Turning Logan's Run Into The Next Hunger Games Is a Really Silly Idea. Why Justice League Unlimited Was, and Still Is, the Best Superhero TV Show. Tommy2255 comments on [S4E8] When will we learn? That New Peter Pan Movie Is Kind of a Disaster. Bruce Wayne on Drugs: One of the Best Batman Stories Ever. Batman Day Is Happening on the Wrong Date. What Transhuman Space Operas Teach Us About the Future. NASA and Matt Damon Told Us Why The Martian Is "a Love Letter to Science" Two Books You Must Read If You Care About the Future of Humanity in Space. Homme de Plume: What I Learned Sending My Novel Out Under a Male Name. The io9 Guide To Gundam. Batman: Arkham Knight Dropped the Ball On One Major Character: Batman. My Dinner with Andre Movie Review (1981) Someone asked me the other day if I could name a movie that was entirely devoid of clichés. I thought for a moment, and then answered, “My Dinner With Andre.” Now I have seen the movie again; a restored print is going into release around the country, and I am impressed once more by how wonderfully odd this movie is, how there is nothing else like it.
It should be unwatchable, and yet those who love it return time and again, enchanted. The title serves as a synopsis. We meet the playwright Wallace Shawn, on his way to have dinner with “a man I'd been avoiding, literally, for a matter of years.” Wally and Andre meet, sit down, talk for almost two hours. We listen with Wally as Andre tells of trips to Tibet, the Sahara and a mystical farm in England. Like many great movies, “My Dinner With Andre” is almost impossible to nail down.
Comic? Wally's response to this is exasperation. Andre doesn't really question the scientific method. The story of their film is one of serendipity. Joss Whedon Just Explained The Meaning Of Life To Us. Advantageous Is An Insanely Good Movie That Everyone Should Watch. RICK AND MORTY IS THE BEST SHOW ON TELEVISION. No, Tomorrowland Isn't Really An Optimistic Movie. Film Crit Hulk Smash: EX MACHINA And The Art Of Character Identification | Birth.Movies.Death. TO BE FAIR, THE MOMENT IS A DIRECTLY CHALLENGING POINT OF CONTENTION WHEREIN THE WHOLE ARGUMENT OF THE MOVIE COMES TO A CRUX.
DESPITE EVEN THE MOST BASE OF THE AUDIENCE LIKELY BEING ON BOARD WITH AVA AND KYOKO'S VENGEANCE AGAINST NATHAN, THEY STILL SEE HER ABANDONMENT AND LOCKING-IN OF CALEB AS EVIDENCE OF HER INHUMANITY AND CRUELTY. MAYBE A RETALIATORY DISPLAY OF THE SAME KIND OF TREATMENT THAT WAS SHOWN TO HER. TO SOME, IT EVEN READS AS AN ACT THAT WOMEN ARE INHERENTLY DECEPTIVE AND SELF-SERVING (AS ONE POINTED TWEET TO THE A24 PRODUCTION COMPANY WAS PUT "Ex Machina proves that you can't trust these hoes"). AND LIKEWISE, THERE ARE SOME ACCUSING THE FILMMAKER OF ESPOUSING THOSE VERY SAME BELIEFS.
EVEN BETTY TALKED ABOUT THE PHENOMENON: "As a woman you don't realize how often you've been conditioned by movies to see yourself as the boy, as Caleb, and it's amazing how much I didn't realize I was Ava until the end. " The Exact Moment When I Realized Final Fantasy VII Was A Masterpiece. New ‘Alien’ Director Neill Blomkamp Says He ‘f*ckd Up’ ‘Elysium’ Getty Image A couple of weeks ago, we reported that Neill Blomkamp — who is currently promoting Chappie (we’ll have more from Blomkamp next week on Chappie) — was very close to directing an Alien sequel, and Fox was just waiting on Blomkamp to make that decision.
Since then, Blomkamp has made that decision, stating that his new Alien movie will be a direct sequel to James Cameron’s Aliens, disregarding the third and fourth films in the franchise. After we discussed his new Alien film, the subject drifted towards Blomkamp’s last film, 2013’s Elysium, starring Matt Damon. Technically, Elysium grossed more money than Blomkamp’s first film, District 9 (though, on a higher budget), and still sports a “fresh” rating on Rotten Tomatoes, but, perception-wise, it’s considered a misfire.
It’s fascinating to listen to a director talk honestly about their past work, especially when that past work is flawed. You mentioned your frustration with negotiating Hollywood. No. A little bit. No. Isaac Asimov's Foundation: The little idea that became science fiction's biggest series. Been looking forward to this post for a long time. Where you been, Wimmer? Unfortunately I have to say that not only did you disappoint me with this post but by promising to give this treatment to a Foundation book every day for a whole week I know in advance that you have ruined my week because there is no frakking way you can out do this one!
Seriously, this is one of the best posts I have ever read on this site and I've read darn near all of them. I know expect more out of this series than I did from Lucas around the turn of the millennium and we all know how that turned out. I could log about 5,000 words here but I'm going to limit myself to just a few. Otherwise, I just want to say what these books mean to me. So that's what "Foundation" means to me. i remember it more for the effect it had on me than the actual content but isn't that true of any great art? Great post Josh and Alasdair. Flagged Y'know: Readin' books, writin' some stuff, impregnating my wife. Thank you, my friend. 10 Genres that Superheroes Have Swallowed Up. William Gibson: The Future Will View Us "As a Joke" Photoillustration: Mario Wagner; Photograph: Michael O'Shea For evidence that the sci-fi future is encroaching on the present, look no further than William Gibson's latest book, The Peripheral, which opens a mere decade or so from now and includes a cameo for cronuts, those croissant-doughnut hybrids invented last year by a New York City chef.
When Gibson's debut, Neuromancer, exploded onto the sci-fi scene way back in 1984, his vision of "cyberspace" felt dizzyingly distant. (Gibson, now 66, had coined the term in a short story a couple of years earlier.) Now Neuromancer just seems prescient: a corporate dystopia whose denizens, increasingly engrossed with their technological distractions, live on opposite sides of a cavernous divide between the tech haves and have-nots, their lives circumscribed by conglomerates with insatiable appetites for data. Here's a condensed version of the interview: Mother Jones: What made you decide to set The Peripheral in an era so close to our own? The Tragic Demise of Science Fiction's Greatest Idea.
Absolutely No Machete Juggling » The Star Wars Saga: Introducing Machete Order. Brace yourselves, what follows is an amazingly long blog post about the best order in which to watch Star Wars. First, let me say this: for people that couldn't care less about the prequel trilogy, I suggest Harmy's Despecialized Editions. They are 720p videos that are the result of "Harmy" from The Original Trilogy forums painstakingly reconstructing the theatrical releases of all three films utilizing a wide variety of video sources as well as custom mattes. Downloading, burning, labeling, and printing cases for these films is one of the neckbeardiest things I've done (aside from writing this blog post), and I'm extremely glad I did it. If the "proper order" for Star Wars for you is the original trilogy and nothing else, stop reading now and find the Despecialized Editions. So, with that out of the way, what can you do if you do wish to involve the prequel trilogy?
There are two obvious options for watching the Star Wars saga. What Gets Removed? Shsaplit - Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Frankenstein. Day after day, day after day, We stuck, nor breath nor motion; As idle as a painted ship Upon a painted ocean. Water, water, everywhere, And all the boards did shrink; Water, water, everywhere, Nor any drop to drink. - From "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" (Part II) By S. T. Coleridge About the Author Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) was an English lyrical poet, critic, and philosopher, whose work, a book entitled Lyrical Ballads, contributed to the English Romantic movement.
Samuel was born in the small, rural Devonshire town of Ottery St Mary in south-west England. Background "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner'" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, was published in 1798 in the first edition of the Lyrical Ballads.Coleridge and his colleague William Wordsworth worked together on this poem. Plot Summary "The Rime of The Ancient Mariner" begins with a mariner meeting a man who is en route to a wedding ceremony. Themes Shelley and Coleridge both create very similar settings. STORY VS. CHARACTER - THE TWO MOVIES WITHIN DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES. Kubla Khan and Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency. As you know, I’m a big fan of the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, especially his epic poems Kubla Khan and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. I was introduced to these poems through, and both play a critical role in, Douglas Adams’ under-appreciated masterpiece, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency That book is the type of book you can read through once and get a lot of enjoyment out of, but the mystery’s plot is a mystery of its own, and it takes many readings and lots of thinking to really understand in all its depth.
This is a much subtler and more profound book than Adams’ more well-known Hitchhiker’s Guide series. And part of that is understanding what’s going on with the poem. When Coleridge published Kublai Khan in the real world, he claimed that it was an unfinished fragment, inspired by an opium trance. As the tale goes, he woke from the trance and was ecstatic to realize he could still remember the full poem. So where does the Man from Porlock come in to all this? GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY AND THE ART OF CONSTRUCTING JOKES. ADMITTEDLY, THE FILM ALSO USES THE SAME GENERAL TACTIC OF HUMOR WITH REGARDS TO THE CHARACTER OF GAMORA, JUST IN A SLIGHT VARIATION. GAMORA IS A COLD HARD ASSASSIN, COMMANDED BY THE CAPITAL E-EVIL TITANS OF POWER, WHO IS NOW THROWN INTO A SITUATION WHERE SHE HAS TO PUT UP WITH SOME NINCOMPOOPS, WHICH MAKES FOR SOME GOOD EYE-ROLLING FOOL-SUFFERING.
BUT! THE KEY DIFFERENCE IS SHE IS FAR MORE SELF-AWARE THAN DRAX, BUT THAT STILL DOESN'T STOP US FROM GETTING A NUMBER OF HER JOKES BEING BUILT ON HER CULTURAL MISUNDERSTANDINGS OF PETER'S REFERENCES ("Who put the sticks up their butts? " AND OF COURSE "Like Kevin Bacon! "). BUT IT'S ALL BUILT OF GETTING THIS CHARACTER OUT OF HER SHELL OF COMFORT. 5 Things the Star Wars Prequels Did Right. Ewan McGregor was PERFECT as a young Obi-Wan. You can easily see him becoming that wizened old man in the original trilogy. Also the scene where Palpatine was telling Anakin about Darth Plageus.
Ewan McGregor should be in everything. It is written. I loved that scene where Palpatine tells the story of Dark Plageus. I love it too. The scene was great. I always wondered why they didn't take the younglings and train them to be servants of the empire. The three prequel actors who were pretty nigh well perfect were Ian McDiarmid, Ewan McGregor, and Liam Neeson. I believe in the EU they did corrupt at leat some f them to the dark side. Well, Palpatine/Sidious was only Plagueis's apprentice in the EU. It never actually says Plagueis is Sidious' master in Revenge, but I believe Lucas has confirmed it off-screen and the Star Wars Databank (including the non-EU parts) still claims he was. Looking back at the prequels, the role of "apprentice" seems quite nebulous, with no guarantee of succession.
The Islamic Roots Of Science Fiction. All The Times Science Fiction Became Science Fact In One Chart. Iran Trip Diary: Part 1, Tehran. Early in 2008, I began work on a new novel, entitled Zendegi. The plot involved brain mapping, virtual reality, and the coming of democracy to Iran. I’d already learnt a bit about the country through conversations with some of the Iranian refugees whom my own loathsome government had seen fit to inter in remote detention centres for many years, and when it came to the novel I was hoping that with enough reading and research I’d be able to make the details ring true.
Over the next few months, though, it occurred to me that there was nothing stopping me from travelling to Iran myself. One of the books I was relying on for maps was the Lonely Planet guide, and every time I turned to it to find the location of a hospital or government building, it also offered me a hotel just around the corner from the places I was writing about. As I write these words, in 2009, Iran is still in turmoil after the June presidential elections, but in June 2008 everything was calm.
Rocketsocks comments on Why did Star Wars become such a cultural phenomenon in 1977? In which events take a generally darker turn: Foundation and Empire by Isaac Asimov. From 'in memory yet green', the first volume of asimov's autobiography, speaking to his mindset at time of writing 'the general/dead hand': "To tell the truth though, I was tiring of the Foundation series. I had written three Foundation stories in a row and for nine months those three stories had been constantly on my mind. I wanted a rest and I also wanted a chance to make use of the other writing I was doing - the Navy style - which, unless I exorcised it somehow, might well corrode my vitals.
"When I handed in 'Dead Hand,' I suggested to Campbell that I planned to do a short story I planned to call 'Blind Alley,' in which I made use of my Navy Yard experience... " "On the January 8 visit, we discussed the next Foundation story, and Campbell said he wanted to upset the Seldon Plan, which was the connecting backbone of the series. "I made up my mind, rather sulkily, to follow orders, but to get my own back by making the new Foundation story the longest and biggest and widest yet. Foundation's Edge by Isaac Asimov: The end is the beginning is the end.
Just awesome work, guys. Hard to add anything to it. I remember gobbling up this book and being a little...dissappointed. maybe it was because I was getting older and I was heavily into late Heinlein and early Niven/Pournelle or, as you put it, the conservatism of the early 1980's. Maybe I had graduated from books heavy on conversation and infodumps. Maybe my expectations were too high - "New foundation book!!!!!! " Foundation's Edge by Isaac Asimov The Pride of Chanur by C. 2010: Odyssey Two by Arthur C. Friday by Robert Heinlein Courtship Rite by Donald Kingsbury Sword of the Lictor by Gene Wolfe I think "Linkage Qudrilogy" is a great phrase. Well, I'm getting ahead of myself but this is where everything starts to blur together because that's what Asimov is trying to do.
2001: The aliens that almost were. 1. Early conceptions In a film like 2001, a project that started with the explicit purpose of investigating the possibility of extraterrestrial life, it comes as no surprise that Kubrick decided very soon in the production to tackle the problem of how to actually depict the extraterrestrials themselves. Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke had met for the first time in April 1964: by the last months of that year the director had already set up a team working on hundreds of drawings about possible E.T. shapes - his wife Christiane was on board as well and worked on preparatory drawings - and in late 1965, the young and recently hired collaborator Anthony Frewin joined the team, researching on modern sculptures, paintings of German artist Max Ernst and modern art in general to try different ideas. Author unknown, alien landscape, pre-production drawing for 2001 (source). We can see some insect-like beings similar to those later described by Arthur Clarke in a script draft. 3. 4. 5. ...
R.U.R. A book is a sneeze. HULK’S FAVORITE MOVIES: DO THE RIGHT THING (1989) WHAT THE F&#% IS IT ABOUT BATMAN? FILM CRIT HULK! HULK BLOG! | HULK HAVE DEEP AND ABIDING LOVE OF CINEMA. HULK RECOGNIZE INHERENT VALUES OF POPULAR, NARRATIVE, AND EXPERIMENTAL STYLES. WWW.TWITTER.COM/FILMCRITHULK. NEVER HATE A MOVIE. HULK VS. PLOT HOLES AND MOVIE LOGIC. HULK ESSAY YOUR ASS: TANGIBLE DETAILS AND THE NATURE OF CRITICISM | FILM CRIT HULK! HULK BLOG! HULK VS. SPOILERS AND THE 4 LEVELS OF HOW WE CONSUME ART.
THE IMPORTANCE OF DRAMATIZING CHARACTER. THE AGE OF THE CONVOLUTED BLOCKBUSTER. HULK VS. TOM HOOPER AND ART OF CINEMATIC AFFECTATION. S3E4 – The Last Airbender. COWBOYS AND ALIENS AND TERRIBLE SCREENPLAYS | FILM CRIT HULK! HULK BLOG! HULK VS. THE JOHN CARTER SCRIPT. WHY YOU SHOULD WATCH DR. WHO | FILM CRIT HULK! HULK BLOG! HULK’S XMAS PRESENT - HULK VS THE HULK MOVIES. Film Crit Hulk Reviews Mark Ruffalo's Performance as Hulk. Hulk And The Cinema Of Edgar Wright - A History. POST-MODERNISM… NOT A THING | FILM CRIT HULK! HULK BLOG! You keep saying 'hard science fiction.' I do not think it means what you think it means.
It's time to start reading hard science fiction again. What will The Simpsons look like after the apocalypse? Escapism Is The Highest Form Of Art. Why Remakes Are One of Our Greatest Achievements as a Civilization. Good Character Development Includes The All-Important "F*@% Yeah" Moment. Namtara comments on Who is the most misunderstood character in all of fiction? I Like The Big Bang Theory, Because Communism. What the hell is a "technocrat," and are you one of them? Why does every story have to be an Earth-shattering epic? ST(O) : If all stories were written like science fiction stories. Awesome Books to Replace Your Favorite Cancelled TV Shows. 10 Alan Moore Comics You Must Read! (Besides Watchmen) OMNI: The Forgotten History of The Best Science Magazine That Ever Was. The books that perfectly capture their authors' philosophies.