For generations both societies lived apart from humanity, united in their common experience as outcasts. But as so often happens when downcast but fanatical groups find themselves in the ascendancy, today their factionalism is
exposed and the rivalry has erupted into
open conflict.
[more inside]
posted by GhostintheMachine
on Feb 28, 2013 -
25 comments
Television Without Pity re-capper
Jacob Clifton has written a short steampunk story for Tor.com. “There’s a level on which the story is an indictment of using steampunk as a fashion or trend. It came about because I wanted to see what would happen if you substituted Jane Austen for Jules Verne in the steampunk equation...”
The Commonplace Book
posted by The Whelk
on Oct 2, 2012 -
19 comments
"What is a cult film? A cult film is one that has a passionate following, but does not appeal to everyone. James Bond movies are not cult films, but chainsaw movies are. Just because a film has become a cult movie does not automatically guarantee quality. Some are very bad; others are very, very good. Some make an awful lot of money at the box office; others make no money at all. Some are considered quality films; others are exploitation movies. One thing cult movies do have in common is that they are all genre films - for example gangster films or westerns. They also have a tendency to slosh over from one genre into another, so that a science fiction film might also be a detective movie, or vice versa. They share common themes as well, themes that are found in all drama: love, murder and greed." - of the British TV film slots accompanied by an introduction perhaps the
most celebrated is
Moviedrome, running between 1988 and 2000 and presented first by Repo Man director
Alex Cox and then film critic
Mark Cousins.
[more inside]
posted by Artw
on Aug 3, 2012 -
88 comments
To paraphrase a character in the film, The Black Hole walks "a tightrope;" if not between "genius" and "insanity," then certainly between "genius" and "banality". If you're looking at this movie as a Manichean exercise between darkness and light, then you can -- for at least a few hours -- entertain the "genius" part of that equation.
posted by Trurl
on Sep 25, 2011 -
106 comments
The Edgewise Guide To Filmmaking. Screenwriter Lisa Morton kept a diary while making the very, very strange 1989 movie
Meet The Hollowheads (
trailer). The low-budget sci-fi/horror/social comment/sitcom takes place in a dystopian underground suburb whose entire infrastructure, operated by monopolist corporation United Umblicial, consists of flexible tubes which carry waste, energy, and slimy and sometimes still living comestibles. The movie, the one and only directorial effort of
horror FX and make-up man Tom Burman, inspires
confusion and
dismay in most viewers.
Hollowheads stars
John Glover and features a 14-year-old Juliette Lewis, her big brother Lightfield,
a musical instrument made out of a live chicken, an eyeball attached to a large intestine that lives in a glass tank, and an uncredited Bobcat Goldthwait as a lascivious cop, whose few lines include "When will children learn to just say no to butt polish?"
posted by escabeche
on May 1, 2011 -
52 comments
Finnish YouTube user
Ishexan has uploaded seven English subtitled movies in parts:
Broken Blossoms (
1919),
Aelita (
1924),
The Gipsy Charmer (
1929),
The Tragedy of Elina (
1938),
The Activists (
1939),
The Wooden Pauper's Bride (
1944), and
Sampo (
1959), which is based on the epic poem
The Kalevala. The films are mostly Finnish, though
Aelita is a silent Russian sci-fi film, and
Sampo was a joint Finnish and Soviet production. More film clips inside (mostly Finnish documentaries and "dorky musical numbers").
[more inside]
posted by filthy light thief
on Apr 30, 2011 -
12 comments
'Star Wars' Producer Gary Kurtz Reflects When George Lucas and I began planning the first film, we had no idea what it would become; the kind of devotion it would attract... So what was it that made Star Wars so different, so special? I can give you one small example of the kind of care we took when putting the film together...
posted by modernnomad
on Apr 19, 2011 -
132 comments
Behind the opening scenes of Blade Runner. “Doug and his Entertainment Effects Group team created thousands of acid-etched brass miniatures lit from below with hundreds of bundles of fiber-optic lights, shot in forced-perspective through layers of smoke to create layers of light refraction, creating depth.” The first of a three-part series on the making of
Blade Runner’s unforgettable opening sequence.
posted by spitefulcrow
on Sep 12, 2010 -
79 comments
He invented or popularized a startling array of the fundamental elements of film: the dissolve, the fade-in and fade-out, slow motion, fast motion, stop motion, double exposures and multiple exposures, miniatures, the in-camera matte, time-lapse photography, color film (albeit hand-painted), artificial film lighting, production sketches and storyboards, and the whole idea of narrative film.
By 1897, in a studio of his own design and construction – the first complete movie studio – his hand forged virtually everything on his screen. Norman McLaren writes, "He was not only his own producer, ideas man, script writer, but he was his own set-builder, scene painter, choreographer, deviser of mechanical contrivances, special effects man, costume designer, model maker, actor, multiple actor, editor and distributor." Also, his own cinematographer, and the inventor of cameras to suit his special conceptions. Not even auteur directors such as Charles Chaplin, Orson Welles, John Cassavetes, and Stanley Kubrick would personally author so many aspects of their films."
Inside: 57 films by Georges Méliès, the
Grandfather of Visual Effects.
[more inside]
posted by Paragon
on Feb 3, 2010 -
31 comments
What's 51 years old and made of silicone with red food dye?
The Blob, best known for it's work in
The Blob, an independent film released in 1958, with Steve McQueen's second movie role (following
Never Love a Stranger, which was released earlier that same year). The movie has been considered
the definitive '50s film about a town that won't listen to the kids until it's too late (as noted in a review for the
Criterion laserdisc release), with a
super-catchy theme song (
extended single version and b-side
Saturday Night in Tiajuana) that was
Burt Bacharach's third US hit song. (See more:
theatrical trailer,
full film on Veoh,
full film as YouTube playlist) Times change, and so do monsters, and things got a bit wacky in the 1970s, with
Beware! The Blob (aka
Son of Blob;
wiki,
trailer,
full film). The sequel played more to the slapstick comedy than the sci-fi/horror spectrum of things. Thirty years after the original,
The Blob was remade in 1988 (
wiki,
trailer,
full film), and is supposedly
being re-created by Rob Zombie, though his statement about reviving The Blob without "the big red blobby thing" has people asking,
then why remake The Blob? (
previous blobby goodness)
[more inside]
posted by filthy light thief
on Nov 3, 2009 -
53 comments
Did you grow up anticipating sports where death would be likely, if not certain? Almost certainly played by convicts, possibly with robot limbs? And which would be even more likely to have chainsaws and flamethrowers not usually found in the sports of today?
Those We Left Behind’s look at Future-sports of the past, in
videogames,
movies and
comics is for you!
posted by Artw
on Sep 11, 2008 -
41 comments
Imagine a world without lightsabers—where, instead, every big Star Wars finale consists of a 10-minute slap fight. Thank the maker we’ll never have to witness such a spectacle, because magical and impossibly high-tech weapons are staples of nearly all of our favorite entertainments! ToyFare Magazine presents
the 50 Greatest Fictional Weapons of All Time.
posted by cmgonzalez
on Nov 21, 2007 -
59 comments
La Planète sauvage - based on the novel
Oms en Série by Stefan Wul, and known to the English speaking world as
Fantastic Planet, is a wonderfully psychadelic animated Sci-Fi film from 1973. An international production between France and Czechoslovakia, the movie has a cult following, mostly from viewers who saw it on USA's
Night Flight in the 1980's. Although it has languished in obscurity for some time, Hollywood has decided it's time for a
live action remake. For those who haven't seen it, or for people who haven't seen it in twenty years, some kind soul
has uploaded the entire film to Youtube. You'll never look at your pets the same way again.
posted by smoothvirus
on Dec 11, 2006 -
36 comments
Every year we seem to get a few horror or sci-fi movies featuring aliens. What happened this year? I may be missing some, but the only 2003 major release movies that had some aliens in them were
Dreamcatcher,
Good Boy! and
Scary Movie 3. One horror movie and two comedies. Just a coincidence or are aliens no longer cool?
posted by quirked
on Dec 30, 2003 -
17 comments
"All democracies turn into dictatorships -- but not by coup. The people give their democracy to a dictator, whether it's Julius Caesar or Napoleon or Adolf Hitler. Ultimately, the general population goes along with the idea... It isn't that the Empire conquered the Republic, it's that the Empire
is the Republic."
George Lucas talks about the politics of his new Star Wars films.
posted by tranquileye
on Apr 23, 2002 -
19 comments
R2-D2 Beneath the Dome is cute, funny, silly and the most despicable ploy to hype a movie ever in the history of cinema. Most importantly, it diminishes the stature of
a great man, by failing to mention Kenny Baker's contribution to the successful phenomenon. It's like talking about Indiana Jones "behind the scenes" without mentioning Harrison Ford.
posted by ZachsMind
on Nov 26, 2001 -
20 comments
Tron returns with a vengeance. With a theatrical sequel, a 20th anniversary DVD and a first-person PC shooter, you have to wonder why Disney is rollling out the red carpet all of a sudden.
posted by ed
on Jul 27, 2001 -
34 comments
Dark Angel is a rip-off of Heinlein's Friday, which I completely agree with. Cameron has been successfully sued by Harlon Ellison before for blatantly ripping off his ideas. Then again the sci-fi word is a static world of either super-humans/machines/aliens/time-trave/alternate dimensions.
posted by skallas
on Oct 19, 2000 -
13 comments
Darn Canadians are going to
get Reboot! first. Looks like we'll both be waiting for this one, premiumpolar. Darn Canadians and their darn YTV anyway! Grrr...
posted by mrmorgan
on Apr 10, 2000 -
0 comments
