routine, without McKenna’s prodigious erudition, effortless eloquence, or arch wit, and Pinchbeck is no exception. For Quetzalcoatl’s sake, if you’re going to start a religion, at least invent your own cosmology. Even L. Ron Hubbard was canny enough to concoct a pulp theology for ham-radio enthusiasts out of leftover SF plots. But every time I see Pinchbeck’s glum mug, regarding the world with a sort of forced bliss, I think: Would you buy a used eschaton from this man? (McKenna, by the way, knew which side his ectoplasm was buttered on. When I asked him, over dinner, why a man of his obvious intellectual nimbleness endured the saucer abductees and trance-channelers who plucked at his sleeve at New Age seminars, he rolled a knowing eye and replied, I thought wearily, that he owed his daily crust to “menopausal mystics” and thus had to suffer them, if not gladly.)

Labels: movies and television, science

Labels: movies and television, politics

All the films stream from the internet, so you'll need an internet connection to grab them, but this app also allows you to download and store films to watch later (up to 24hrs), which is fabulous for those places around town where signal is weak or non-existent—like the 3rd floor bathroom in your office, or the spotty signal you get while riding the train.

The content includes everything from children's cartoons to Oscar-winning flicks, and to top it all off, the download and the entire contents of their film library are free of charge.

Labels: movies and television

Readers will likely enjoy his treatment of the TARP and its aftermath. Moore provides evidence well known to finance blog readers, such as Goldman penetration of key policy positions, an obligatory Phil Gramm saying something heinous shot, and the role of financial services contributions (he managed to interview the fellow at Countrywide in charge of the “Friends of Angelo” cheap mortgage as bribe program, who sees nothing wrong in what he did). He also makes good use of Bill Black and Elizabeth Warren. Congressmen and women, agitated even now, describe how the process of getting the TARP through despite overwhelming popular opposition was masterfully orchestrated, carefully timed to prey on re-election fears “like an intelligence operation”. The clips are simply damning, and dispel any doubts of who is really in charge in DC.

Labels: economics and finance, movies and television, politics

To give you a very small example: bullets. The characters come into the ship with a certain number of bullets. It is very difficult for them to get any more of them. So I count the scenes where bullets are used and I send notes that say “now, you know you have that many fewer bullets now, right?” The point is not just to be OCD anal (although there is value in that in this case), but to remind everyone that realism is something we’re looking for, and the choices we make now will have an influence later. So what the producers and writers have to do is to decide whether they want to spend their bullets now, or find some other, non-bullet-related way to solve a particular problem. Sometimes you need a bullet, sometimes you don’t.

Labels: movies and television, SF

As far as writing The Surrogates, again when I was in grad school, we read a book called The Cyber Gypsies, which was a non-fiction book where a guy had spent a lot of time with people addicted to online games, and these people in the book had become so identified with the personas on their computers that they'd lose their jobs or get divorced or any number of things because they were devoting so much of their time to maintaining that persona that they were neglecting the basic steps of living. It was an idea that stuck with me, this basic human desire to be someone other than who we actually are. It just clicked for me in 2002: What if there was a technology that would allow you to create a persona that, instead of being bound in a machine or have a virtual reality situation, what if the technology was reversed and the machine would go out into the world and do all the things you need to do to live for you? You could be that persona all the time and still maintain all your responsibilities.

Labels: books, movies and television, SF

So how, in the end, to sum up District 9? On one level, the complaints I've listed here seem almost petty when one considers what the standard of storytelling and political commentary is in most effect-laden science fiction films. The simple fact that it didn't use a genocide as a means of developing a main character puts District 9 leagues ahead of Star Trek, which in turn makes it the most sophisticated and morally complex film to come out of this year's blockbuster season (not that that's not a sad commentary in itself). On the other hand, the very fact that District 9 aspires to something beyond the Star Trek-Transformers 2 axis means that it should be judged by harsher standards, and by those it is quite wanting--I haven't even touched on the film's treatment of race within humans, though I was appalled by its depiction of the Nigerian characters, a nameless mass of mobsters, pimps and cannibals. Once again, I find myself uncertain about the film--is it more laudable, or more regrettable? I hope that District 9 and its success are an indication that other filmmakers are going to make science fiction films with loftier goals than the ones we've become accustomed to, but I also hope that they are more successful than Neill Blomkamp at achieving them.

Labels: movies and television, SF

Labels: movies and television, SF

Labels: movies and television, SF

Labels: movies and television, SF

Cinematical: How difficult or easy was it to juggle the film's thematic elements and still maintain the sense of a compelling story?

Blomkamp: Well if you have a clear enough idea in your mind [and] if you can boil the essence of what the film is down in your mind to, even if it's an emotion that's in me or something I can relate to on a very basic level, because a lot of how I operate is all based on instinct. It's like I can't verbalize a lot of it, it just has to feel right, which I guess is how directors all sort of operate. So when you're going about the action sequences and the flow of the story, like when I was writing it with Terri [Tatchell], I kind of made sure that whatever that natural feeling that felt like I was getting to the essence of what this film was meant to be, if I felt that in the way that I was approaching the action, it meant that whatever the core ideas are, of which I have some in my head, it meant that I was getting close to it. And, if you just do action for the sake of action, and you don't reinforce what the basic emotional core of the film is, then it's meaningless. So at the end, it's really a story of redemption, and hopefully it should be about the guy who made wrong decisions in his life and been an indirect racist, is laying waste to this group that has been oppressing another group for a whole bunch of years. So hopefully it works on an emotional level first.

Labels: movies and television, SF

Labels: movies and television, SF

Labels: movies and television, SF

Ever since Scott announced his intentions to make an Alien prequel, speculation has abounded as to whether Scott himself would return to the director's chair. Word was the commercial director (and Scott's daughter's current beau) Carl Erik Rinsch might take the reigns, but that Fox refused to greenlight the project without Scott as director. Variety now reports that Scott has agreed to direct his first Alien movie in 30 years, with Jon Spaiht attached to write the script.

Spaiht isn't a household name yet, but his philosophical science fiction romance Passengers made the 2007 Black List of best unproduced scripts. He's also scripting The Darkest Hour, a film described as "Independence Day in Moscow," for 9 producer and Wanted director Timur Bekmambetov, as well as a feature for Disney titled Children of Mars. Reportedly, Spaiht delivered a prequel pitch that wowed Scott and the studio.

Labels: movies and television, SF

Battlestar Galactica attracted a lot of fans and a lot of kudos during its run, and engendered this sub blog about it. Here, in my final post on the ending, I present the case that its final hour was the worst ending in the history of science fiction on the screen. This is a condemnation of course, but also praise, because my message is not simply that the ending was poor, but that the show rose so high that it was able to fall so very far. I mean it was the most disappointing ending ever.

(There are, of course, major spoilers in this essay.)

Other SF shows have ended very badly, to be sure. This is particularly true of TV SF. Indeed, it is in the nature of TV SF to end badly. First of all, it’s written in episodic form. Most great endings are planned from the start. TV endings rarely are. To make things worse, TV shows are usually ended when the show is in the middle of a decline. They are often the result of a cancellation, or sometimes a producer who realizes a cancellation is imminent. Quite frequently, the decline that led to cancellation can be the result of a creative failure on the show — either the original visionaries have gone, or they are burned out. In such situations, a poor ending is to be expected.

Sadly, I’m hard pressed to think of a TV SF series that had a truly great ending. That’s the sort of ending you might find in a great book or movie, the ending that caps the work perfectly, which solidifies things in a cohesive whole. Great endings will sometimes finally make sense out of everything, or reveal a surprise that, in retrospect, should have been obvious all along. I’m convinced that many of the world’s best endings came about when the writer actually worked out the ending first, then then wrote a story leading to that ending.

There have been endings that were better than the show. Star Trek: Voyager sunk to dreadful depths in the middle of its run, and its average ending was thus a step up. Among good SF/Fantasy shows, Quantum Leap, Buffy and the Prisoner stand out as having had decent endings. Babylon V’s endings (plural) were good but, just as I praise Battlestar Galactica (BSG) by saying its ending sucked, Babylon V’s endings were not up to the high quality of the show. (What is commonly believed to be B5’s original planned ending, written before the show began, might well have made the grade.)
Ron Moore’s goals

To understand the fall of BSG, one must examine it both in terms of more general goals for good SF, and the stated goals of the head writer and executive producer, Ronald D. Moore. The ending failed by both my standards (which you may or may not care about) but also his.

Moore began the journey by laying out a manifesto of how he wanted to change TV SF. He wrote an essay about Naturalistic Science Fiction where he outlined some great goals and promises, which I will summarize here, in a slightly different order

* Avoiding SF clichés like time travel, mind control, god-like powers, and technobabble.
* Keeping the science real.
* Strong, real characters, avoiding the stereotypes of older TV SF. The show should be about them, not the hardware.
* A new visual and editing style unlike what has come before, with a focus on realism.

Over time he expanded, modified and sometimes intentionally broke these rules. He allowed the ships to make sound in space after vowing they would not. He eschewed aliens in general. He increased his focus on characters, saying that his mantra in concluding the show was “it’s the characters, stupid.”

Labels: movies and television, SF

They lost me before the action even started, with the prologue in the form of an advertisement for a company that has discovered and now solely controls a form of cheap energy involving cold fusion. But the only thing you can use for this fusion is 'He3," a molecule found only on -- get this -- the dark side of the moon. Because of course the sub-lunar composition is different on the farside than the Earth side. Then, the evil corporation (of course) that controls this resource sets us a harvesting operation for He3, manned by ONLY one person.

Labels: movies and television, SF

Although 'Children Of Earth' experienced the occasional lull during its five days, the decision to screen the series over consecutive nights was a masterstroke. Seen in isolation, some episodes were stronger than others, but as a whole this latest incarnation of Torchwood has been a massive success. Excellent supporting turns by the likes of Capaldi, Paul Copley (Timothy/Clem), Cush Jumbo (Lois) and Liz May Brice (Johnson) squeezed every bit of depth out of their characters, while Barrowman, Eve Myles, Gareth David-Lloyd (Lanto) and Kai Owen guided us through the adventure with panache and verve.

Director Euros Lyn was consistently brilliant as he dealt with five of the most compelling hours of British science fiction since the similarly themed Quatermass. Actually, referring to the show as 'science fiction' almost does it a disservice, as if it's being dumped into some niche category. It's simply great television. Fact.

Update:

Torchwood needs to come back from this shocking, disturbing, grand, insane story with something maybe a bit more pedestrian. It needs to be a regular television show again, showing us from time to time how Captain Jack helps get a cat out of a metaphorical tree. So if I were Russell T. Davies, I'd push for a regular 13-episode series next year — it can end with some kind of massive world-shattering climax, but it can also have room for episodes where there's a sex monster or Captain John has dangerous underwear or Cardiff is nearly sucked into a null dimension, or whatever. Stories that can sustain themselves for 45 minutes, but wouldn't justify five hours.

The bottom line: You can't raise the stakes again after a story like this one. If you do, you'll start dealing in stakes that are so huge, they're unimaginable. Torchwood will probably never be as good as it's been these past five days — although I'm desperately hoping to be proved wrong about that — but it can still be way better than its first two seasons, if it builds on the brilliance of "Children Of Earth." I just don't think the way to build on "Children Of Earth" is with more "Children Of Earth."

Labels: movies and television, SF

Labels: movies and television, places

That thoughtful approach pays off, making Moon a movie that stands up to repeated viewing. Despite its relatively low budget (Jones says Moon cost $5 million to produce), this indie gem delivers plenty of gorgeous special effects (more than 450 FX shots during the 33-day production, according to the director).

Cinematographer Gary Shaw’s exterior shots rely heavily on old-school models for aesthetic as well as financial reasons, Jones said. When Sam patrols the heavily shadowed surface of the moon in a rover created by the same U.K. model makers that crafted Alien’s spaceship Nostromo, the Earth — giant, blue and beautiful — floats on the horizon almost like a colorized outtake from the Apollo 11 mission.

With no giant explosions, no monstrous aliens and no shortage of nods to cerebral sci-fi classics, Moon delivers a stirring, character-driven story about a profoundly isolated blue-collar guy in a bad situation. Rockwell’s intensely introspective performance imbues this somber little movie with sci-fi beauty that’s more than skin deep.

Labels: movies and television, SF

The trick to Star Trek, for me, was that it stayed focused, and chose carefully. Appreciating that JJ Abrams had a sizeable budget at his disposal, there was still little doubt in my mind that it was all up there on screen as I walked out at the end. The last time I think I'd seen such concentrated focus on wringing the most out of an effects budget for the benefit of the film itself was with Danny Boyle's underrated Sunshine, and I long now for other blockbuster directors to pick up some of the lessons that Star Trek has clearly demonstrated.

Because special effects exist to enhance a story, not be the story. They're there to add a dose of magic to what happens on screen, rather than become the primary focus of it. In Star Trek, the battle around Vulcan is the standout example for me, but even something like the drilling sequences worked a treat, and whenever JJ cut to a wide shot of the Enterprise travelling through space, I bought it every time. It actually mattered.

Labels: movies and television, SF

Labels: movies and television, SF

Labels: movies and television, SF

Labels: movies and television, SF

Labels: funny, movies and television, SF

When it premieres, Flash Forward will feature a lot of familiar faces, both in front of and behind the cameras; Joseph Fiennes, Pirates of the Carribean's Jack Davenport and Star Trek's John Cho lead the cast, while the showrunners are Green Lantern and Amazing Spider-Man's Marc Guggenheim and The Dark Knight and Blade's David Goyer (who co-wrote the pilot with former Star Trek franchise chief Brannon Braga). Even before the official order, the show was widely assumed to be a definite go considering that ABC has already been running teaser trailers for it during the last two episodes of Lost; those teasers are now being pointed to by some as a sign that the show will either be paired with the island drama or, more likely, be in its Wednesday timeslot before Lost's January 2010 return.

Labels: movies and television, SF

For 30 years J.G. Ballard had many readers in many lands. For them, everything he published was news. But after Steven Spielberg based a good though not incandescent film on his autobiographical novel, Empire of the Sun (1984), Ballard became publicly newsworthy over large parts of the world that his words had never reached directly.

He became a sage and prophet, whose visions of the cost of living in the modern world were an integral part of our understanding of the shape of things to come. At least one English dictionary has accepted "Ballardian" as a term descriptive of the landscape of the late 20th century: bleak, rusted out, choked with Ozymandian relics of the space age now past, dystopian – a landscape which surreally embodies the psychopathologies of modern humanity.

Labels: books, movies and television, SF

Lifehacker: How do you plan out a season of MythBusters? How much can you plan ahead, and how much space do you leave yourself to explore stuff you hadn't anticipated?

Adam Savage: The flow of the season happens very much like the flow of an episode. We'll plot out a straight line through an episode, or a season, then it changes radically, constantly. The story list for the next full season, for example, had 60 stories. That came from a master list of about 130, 140 items, from which we'll choose 60. As we film that season, we'll end up following maybe 40 of those, but then 20 new items come up during shooting. All it takes is one more news story for me to realize how I could dig into something.

... There's also room for totally randoms stuff. Jamie came up with this idea of proving you could build a working ship out of wood pulp and water, during the Alaska episode. What we built was stupendous, and what we built wasn't on anybody's list. It normally takes about 9 or 10 days to finish a story, but we try to be flexible. We find a story sometimes we just don't want to sink our teeth into or, more often, need to give more juice to. We had one thing, duct tape, slotted as a three-day story, but we realized that is not a small story. We can turn on the idea that duct tape can do almost anything. So we turned out this episode that takes duct tape to the absolute edge of its performance capabilities.

Labels: movies and television, science, technology

Driving or walking to the video store to bring home less than a gig of data — data that may or may not even be in stock — just doesn't make much sense anymore.

At least not when compared to Netflix's easy ordering system, its recommendation engine, lack of late fees, deeper inventory and clever use of the Postal Service to have movies delivered quickly.

Blockbuster tried to keep up, with an innovative mail rental plan that let people trade in movies at the store as well, but the plan turned out to be too complicated and too late.

But even the notion of even leaving the room to get a movie, doesn't make sense if you have a fat internet connection and the willingness to explore some legal and less-legal ways to download movies to a computer.

Labels: movies and television, technology

The lights went down, the film began, and after just a few minutes, my apprehension was gone. I knew after the Comedian hit the street that this was going to be everything I'd hoped for. For the next two hours and forty-five minutes, I gasped, I cheered, I applauded, I was stunned and I was blown away. Most importantly, though, I was transported to the world I first visited, one issue at a time, when I was a teenager. When it was over, I wanted to go right back to the beginning and start over again, just like I did when I finished the graphic novel back in the 80s.



I'm not going to discuss specifics, because that would suck for a lot of people, but: PAY ATTENTION, MY FELLOW GEEKS: YOU HAVE NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT.

(Did I just all-cap and bold that? I guess I did. What is this, MacWrite in 1986? Whatever. I'm leaving it, because it's that important to me that my fellow geeks read it.)

Labels: movies and television, SF

And that was just the beginning. Ask Gaiman for his archetypal Toronto fan moment and he recalls it instantly.

"I came out for a signing in 1991 for Season of Mists. There was a line stretching around the block outside the Silver Snail at 3 p.m. when I was supposed to start. I signed for hours and hours.

"Round about 1 a.m., I got back to my hotel room and discovered that room service had long since packed it in. So I sat in the bath, eating my complimentary bedside cookie, resting my sore, swollen arm and thinking sarcastically, `So this is the glamorous life!' but also seriously being aware that this was something very special."

For lovers of Neil Gaiman's novel Coraline (2002), writer/director Henry Selick's stop-motion animated film is about as good an adaptation as they could have realistically hoped for: he is generally faithful to the book's storyline — a young girl named Coraline Jones (Dakota Fanning), neglected by her busy parents, enters an alternate world with a doting "other mother" (Teri Hatcher) who turns out to be a predatory monster — and he also endeavors to emulate its special tone. If he doesn't quite succeed in doing so, that is because Gaiman's work is very much a gentle, charming fantasy, and whenever Hollywood applies its formulas for sure-fire box-office success, it rarely does "gentle" or "charming" very well. As a whole, then, the film struck me as a bit too blunt, too crass, too bombastic for my taste. (I mean, a topless Miss Forcible [Dawn French] wearing pasties?) It shouts while Gaiman whispers, dazzles while Gaiman tickles.

Labels: movies and television, SF

Labels: movies and television, SF

It takes nerve to craft a horror story about children in this day and age, where glossy wastes like Kung Fu Panda and Hannah Montana have usurped our children's intelligence and healthy sense of fear. We have come a long way from the uncensored violence of Carlo Collodi's original 1883 Adventures of Pinocchio and perhaps even Jeunet and Caro's surrealist 1995 classic, The City of Lost Children. Which is to say, we have lost our way.

But this latest installment of the little-girl-lost narrative may restore the public's faith in fairy tales that don't have rousing musical numbers (although They Might Be Giants makes a boisterous appearance in the "Other Father Song") or plots stripped of danger but brimming with production value. Selick and Gaiman's cinematic adaptation is a mind-blowing good time masquerading as a coming-of-age tale wrapped in a warning. Don't miss it.

Labels: movies and television, SF

With one eye on the screen and the other on reactions from fans and journalists gathered at the Directors Guild of American screening room, the former music video director showed off the post-Judgment Day world he's crafting for Terminator Salvation. The scenes showed new Terminator models and bleak vistas from a nuke-ravaged Earth destroyed by sentient computer network Skynet.

Work-in–progress action sequences looked impressive enough to suggest that McG and his collaborators might just restore the franchise to its former glory.

Labels: movies and television, SF

Snow Crash (Neal Stephenson): Frankly, any of Stephenson's novels would make a terrific flick (with the exception of his aptly-named Baroque Cycle trilogy, which need to be multi-year television series). But if I had to pick one, I'd go with Snow Crash, because from the ridiculously funny pizza delivery at the start, the book never stops coming at you. And, let's face it, everyone loves the idea of a katana-wielding super geek squaring off against the dogmatic forces of evil. This story would need a director with an offbeat, jazzy sense of pacing -- I nominate Guy Ritchie or Danny Boyle.

Could it happen? There's nothing in the works, but this is one of those books I expect will hit screens eventually.

Labels: movies and television, SF

Labels: movies and television, technology

To answer questions that immediately come to mind: What “creative consultant” means in this case is to assist the producers and directors in shaping the direction of the series, to offer technical writing suggestions and advice, and basically to be useful when they want another point of view on something; it’s a background rather than foreground sort of job. No, I won’t be writing for the series at this point; hey, I just got the one gig, let me do that first. Yes, I’ve seen scripts and now know all sorts of stuff about the series you don’t, yet. No, I won’t tell you anything more than what’s already out there; my title is “creative consultant,” not “dude who leaks stuff.” Yes, the producers and writers are very smart folks who have a definite idea of what they want SGU to be, and I think it’s a good and intriguing idea with lots of interesting possibilities, which is why I signed on. No, I won’t be moving to Vancouver, though it’s a lovely town. Yes, dinner last night was spectacular, and I’m currently filled with crispy duck and other delights. I know for a fact Joe Mallozzi will be blogging about it, with lots of pictures of our dishes. Foodies, prepare to go insane.

Labels: movies and television, SF

The film is set in 1957 and shows what happens to the residents of a small California town, when an alien space ship crashes. First comes the monster, then the alien bounty hunter (Urp) and then the cops. It looks like one of those sweet, "If we all put our minds together we can beat this thing" films. Alien Trespass premiered at the 2009 Palm Springs International Film Festival, but we'll have to see where it pops up at next on the festival circuit.

Labels: movies and television, SF

Labels: movies and television, SF

Set 50 years before "Battlestar Galactica," "Caprica" follows two rival families -- the Graystones and the Adamas -- as they grow, compete, and thrive in the vibrant world of the 12 Colonies, a society recognizably close to our own. Enmeshed in the burgeoning technology of artificial intelligence and robotics that will eventually lead to the creation of the Cylons, the two houses go toe-to-toe blending action with corporate conspiracy and sexual politics. "Caprica" will deliver all of the passion, intrigue, political backbiting and family conflict in television’s first science fiction family saga. As the series begins, a startling development is about to occur -- the creation of the first cybernetic life-form node or "Cylon" -- the ability to marry artificial intelligence with mechanical bodies. Joseph Adama (Morales) -- father of future "Battlestar" commander William Adama (Najafi) -- a renowned civil liberties lawyer, becomes an opponent of the experiments undertaken by the Graystones (Stoltz), owners of a large computer corporation that is spearheading the development of these living robots: the Cylons.

Labels: movies and television, SF

Labels: funny, movies and television

Apparently, Straczynski's script will be more of a continuation, or a companion piece, than an actual remake. It's possible the new movie retcons the story a bit, and leaves Altair 4 intact and alive. The beloved Robby the Robot will be in it, and the movie will be "an enormous, giant, retro sci-fi movie ... nothing sleek or 'chromy'" in its visuals.

If you were a Babylon 5 fan, you know Straczynski's love for the original film runs as deep as anyone else's. It sounds like he's trying to do right by the story, and yet give fans a little something new. If it's a movie that continues the nightmares of the original, I think that could be pretty darn cool, and a nice break from the reboots and outright remakes that are taking over Hollywood. But, let's turn it over to you Planet fans in the comments, and see if this softens the blow, or just rubs salt in the wound.

Labels: movies and television, SF

Labels: movies and television, SF

Labels: movies and television, SF

But now I’ve seen two episodes, and in my opinion, if this is the best new show of the Fall, the rest of the season is going to be pretty lousy.

Labels: movies and television, SF

ZERO GRAVITY TOILET

PASSENGERS ARE ADVISED TO
READ INSTRUCTIONS BEFORE USE

1 The Toilet is of the standard zero-gravity type. Depending on requirements, system A and/or system B can be used, details of which are clearly marked in the toilet compartment. When operating system A, depress lever and a plastic dalkron eliminator will be dispensed through the slot immediately underneath. When you have fastened the adhesive lip, attach connection marked by the large "X" outlet hose. Twist the silver coloured ring one inch below the connection point until you feel it lock.

2 The toilet is now ready for use. The Sonovac cleanser is activated by the small switch on the lip. When securing, twist the ring back to its initial-condition, so that the two orange lines meet. Disconnect. Place the dalkron eliminator in the vacuum receptacle to the rear. Activate by pressing the blue button.

Labels: movies and television, SF

When Batman Begins was released and the entire internet was falling over itself, going on about the best superhero film ever and My God, the Realism, I found myself left out of the celebrations. I liked the film well enough, but I thought it was held back from greatness, or for that matter even very goodness, by the same flaws which, earlier this year, marred my enjoyment of Iron Man. The dialogue was atrocious, the villains forgettable, and the plot trapped in the well-worn grooves of the superhero origin story, and thus completely predictable. It was only at its very end that Batman Begins--again setting an example that Iron Man would later follow--made me sit up and take notice, in a scene in which Gordon uses the Bat Signal for the first time and makes a tentative alliance with Batman. Even as he chooses to tolerate Batman's presence in the city, Gordon notes that that presence is an escalation in the terms of the battle between law and lawlessness, and that its consequences will be that the other side will match it--producing the Joker's calling card as an example.

This scene was a rare example of a superhero film actually delivering what most of them claim to be trying to envision--realism, an actual exploration of what it means to be a superhero in the real world, and of what it is like to live in a world that is much like ours but also has superheroes in it. Most superhero films take these two elements--the superhero and his accouterments, the real world and its troubles--and treat them as two discrete layers. So that we get a Tony Stark who is shocked, shocked to discover that the vicious weapons he makes have ended up in the hands of America's enemies and yet also lives in the same world as the rest of us, in which America has for years been arming groups in one decade only to fight them in the next. When the tropes of any particular superhero show up in these films, they often feel like fanservice, or like the filmmakers unthinkingly ticking items off a list--Superman has to moonlight as a bumbling, four-eyed journalist; J. Jonah Jameson has to have ridiculous hair and a hate-on for Spiderman. What struck me about that final scene in Batman Begins is that it imagined the Joker growing organically out of the universe it had created, striving not for realism but for internal consistency, commingling Batman's familiar elements and the ones familiar from our lives into something new and all its own.

Labels: movies and television

The technological advances you must face with every Pixar project seem to us quite dramatic. How does that manifest itself with every new film? How early do you have to ‘lock’ the look of a project?

The look of the film is locked when the film comes out, I think! You can still affect things in many ways. But initially there’s the pre-production process, and we sort out what the look of the film is going to be. Early on they’ll do painting, and the production designer Ralph Eggleston was very specific about this is the look I want, and worked with Andrew [Stanton, director] very closely to establish the look of the film.

I don’t think it changed that much as we went through the film. So that was established pretty early on. I would say two years into it, the story’s being sorted out, the look of the film has then gone through an iteration of being on the screen in actual finished film, and I think that’s when it’s sorted out.

Labels: movies and television

Labels: movies and television, SF

The Bat-plan was simple: Base-jump off one Hong Kong skyscraper, smash through the window of another, grab the Chinese crime boss, then hitch a drag chute to a passing C-130 cargo plane for a daring aerial escape. And on to Gotham! An instant, no-fuss extradition in the best tradition of American vigilantism. Just another working day for Batman and, presumably, just another feat of digital wizardry for the visual effects team. Except for one thing: Christopher Nolan, director of The Dark Knight, wanted to do it for real.

Which is a funny thing to want when you're making a lavish superhero sequel here in the heyday of the greenscreen. And certainly not an easy thing to get, 88 stories above a juddering megacity on the other side of the world. "They spent weeks in preproduction working out a way to hang the stuntman from one helicopter and have a second helicopter following him with the camera," says Wally Pfister, the movie's director of photography. Two choppers and a stuntman on a string — all to make a comic- book hero seem as credible on film as Frank Serpico or The French Connection's Popeye Doyle. All to make a comic-book movie speak the cinematic language of crime thrillers.

Labels: movies and television

Wall-E features loving nods to everything from Brave New World to 2001 to Star Wars without ever feeling derivative. Instead, it builds on them, making what has the potential to be an almost relentlessly bleak world into one full of complete joy and levity. It always has that undercurrent of melancholy just under the surface, as we never really forget that humanity has utterly destroyed the planet and turned itself into a race of pudgy, helpless babies, but heart of the story is Wall-E and his longing for love.

And isn't that the sign of great science fiction? While on the surface it's a movie about robots and spaceships set centuries in the future, deep down it's about humanity and its place on Earth and in the universe. It uses its out-of-this-world settings and characters as a lens to reflect our own world back at us, showing us both the beauty and the ugliness of our existence through the eyes of a guileless, trash-compacting robot.

In a movie season that's overpopulated with tired superhero movies, remakes and sequels, it's incredibly refreshing to see a movie that stands on its own as a completely new and unique creation. It's safe to say you've never seen anything like Wall-E, and you might not see anything like it again. Go. Go see it as soon as you can.

Labels: movies and television, SF

This isn't a case of the show building on what came before it, gradually constructing plot arcs, character arcs, and themes. Instead, Galactica's season 4 is giving off the whiff of Friends's season 10, when the writers realized that there was finally nothing stopping them from putting Ross and Rachel together permanently. It's hard to escape the conclusion that a similar reticence tied the hands of Galactica's writers in season 3 and the latter half of season 2--a crippling fear of changing the show's format, of doing anything too drastic or too new, of veering too far from the status quo. Knowing that the end is nigh has obviously freed the show's writers from this fear, but now they have to contend with the mess they've made. For all my reservations there's no denying that Galactica has measurably improved in its fourth season, and the shocking-yet-not-surprising ending of "Revelations" sets the stage for a potentially very interesting conclusion. It may well be that Galactica's strong beginning will be matched by a strong ending, but I will always think sadly of the show we might have had if its writers had been willing to give us a worthwhile middle.

Labels: movies and television, SF

For those who are not familiar, Torchwood is a British science fiction drama that centers on a team that is tasked with keeping an eye on the space/time Rift that runs through the city, and on whatever washes through it. It also deals with the activities of the Cardiff branch of the fictional Torchwood Institute, which deals mainly with incidents involving extraterrestrials. Created by Russell T Davies, the show also features Burn Gorman as Dr. Owen Harper, Naoko Mori as Toshiko Sato, and Gareth David-Lloyd as Ianto Jones.

Labels: movies and television, SF

Labels: movies and television, SF

Labels: movies and television, SF

Labels: movies and television

Labels: movies and television, SF

There he goes, there goes Speed Racer -- right into a wall: Last weekend Speed Racer crashed and burned at the box office, pulling in a feeble $20 million. This gives 2008 its first major SF/F flop and assures that Warner Bros and its financing partners are going to eat most of the rumored $150 million production cost of the film (not to mention the additional tens of millions for marketing). Right now, the Wachowskis are sitting in a dark room, looking at the numbers and realizing that they really do have to stop cruising on the cred they earned on the original Matrix flick -- that's all gone now.

If Only the Wachowskis Had Released Speed Racer 31 Years Earlier
Because here's something interesting: On July 15, 1977, after several weeks in limited release, Star Wars had its official wide release and pulled in $6.8 million for the weekend, which, adjusted for inflation, would be about $20.9 million dollars today. Star Wars would go on to make more than $300 million in its initial release (a gobsmacking $930 million or so in 2008 dollars), and, of course, go down in movie history, spawning a franchise that is even now dropping films into theaters. (The animated Clone Wars, heading to screens in August.)

So, the question, which the Wachowskis might ruefully ask, is: Why does a $20 million opening spell disaster for Speed Racer today when its equivalent was absolutely fantastic for Star Wars, back in the day? Movies are still the same strips of images on film stock in 2008 as they were in 1977 -- has everything else about movies changed so much?

Labels: movies and television, SF

Labels: funny, movies and television, SF

In the early 1950s, and one assumes after the success of Destination Moon, Robert Heinlein teamed up with producer Jack Seaman to create a science fiction television anthology series. The anthology series had as a framing device a teacher educating a student of his about the history of space exploration; the episodes themselves were largely adaptations of Heinlein’s “Future History” stories, with some original teleplays written or proposed to go along with them. One of those original teleplays, “Ring Around the Moon,” was put into production as the pilot for the series.

And what happened to the series? Well, nothing happened to the series; what happened is that Jack Seaman unilaterally decided to make “Ring Around the Moon” into a feature film, retitled Project Moonbase, padding out the script and story to feature length (barely: the whole thing clocks in at sixty-three minutes) and getting it out to theaters in September of 1953. The movie was made “economically”–which is to say so cheaply that its sets and costumes were used simultaneously on another production, the evocatively-titled Cat-Women of the Moon (“love-starved moon maidens on the prowl!” exclaimed one tagline for the flick)–and its biggest star was the guy who would later be best known as “Dr. Bellows” on I Dream of Jeanie. To call the acting of the leads Donna Martel and Ross Ford wooden is to invite splinters from affronted furniture and railings.

Labels: movies and television, SF

Labels: movies and television, SF

Labels: movies and television, SF

After mining the soft-and-fuzzy (and yet still kinda grisly) end of Stephen King's literary catalog with The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile, writer-director Frank Darabont may seem like an unlikely choice for tackling one of King's shorter, grimmer horror tales. After turning high-end King into Oscar statues and nominations, why go slumming in the shabbier-seeming sections of King's catalog? Darabont's proven he can warm our hearts with King's stories, but does he have what it takes to chill our blood with one of the author's less high-minded efforts?

The Mist answers that question with a firm "Yes," although you'll be hard-pressed to hear it over the shrieks and shouts coming from the screen and the audience. Darabont's made what can best be called a grade-A B-movie, full of jolts and jumps and classic monster-movie tricks played out with old-school showmanship and thoroughly modern special effects. The plot is vintage King, placing ordinary people in an extraordinary circumstance and watching to see who dies and who doesn't, who discovers hidden strength and who displays hidden madness. And no, The Mist is nothing new -- but it's superbly executed, and far smarter than it had to be. Apparently, Darabont read The Mist when it was published in 1980 and longed to make a film from it; instead, his debut was Shawshank, with The Mist in development limbo for years. The horror fan in me thinks it was more than worth the wait.

Labels: movies and television, SF

Labels: movies and television, SF

Labels: history, movies and television

Labels: history, movies and television

# Caprica, a two-hour pilot that takes place 50 years before BSG, has been given the green light. As the Galactica stars were gearing up to come on stage, Eick was setting up meetings to start casting and continue planning. The show will begin production this spring and will air in the fall.
# Producer Moore is directing his first episode (episode 12 to be exact), and Edward James Olmos, who directed two episodes in the past , will direct this season as well.
# A new series of webisodes has been ordered for season four.

Labels: movies and television, SF

As a concept, the human race seems to be a very workable idea. When you get down to the individuals, most of them need a ball-peen hammer to the middle of their forehead to make them move even as a slow pony. I figure any species that is capable of writing "Moby-Dick" and painting the Sistine Chapel ceiling and putting people on the moon does not have to settle for novels by Judith Krantz, McDonald's toad burgers and movies like "Dumb and Dumberer." What is that Latin phrase? Spero melior -- I hope for better things.

Labels: movies and television, SF

Charles McVety, president of the Canada Family Action Coalition, said his lobbying efforts included discussions with Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day and Justice Minister Rob Nicholson, and "numerous" meetings with officials in the Prime Minister's Office.

"We're thankful that someone's finally listening," he said yesterday. "It's fitting with conservative values, and I think that's why Canadians voted for a Conservative government."

Mr. McVety said films promoting homosexuality, graphic sex or violence should not receive tax dollars, and backbench Conservative MPs and cabinet ministers support his campaign.

Labels: movies and television, politics

Labels: movies and television, music

del Toro wants to film that version of the story, even though "iit's a compilation of really dry scientific annotations that happen to be annotating something really scary. There is no character or dramatic thread." So you know, kind of like Cloverfield, except with monsters that will make you crap your pants. Given his track record, we're pretty sure he'd do a spectacular job with this and keep it from devolving into Aliens Vs. Predator.

Labels: movies and television, SF

Labels: movies and television, SF

Labels: movies and television, SF

Labels: funny, movies and television, SF

Lena Headey does a fine job of reinventing Sarah Connor, while maintaining all the edge Linda Hamilton, the original Sarah Connor, had in Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Fresh from a very different role in 300, Headey is tough and uncompromising, but she also has fragile and loving moments that lead to Sarah becoming a well-rounded character.

As for Thomas Dekker's John Connor, he does an excellent job of defining a character who never seemed to be as well-realized as he should have been in the movie series. However, it's Summer Glau who has the toughest role as she turns her mostly expressionless character into someone we care about. Glau is a lovely actress with an otherworldly quality, and it is fun to watch her toss around men three times her size.

The only complaints about the pilot are minor, such as Sarah's failure to use an alias after she moves on with John initially. That key mistake leads to lots of trouble for our heroes, and it's one she wouldn't have made. She had two years to have an alias ready to go. Aside from such minor nitpicking, and the fact that Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles has a really long name, this looks to be the next great action series.

Labels: movies and television, SF

It sounds super trippy, and Clarke already mined it for the plot of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Peirce says the movie's draft script deals with big ideas, like whether humans can accept alien saviors who look like the devil. But it also has cool-looking space travel and a visit to the aliens' homeworld, so she'll need at least $70 million to make this thing. That, in turn, means she needs backing from Universal and a big star. I'd love to see Peirce make a science fiction movie, but maybe she could adapt something newer?

Labels: movies and television, SF

Labels: movies and television

Labels: movies and television

Stam likes hideous complications. He works for Autodesk, the software company that produces Maya, the world's leading 3-D modeling software. Maya has shaped nearly every CG visual effect you've seen since 1998 — from the first Matrix to the newest Spider-Man.

With his current project, a new module for Maya called Nucleus, Stam is getting closer than ever to his goal. Stam's formulas allow two or three elements to interact as they would in the real word — smoke with wind, or fabric with solid objects. What hasn't been accomplished yet is a system that can encompass and express dynamically all of the earthly elements and physical laws at once. Stam wants software that can play God with pixels. Right now, he's only in the early stages, but Nucleus is taking the special effects world a step closer to Stam's dream of a unified physics-driven system that can produce eye-popping visual effects all by itself.

Labels: movies and television, software

Labels: movies and television

If The Duellists was the film that first garnered Scott critical notice, and it was Alien that brought him to the attention of a much wider audience... Blade Runner is the film that solidified his acclaim among hard-core cinephiles and earned him a loyal legion of fans. Scott's near manic attention to detail and his use of rich, stylish and atmospheric staging and camera setups were on full, unrestrained display here - a fact that caused significant problems with his producers and the studio at the time. Surprisingly, when the film was released into theaters, it was a critical and commercial bomb. Many people just didn't know what to make of it. Over the years, however, opinions have shifted dramatically. Blade Runner is, today, considered one of the best films (if not THE best) in Scott's decidedly impressive body of work. It showcases Ridley at his most... well, Ridley. Even at the time of its original release back in 1982, Blade Runner quickly and definitively set its director apart from other filmmakers as a singular, visionary talent.

Labels: movies and television, SF