RSS
Arrival is a girl sci-fi movie in the tradition of Jody Foster’s Contact. Amy Adams plays a linguist (or some other kind of language-related academic) with a sad back story much like Sandra Bullock’s in Gravity. She is hired by the US Army to try to communicate with the aliens inside the giant flying saucer hovering a few feet above Montana. The plot is aimed at a female audience: the titanic history-changing events are really just a cover for a story about the loss of loved ones.
It’s a fairly distinctive movie although not a spectacular one (its budget is a moderate $47 million, which doesn’t pay for a lot of special effects). In style, the movie is reminiscent of Vladimir Nabokov’s sci-fi short story “Lance” in which a story of the first expedition to Mars is told in the most oblique manner imaginable, with the main characters being the elderly, worried parents of one of the astronauts. (The son being an astronaut was a metaphor for the Nabokovs’ son being a mountaineer and all the worry it caused his parents.)
Arrival is directed by French Canadian Denis Villeneuve as pretty much the exact opposite of his Mexican border narco movie Sicario. Where Sicario was violent, dusty, and sun-beaten, Arrival takes place mostly in a northern valley of clouds, rain, green grass, and dim light. There is almost no action in Arrival and what does happen is shown obliquely, often with the camera pointing at a person reacting to whatever it is we really want to see. Dialogue is not on the on the nose and can be a little hard to hear. Amy Adams’ disoriented scientist is plagued by insomnia and in much of the movie is either on the verge of nodding off or is just waking up. The style of the movie is similarly blurry.
Overall, I’d say: good, not great. But the movie is different enough that I’ll leave open the possibility that it may eventually become the consensus that it’s very good.
By the way, is this the golden age of science fiction movies? It seems like there are several ambitious and accomplished sci-fi movies per year in this decade, perhaps double the rate when I was a kid.
“Dialogue … can be a little hard to hear.” Bastards: then I certainly shan’t watch it. Not that I ever attend the Kinema anyway.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/arrival/#comment-1648628
Genre fiction always gets a boom during long stretches of (relative) peace. Look at the turn of the 20th Century and shortly thereafter with Doyle, Bram Stoker. HG Wells, Jules Verne, Edgar Rice Burroughs etc. Societies that do not face war, torture, rape, and pillage for extended periods look outside reality in order to find subject matter. Fast forward to WWI and sci-fi, fantasy, etc was relegated to pulp for 40 years. The cycle starts again a decade after WWII: peace and prosperity breeds genre sci-fi. fantasy, monster movies etc. Vietnam hits and genre fiction goes underground again. Then it reemerges in the late 70s and early 80s.
In other words, writing about aliens, vampires, and Wookies seems silly when you’ve seen your friends and brothers getting their legs blown off.
I went to see this Saturday night and was surprised to see tickets were sold out. May try again Sunday, now that we no longer watch The Walking Dead.
This may be a golden age for science fiction novels. I’ve read two excellent recent ones this year (Seveneves by Neal Stephenson and Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson) and am reading another now that’s great as well (The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu). These novels are so good that before reading this post I expected Arrival to be a letdown in comparison despite its great reviews.
Sci-fi/fantasy is definitely having a boom time; it might that the baby boomers directors who grew up reading Heinlein etc now want to realise their visions on screen.
Finally a good sci-fi film focuses more on the science (like the Martian) than the fiction (like Interstellar). The silver screen can't do justice to world-building (which is so fundamental to sci-fi, which is why sci-fi novels have to be at least 150k words) as much as the small screen can.
A very promising Fantasy writer is N.K Jemisin: just finished her book Fifth Season..
"At some unspecified date in the near future, an unknown force causes the Moon to shatter into seven pieces. As the shattered remnants of the Moon begin to collide with one another, astronomer and science popularizer "Doc" Dubois Harris calculates that the number of collisions will increase exponentially."
As if we don't have enough problems on earth, we gotta worry about the moon cracking up into 7 pieces?
LOL
Just out of curiosity, why? I'm considering giving it up too, at this point I'm finding it redundant.
CGI was the deal breaker in realizing a lot of these movies. Certainly comic book movies were mostly cheesy in the 1980s and earlier. And now we have CGI, it’s the enabler.
2001, Alien, Aliens, Planet of the Apes, Predator, Stalker, Solyaris (1972), Blade Runner, Robocop, Ghost in the Shell, Akira, 12 Monkeys, Inception and Intersteller are some of my favorites. Event Horizon is quite good. The Matrix was made back in 1999, so it seems like good enough CGI has been around a while.
The earlier ones I think relied on either very skillful directors or animation to make it work. The later ones have had CGI.
I think the limitation of great ideas/script/director is still the most important limitation. For example a movie like Sunshine is visually stunning, but rather empty. Whereas a movie like Pi was interesting and had basically no budget. A sci-fi leaning director like the Nolans for example can do anything they want to do with CGI now. So such output is less constrained now.
Maybe it’s also possible that due to imdb, really good movies can succeed by being really good and that features as their own advertising. So a great and unique movie might more easily achieve a green light.
Or maybe its Dan Brown book about mutating encryption.
Or is it more like sphere / event horizon.
I thought at first that this was a remake of that Charlie Sheen movie with the ostrich-legged aliens.
Three Body problem is sort of the literary equivalent to the Arrival; very oblique.
Sci-fi/fantasy is definitely having a boom time; it might that the baby boomers directors who grew up reading Heinlein etc now want to realise their visions on screen.
Finally a good sci-fi film focuses more on the science (like the Martian) than the fiction (like Interstellar). The silver screen can’t do justice to world-building (which is so fundamental to sci-fi, which is why sci-fi novels have to be at least 150k words) as much as the small screen can.
A very promising Fantasy writer is N.K Jemisin: just finished her book Fifth Season..
http://nkjemisin.com/2014/05/wiscon-38-guest-of-honor-speech/
I'll probably watch Arrival, because I like Sci-fi movies, but I don't have high expectations.....
Why do the retarded aliens land their flying saucer end-up?
>>hired by the US Army to try to communicate with the aliens inside the giant flying saucer hovering a few feet above Montana.
I wish that they would get the friggin science right. Presumably, the aliens come from our universe, then their spaceship must obey the laws of physics of our universe. We all know that there is no way in this universe that one can get a several thousand ton craft to “hover” a few feet over the earth’s gravitational pull. The science would have been plausible if the damned craft had just crash landed into the earth. I still may go see the movie, though.
"Aliens" of any kind at all are unscientific.
Unlikely. Women (on the whole) aren’t drawn to sci-fi.
More likely to men displaced from their masculinity (either by ideology or circumstance) who can only identify with a female lead.
https://beautycon.com/Are they going to make any money off this movie? Who knows?
It's soc-sci-fi.
The Hunger Games are sci-fi aren't they? I never saw one of these movies.
It is a STEAM over STEM movie. S, T, E, & M have a role to play but the A saved the world. The lead is also a single mom of sorts, right? Bonus.
And all the guys of the world were standing around with their dicks in hand with no progress toward communication. It took a woman to literally say, “Hello.” Guys, why didn’t we think of that?
They know sci fi will automatically appeal to males. Therefore having a female lead can make it a plausible date movie choice when the content is unlikely to appeal to the boom boom crowd a la Gravity, Interstellar and Contact
It’s funny how Nabokov’s ideas have been used without any credit. Previously, there was the 1999 film named The Astronaut’s Wife which is based on a letter from Nabokov to Hitchcock.
http://theamericanreader.com/28-november-1964-vladimir-nabokov-to-alfred-hitchcock/
Is this a sequel to the 1996 Charlie Sheen film?
More likely to men displaced from their masculinity (either by ideology or circumstance) who can only identify with a female lead.
It’s a trend that’s being going on for a generation by now : male heroes are barely tolerated in liberal Hollywood. They cast as many female rocket scientists and butt-kicking babes as they can get away with . If I were a little boy today I’d be very frustrated. Maybe that’s the goal, morally castrate masculinity from an early age. So far, they’ve done a pretty good job with millenials, poor kids.
I’ve never understood what you have against Apocalypto. Best Gibson movie by far just dying to be re-evaluated once all the jew diligence is done.
Much needed interrogation (as the po-mos say) of anti-colonial cant.
I absoapocaliptociously agree on this one:
"The Passion of Headcrashing Tupamaros" is vintage Mel that requires proper cellaring.
Honest question, not trolling:
“This may be a golden age for science fiction novels.”
Is this really true? The Alt-Right (ex: Vox Day) says the exact opposite: that science fiction has been taken over by progressive political writers, and what is coming out, and what is being awarded, is pc garbage (all gay rights, minority rights, and women empowerment/romance disguised as science fiction).
I’m not keeping up with scifi, so I don’t know. I’ve read a few books I like in the last ten years (Vernor Vinge, and Neal Stephenson), and have seen a few that seem like garbage.
joeyjoejoe
There's also speculation about political and sociological effects, not much of which maps to current events.
Seveneves contains, like Derb said, engineering fiction too. But most of it is set in the very near future. Even so, I wouldn't describe it as PC. There's a bit of HBD in it, for example.
I haven't finished The Three Body Problem yet, but so far it seems to be pretty right-leaning. Pax Dickinson liked it.
The affirmative action character’s garbled lines cannot be understood – but that apparently is quite okay …
More likely to men displaced from their masculinity (either by ideology or circumstance) who can only identify with a female lead.
Maybe not – but they are into affirmative action, soft focus , children, death and dying …
LANCE is available via the New Yorker archive .
Speaking of sci fi Star Wars is inspiring the new diverse America to resist Trump and his evil empire.
You guys are evil Vader sequel nazis and we are the rebel alliance.
Brexit and trumps election are the empire strikes back but we will win in the ends
Re your Star Wars analogy: obviously Hillary was the Death Star and just got blown up in the last few minutes against all odds.
But its just your first post back. You'll find your groove again.
And, you Tiny D, will be allowed to have your wet dream coming to its final fulfillment:
Trump will let you to be devoured by the Universe biggest vagina dentata-The mighty Sarlacc of the Great Pit of Carkoon .
Also, as long as Democratic National Convention mirrors Mos Eisley Cantina annual gathering of documented and undocumented fringy denizens, our glorious Lord Trump and his 60.000.000 loyal storm troopers can calmly focus on the constructive solutions for our galaxy's problem:
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Walker_barrier
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/High-gravity_trap
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Pit_trap
Bonus:
http://www.vdare.com/articles/rnc-vs-dnc-ocean-of-whiteness-vs-star-wars-cantina
First off there already was a sci-fi movie called “The Arrival” 1996 with Charlie Sheen which was a decent B movie. So the “Arrival” name here is a rip off. It tried to capitalize on the success of “Contact” which for me was a v good movie with lots of clever-witty one liners from the SR Hadden character John Hurt. Not knowing Jodie Foster was gay was a big help for credibility. Never read the book. Many good actors in Contact.
Sandra Bullock’s in Gravity…
Skipped that fem-centric outta space jive. “The Martian” was hokey but passable.
Based on the trailers, “Passengers” looks good for Christmas. Unless the reviews reveal it as a waste of time I will see it.
Michelle Rodriguez is legit in outer space, not that dopey Sandra Bullock.
I just watched the trailer you posted. It’s visually strong enough to entice me into seeing, although I usually think movies about–or the parts of movies about–making contact are pretty dumb. Example: Mission to Mars. So bad that Don Cheadle’s laughably poor performance didn’t even detract that much from the film.
More likely to men displaced from their masculinity (either by ideology or circumstance) who can only identify with a female lead.
My theory is that somebody went to a comic book or anime convention, saw all the teen girls there, and figured ‘nerd culture’s gone coed, let’s be the first to capitalize on it’.
The nerd liberation thing has some legs to it–’BeautyCon’? the makeup industry’s copying comic book nerds?
https://beautycon.com/
Are they going to make any money off this movie? Who knows?
Sometime back, Steve mentioned that boys made girls heroes as a way to show their affection.
If some people went to cons and thought that what those girls wanted was mumbly, sleep-deprived Amy Adams in a baggy space suit ... I think they accidentally entered the NOW convention by mistake.
To the extent they are, they're as displaced from their femininity as the boys are from their masculinity.
As always, there are exceptions, but the rule holds.
Where are the parents? Why are they raising their kids to be shallow vapid idiots staring into mirror all day?
As I was watching it I had two thoughts. First, that this would be one of those movies where the audience claps at the end. And second, that I would not clap myself nor really understand why the audience was doing it.
Both happened just as I thought. Perhaps I was picking up the aliens’ language and was seeing the future through a haze. More likely it just came across to me as being a little too big for its britches.
Science fiction uused to acknowledge a higher power, mostly in somewhat subtle Christian references. I can’ t read most of it today or even watch. Of course that goes with most of the tripe served today in film.
Super intelligent black scientists, bold and warrior like 120lb. women and evil plotting or weak white males except for the male lead.
In sci-fi now the usual reason for the visit by aliens in the crimes we are doing against our planet. Soon it will be about our racism and bigotry.
I did like the Matrix.
Sci-fi/fantasy is definitely having a boom time; it might that the baby boomers directors who grew up reading Heinlein etc now want to realise their visions on screen.
Finally a good sci-fi film focuses more on the science (like the Martian) than the fiction (like Interstellar). The silver screen can't do justice to world-building (which is so fundamental to sci-fi, which is why sci-fi novels have to be at least 150k words) as much as the small screen can.
A very promising Fantasy writer is N.K Jemisin: just finished her book Fifth Season..
The boomer and post-boomer directors watched Star Wars. They quote it endlessly, ever since Spielberg and ET. Also, Star Trek, Blade Runner, The Matrix, etc. Reading? Not so much. (If they did read, they would’ve paid more attention to the greats–Ballard, Gene Wolfe, M John Harrison.)
SF novels can be any length. As well, the hallmark medium of SF has long been the short story, which can suggest so much without explaining. “Arrival” is based on a short story.
Jemisin is an SJW to the core. She said that Heinlein was “racist as f–k,” clearly demonstrating her intellectual depth and sophistication.
movies and most tv shows are now targeting females…the current fashion…also, young men are now more into games…especially white males…retreating from an entertainment industry that puts white males at the bottom of the social status ladder
I wonder if the overseas market is driving sci-fi films.
Most of them don’t require a lot of knowledge of American culture or history. Also nerds are somewhat cross culture — similar material is going to appeal to sci-fi fans in Russia and China.
If I want to watch a good movie with a female lead about the loss of loved ones, I’ll watch “Come Back, Little Sheba” with Shirley Booth who won the Oscar for Best Actress.
It’s on YouTube with no ads (but with Greek subtitles). It has 55,000 views and people rave about Shirley Booth’s performance. Not bad for a black and white movie made over half a century ago about a troubled middle-aged couple.
It sounds like SJW Science Fiction with a message like Afternoon Tea with Pronouns.
Wake me up when they do a version of The Mote in God’s Eye or Protector.
My impression is that the local “up-scale” movie theaters were more packed than I’ve ever before seen them; the more plebeian mall-type theaters less so. Maybe the movies are providing a desperately needed escape from the seemingly endless, enervating intensity of the just-ended presidential election.
https://beautycon.com/Are they going to make any money off this movie? Who knows?
I thought teen girls wanted a hot, hunky male lead in their movies.
Sometime back, Steve mentioned that boys made girls heroes as a way to show their affection.
https://beautycon.com/Are they going to make any money off this movie? Who knows?
What that person didn’t understand is that women are just there for the social aspects and the dressing up.
The dressing up (kosplay) is especially important, because it provides an excuse. You’re not just showing your tits to the world, you’re expressing your appreciation for LITERATURE.
Then afterwards you can be catty about other girls’ costumes and complain about inherent sexism and toxic masculinity. What more could you want?
If talky, metaphor-driven movies with actors that seem like they just woke up mumbling poor dialogue is what “good” means, then I think the definition of “good” has changed since I was a young man.
https://beautycon.com/Are they going to make any money off this movie? Who knows?
Most popular costume for girls this past Halloween was Harley Quinn.
If some people went to cons and thought that what those girls wanted was mumbly, sleep-deprived Amy Adams in a baggy space suit … I think they accidentally entered the NOW convention by mistake.
https://beautycon.com/Are they going to make any money off this movie? Who knows?
They may be there (in my experience, the actual number is vastly overstated by boys into comic books and anime who are desperate for girls to be there too, for all kinds of reasons, from the PC to the hormonal), but they’re there like they’re on college campuses – because it’s the thing they’re (in the current_year) supposed to be doing.
To the extent they are, they’re as displaced from their femininity as the boys are from their masculinity.
As always, there are exceptions, but the rule holds.
In other words, barely two thirds the budget of an Adam Sandler production.
Movies not aimed at a female audience are the exception these days. That’s true of television too. Our rulers are so sure the prophesies are true, they are carrying on as if white men no longer exist, just to get ahead of the curve, since, you know, it is inevitable.
Golden age of sci-fi movies? I don’t know. Looking at the 2015 list I see The Martian, which was good. Ex Machina was not great, but it was not terrible either. After that, not so much. It’s all relative, but quantity is not quality. If you are a 12 year old girl, the Hunger Games is great stuff, but it is not sci-fi.
Hey, it worked for Spielberg in Close Encounters. You can do that for hours as long as there’s a payoff at the end.
Or if it is as intriguingly, beautifully, and masterfully filmed as Close Encounters was. As a story, JAWS was Spielberg's best movie. As a film, i.e., something to watch and marvel at, Close Encounters was.
And actually, it did have some action: car chases, helicopter chases, etc.
OT:
Geneticist Ricki Lewis says Trump voters are evolving into a race of maladaptive “Morlocks,” then deletes the blog post.
Until a few minutes ago it was here:
http://blogs.plos.org/dnascience/2016/11/10/donald-trump-and-the-new-morlock-nation/
H/t Rod Dreher
“By the way, is this the golden age of science fiction movies?”
Technology and specially cheaper CGI has made it easier for special effects, so there are more sci-fi films than ever before. That does not mean that all the films are good, in fact, most have been subpar and in many cases dragged down by PC. Prometheus, anyone? Then again, I didn’t like The Martian either, mediocre film, and almost hated Interstellar and its pseudo-philosophical mumbo-jumbo. So maybe I don’t like sci-fi that much now, although I used to love Asimov novels when I was a teen.
When the Whorfians send their radially symmetric Kangs and Kodoses inside the giant flying saucer to hover a few feet above Montana, they’re sending their best.
They are not sending you.
And the very same standard goes for the hovering location;
Chicago, New York, Detroit,Baltimore, St. Lois, Portland, and a dozen more cites were scratched from the list of landing possibilities a thousand stellar years ago.
I would argue this is the WORST time, for Sci-Fi, and fantasy, and its because of women.
Browse through your local bookstore, in the Sci-Fi/Fantasy section. The overwhelming amount of books are by women, with titles like “Fashionista Werewolf” or stories about lesbian were-seals in space. No I am not making that up. Or Dinosaur porn. Not making that one up either.
What’s happened is that women burst into Sci-Fi/Fantasy in a big way, first by publishing houses eager to subsidize loss-making books for “diversity” points and second as a way to make “legitimate” pr0n. This stuff is mostly just slash fiction that found a publisher. See Fifty Shades of Grey.
There is nothing like the Michael Moorcock novels, or the ripping adventure novels of Philip Jose Farmer, or the fantasy of Tim Powers (“Drawing of the Dark”). Its all about feelz. Which is most popular entertainment these days, even Star Wars with female leads feelz-ing.
In general modern Sci-Fi/horror TV shows follows the SVU model, the top alpha dog is some female surrounded by some beta males that are basically old school red shirts(disposable). The only current horror shows that don't follow it is "Supernatural" and "Grimm" . Most of the series on the Sci-fi channel have a dominant female lead and weak kneed white guys. Most make no attempt at even being remotely accurate on science. Replace their space ships with cars and you get the idea.
The Walking Dead and Fear the Walking Dead are just cringe worthy and morose, especially the latter with it's urban pant load white males(which I think is accurate but these sorts are correctly killed off in the first 10 minutes of any apocalypse). Really folks basing a TV series off a comic book?
In terms of SCI-FI literature there's a lot of garbage out there because PC/MC and feminist pressure. John C. Wright one of the current Sci-fi top dogs put out a book criticizing this insane movement and it's characters: "Transhuman and Subhuman"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seveneves
“At some unspecified date in the near future, an unknown force causes the Moon to shatter into seven pieces. As the shattered remnants of the Moon begin to collide with one another, astronomer and science popularizer “Doc” Dubois Harris calculates that the number of collisions will increase exponentially.”
As if we don’t have enough problems on earth, we gotta worry about the moon cracking up into 7 pieces?
LOL
https://beautycon.com/Are they going to make any money off this movie? Who knows?
“The nerd liberation thing has some legs to it–’BeautyCon’? the makeup industry’s copying comic book nerds?”
Where are the parents? Why are they raising their kids to be shallow vapid idiots staring into mirror all day?
Ted Chiang is both fringy and smart enough to pretend to believe that nowadays Fermat could be grasped only by une femme d’un certain âge .
I’m looking forward to learning more about Dr. Elizabeth Louise Mensch-Banks from Planet Theranos.
Sunday Bonus -”Arrival ” Screenplay:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/iz68lrv4hx75y49/STORY%20OF%20YOUR%20LIFE%20by%20Eric%20Heissere-50r.pdf?dl=0
Have been very much looking forward to this film, both as someone who loved “Contact” and since realizing (relatively quickly) that it was based on an excellent short story by the semi-legendary Ted Chiang, who I finally managed to read this year. Chiang, a Californian and a product of the Clarion writer’s workshop, is semi-legendary for being so universally highly praised despite being rather obscure and painfully unprolific (dude, where’s your novel?). If Hollywood comes calling as a result of this film’s success a George R. R. Martin or Truman Capote-style freak-out is not beyond the realm of possibility. The only author I’d be more excited to see get the big screen treatment is Australian Greg Egan.
I would second Steve’s statement about a new Golden Age of sci-fi. For instance, I’ve seen every film that’s tried to take up the mantle of “2001″ since the original, and can say with complete confidence that “Interstellar” is by far the closest of any American effort (the original “Solaris” is “2001″‘s equal). I’m sure it’s an unintentional byproduct of the fact that the only films Hollywood really focuses on anymore are fx-laden action spectaculars: producers occasionally think they can slip a serious one in under the radar.
People these days have forgotten that Science Fiction nearly just slumped into nothingness in the mid seventies. In those days I read the Sci-Fi pulp magazines. They had editorials about the death of the Sci-Fi movie. They wrote about the glory days of the fifties with Forbidden Planet, and they wrote about how ’2001′ had been so profound and mature. But there were no Sci-Fi films being made in Hollywood. It was – they said – an end of an era.
But then ‘Star Wars’ was released and everyone forgot about the dearth of Sci-Fi movies.
Star Wars wasn't really sci-fi. It was a fantasy story set in space. And of course, Lucas managed to kill the whole thing by the second act of the sequel. And not being content to have done that, he stomped on the corpse and then pissed on the grave with the prequels.
“May try again Sunday, now that we no longer watch The Walking Dead.”
Just out of curiosity, why? I’m considering giving it up too, at this point I’m finding it redundant.
Sci-fi/fantasy is definitely having a boom time; it might that the baby boomers directors who grew up reading Heinlein etc now want to realise their visions on screen.
Finally a good sci-fi film focuses more on the science (like the Martian) than the fiction (like Interstellar). The silver screen can't do justice to world-building (which is so fundamental to sci-fi, which is why sci-fi novels have to be at least 150k words) as much as the small screen can.
A very promising Fantasy writer is N.K Jemisin: just finished her book Fifth Season..
Jemisin is a black radical feminist etc, for what it’s worth. Possibly with a certain ressentiment.
http://nkjemisin.com/2014/05/wiscon-38-guest-of-honor-speech/
20 years ago another alien invasion movie called The Arrival, this one starring Charlie Sheen playing an astronomer at JPL, was released. Though not very well known, I found it to be fairly imaginative compared to some of the other science fiction/action movies that were released in the mid to late 90s.
Sci-fi/fantasy is definitely having a boom time; it might that the baby boomers directors who grew up reading Heinlein etc now want to realise their visions on screen.
Finally a good sci-fi film focuses more on the science (like the Martian) than the fiction (like Interstellar). The silver screen can't do justice to world-building (which is so fundamental to sci-fi, which is why sci-fi novels have to be at least 150k words) as much as the small screen can.
A very promising Fantasy writer is N.K Jemisin: just finished her book Fifth Season..
IMO, Jemisin is pretty awful, and reflects the kind of SJW mentality that took H.P.Lovecraft off the H.P.Lovecraft award…..I don’t see anyone out there who is of the caliber of Heinlein, Philip K. Dick, Herbert, Robert E. Howard, etc….Whereas the movies are pretty good despite the extremely dubous science in The Martian and Interstellar….For my money, Gravity was the best, and one of the three best SciFi films of all time.
I’ll probably watch Arrival, because I like Sci-fi movies, but I don’t have high expectations…..
I'm not going to watch the damn movie. Looks like lifetime movies could do it as well.
OT: Ryan, Kevin McCarthy already loudly cucking out on immigration and trade.
http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/13/politics/paul-ryan-donald-trump-obamacare-deportation-force/index.html
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/11/13/house-leader-mccarthy-gop-will-repeal-obamacare-put-up-wall.html
The “virtual fence” was suggested. Trump needs to suggest they become virtual congressmen.
Well said.
Let’s put a virtual fence on the border like obama had a virtual fence around the White House, or Paul Ryan has a virtual fence on his property, or that Zuckerberg has on his HI property. In other words, no friggin virtual fence. That’s what we have now. Doesn’t work. BUILD THE WALL
To the extent they are, they're as displaced from their femininity as the boys are from their masculinity.
As always, there are exceptions, but the rule holds.
OK, full disclosure, I went to one recently (it was close by and I was curious) and saw lots of them. It was really strange–you would never see a girl at a convention in my teenage years. I was never big into comic books (though I read more than my fair share of Asimov and Niven), but I did go to a few conventions back in the day–still have my copy of Deities and Demigods with Cthulhu.
Estranged from their femininity? Yeah, I’d buy that. A lot of the new comics like ‘Steven Universe’ hold up this gender-bending thing as some sort of ideal. Makes sense–if you can’t fit the rubric appropriate to your gender, claim the whole system’s rotten.
The kink thing also seems to be huge–quite a few of the costumes were like someone dipped the Folsom Street Fair in pink and purple.
Instead, they junk the whole thing and get lost either trying to re-invent the wheel from scratch or fit into the current_year rubric that everyone seems to think is the thing but instead leaves them feeling mysteriously empty.
Perfect enemy of the good.
Girl here. Favorite Sci-Fi movies. Invasion of the Body Snatchers, original and remake. The Thing, original and remake. Soylent Green. Andromeda Strain. Moon. Danny Boyle’s, Sunshine, probably my all time favorite, yeah, it’s slow, and brilliant and I completely love it! Red Planet. Alien. Aliens. Prometheus. Terminators 1 and 2. Creature from the Black Lagoon???
I hated, hated, hated, The Martian and Gravity, both were light Hollywood schlock without the redeeming fun dialogue, fun, multi-celebrity, cast, (Armageddon) and gratuitous violence. I still love Matt Damon, lefty though he is, Bourne movies are da bomb. I very much like Sandra Bullock, I think her portrayal of Harper Lee was deserving of an Oscar and I also like George Clooney, who is an adequate actor who is in interesting films, (Three Kings, The Men Who Stare at Goats) but those 2 movies I just did not enjoy. Maybe I am just joyless! A caller to the PBS radio show, Car Talk once said that if Click and Clack couldn’t bring joy to someone, maybe there was no joy in them.
Another good sci-fi movie I recommend is The Forbin Project, which I imagine was an influence on Cameron's Terminator movies. Also, I rather like The Arrival, a somewhat strange, off-beat alien-invasion movie.
It’s obvious why McCarthy is whining. Look at his district – Bakersfield, CA. Big time farming region, they use lots of illegals. And oh drive down the wrong parts of Bakersfield and it’s like Mexico city, very scary. I’m sure McCarthy doesn’t live near or venture to these neighborhoods like most “good whites”, he’s just happy to shove these people down the throats of other whites.
Arrival isn’t really bad, but it’s not good. It’s a send-it-straight-to-the-airlines type of movie.
The SF parts of it, such as there are, are not so bad, though there’s not really that much.
Where it’s really off, if you have any real experience with it, is its portrayal of what might be called the military-research complex. How military, and civilian military scientists (the civil service Pentagon employee types) deal with things.
Hollywood just can’t seem to get this anywhere near right. So the movie comes off like an exaggerated caricature. As if parts of a script written for a rejected Marvel Hulk film were wrapped with elements of a hard SF (“potentially realistic”) movie. It probably doesn’t spoil anything to say the Philp K. Dick ending doesn’t help. Once the drugs kick in enough when writing the script, it’s not hard SF, it’s fantasy.
Where is the
Defense Language Institute? We don’t get any evidence of the depth provided by organizations such as the Center for Advanced Study of Language.
The “complete militarization” misses the mark. For better or worse, the government has massive non-military (civil service) resources that you’d expect to be relevant. For instance, the NASA Astrobiology Institute [1] [2]:
And such as Nexus for Exoplanet System Science:
You would expect non-governmental organizations, such as the SETI Institute, who have been explicitly studying such problems seriously for years, to show:
The SETI Institute has been thinking about the “decoding” problem for a long time and have done some pretty serious work, for instance, the Allen Telescope Array
:
People have been thinking about the linguistic problem for a long time, for instance,
Lincos, “…a language designed to be understandable by any possible intelligent extraterrestrial life form, for use in interstellar radio transmissions.”.
And it’s not like the military has never dealt, successfully, with some of the foremost signal processing and cryptography problems in the world. Where are these people? The juxtaposition of trying to make a “feels real” movie with “Marvel military” is jarring and offputting.
Yeah, I get it, it’s a relationship-type movie and each to his own. But the science in the SF seems some sort of Hollywood echo of 1950s SF. Not really SF, but more of a stock movie trope. Godzilla Rules!
More likely to men displaced from their masculinity (either by ideology or circumstance) who can only identify with a female lead.
This isn’t sci-fi.
It’s soc-sci-fi.
They’re just following the money. Controversial writer Steve Sailer has noted how lucrative science fiction is:
http://www.unz.com/isteve/which-science-fiction-movie-stars-actually-like-science-fiction/
OT: One of the best pics in the known universe:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CxGW0UqWIAAqL9w.jpg:large
I just can’t watch another chick flick. I crave good sci-fi, it’s so rare to find quality sci-fi, but I can’t watch another chickish or PC movie. From the nauseating political correctness of Avatar to the most recent Star Trek in which I learned that girls of all species can kick the butts of the boys of all species (oh wait, I learned that in the Star Wars one that came out this past summer), I just can’t do it. I already do not read books written by female authors, and I avoid books by male authors with female leads; now I’m going to have to come up with similar rules for movies. Female lead? Forget it. Based on a book by a female author? Forget it, I hated Harry Potter anyway. Produced or directed by a female? To hell with it, I’m not watching it.
But the movie is different enough that I’ll leave open the possibility that it may eventually become the consensus that it’s very good.
Wish this had happened to Fifth Element. That was such an interesting take on a popcorn action film.
Not only Ryan. Trump’s comment that we deport criminals first and decide later on other illegals doesn’t sound so good.
I think it is widely acknowledged that Chinese box office plus some Chinese corporate control is making Hollywood blockbusters for “Chinese” in their sensibilities, if putting some scenes in China for example.
Could also the Chinese market be driving all the remakes out there? The Chinese never saw SWAT or Drop Dead Fred or Commando so the development and writing becomes cheaper.
Why not lease the script to a Chinese studio to remake with Chinese people in the movie? Or would Koreans not watch Chinese movies when they might watch white people?
A downloaded the following movies recently to possibly watch with my GF. All of them are Oscar Best Picture nominees or winners from the 80′s.
Any opinions?
Prizzi’s Honor – I did not think the Mafia comedy with Marlon Brando and Matthew Broderick was very good, but thought I’d give this one a shot.
Born on the Fourth of July – Loved this movie as a kid, saw on HBO multiple times, but have not seen it in 15+ years
Platoon – Ditto above, as well as the final one on the set, Heaven & Earth.
My Left Foot – Not my kind of movie from the plot description, but she might like it
Dangerous Liaisons – I really like period dramas that involve wars, I am mixed on others, but I can definitely appreciate a peaceful period drama with good acting and liked Downton Abbey.
The Prince of Tides – I vaguely remember watching part of this on HBO as a kid and not liking it.
Chariots of Fire – A favorite of my Dad that looked too boring to watch as a kid
On Golden Pond – The plot sounds interesting.
The Big Chill – I saw this with my parents on HBO when I was like 8 and had no clue what was going on, but they liked it.
Dangerous Liasons - Wonderful adaptation, a classic! A great relationship-themed movie, though by no means romantic. Watch with few distractions, because the dialogue is delicious. The Prince of Tides - Depends on your tolerance for Barbra Streisand. If you can handle her, it's a great melodrama, but it has some heavy scenes, and is not really a date-night movie. Chariots of Fire - Perhaps slow-moving for what you'd expect from a sports movie, but beautifully made, and a very moving and inspiring story.The Big Chill - Worth watching for the likable cast and soundtrack, a couple of weird, WTF storylines make it fun for watching with a gf. I'm guessing it hasn't aged well, because it was once considered relatable. Never seen On Golden Pond.
Ever since Donald Trump won the presidency, the Left is churning out hate crime hoaxes at a rapid pace.
Apparently Muslim women all across America are being robbed at gunpoint by White male Donald Trump supporters.
I have a hard time believing it because most street muggings in America are committed by Black males.
Street muggings are not a very White male crime in America. Like Chris Rock said in his 1996 stand up show if he is at an ATM at night withdrawing money, he’s looking over his back to make sure there are no N-Words approaching him.
Prizzi’s Honor – Overrated. Pre-[current year] agit-prop.
Born on the Fourth of July – Never saw it. Prob not for GFs.
Platoon – Good movie, but unless your GF is a closet (or open) warmonger, forget it.
My Left Foot – GFs like this.
Dangerous Liaisons – Never saw, but seemed overrated, i.e., people I know who are easily impressed liked it.
The Prince of Tides – Never saw it. Sounded dumb, like victim porn.
Chariots of Fire – Good.
On Golden Pond – Som’th’n about old people.
The Big Chill – Lame, overrated Boomer narcissism porn.
Prizzi’s Honor is a GRRREEEAT film.
The rest? Blah.
For a clever GF friendly movie, try Ever After, a very interesting version of the Cinderella story.
(Costume drama with added British actors to back up Drew Barrymore but still good).
Prizzi’s Honor – That was Jack Nicholson and Kathleen Turner.
Dangerous Liaisons and Chariots of Fire are the only two films on that list I would watch with a girlfriend I cared about.
My firstborn will probably call and ask me to go with him. Not taking these invites lightly. How many almost 30 somethings want to hang out with their dad? He even pays for the tickets, how good is that?
I’ve seen some “interesting” films in the course of being a good dad. The Neon Demon being the last one. And I’ve seen more Marvel movies than I would have on my own. Must admit that I rather enjoyed Dr. Strange especially due to the “controversy” caused by Tilda Swinton in the part of a character who is an old Asian dude in the comic. I’ll bet no one would’ve made a peep if the part had been played by Michelle Yeoh.
Even though an incoherent mess was made out of Johnny Mnemonic I’m waiting for an adaptation of Neuromancer.
NO. Fricking film industry has ruined enough good novels. I hope they leave Neuromancer alone.
Gravity was a great movie just as a movie (i.e., it was spectacular in an innovative Hollywood way, had a story that pulled you in, and had good performances from likable movie stars). I liked the Martian a lot, too, though I don’t think it’s as formally impressive. What are the other must-see sci fi movies of the past ten years?
Prizzi’s Honor – Just OK, but a must-see for Angelica Huston fans.
Born on the Fourth of July, Platoon – Solid, good films that appeal to women too, but not really date-night movies.
My Left Foot – Oscar-baity in the best possible way, very life-affirming and surprisingly romantic.
Dangerous Liasons – Wonderful adaptation, a classic! A great relationship-themed movie, though by no means romantic. Watch with few distractions, because the dialogue is delicious.
The Prince of Tides – Depends on your tolerance for Barbra Streisand. If you can handle her, it’s a great melodrama, but it has some heavy scenes, and is not really a date-night movie.
Chariots of Fire – Perhaps slow-moving for what you’d expect from a sports movie, but beautifully made, and a very moving and inspiring story.
The Big Chill – Worth watching for the likable cast and soundtrack, a couple of weird, WTF storylines make it fun for watching with a gf. I’m guessing it hasn’t aged well, because it was once considered relatable.
Never seen On Golden Pond.
“Even though an incoherent mess was made out of Johnny Mnemonic I’m waiting for an adaptation of Neuromancer.”
NO. Fricking film industry has ruined enough good novels. I hope they leave Neuromancer alone.
Your GF will love Dangerous Liaisons, and hate all the rest.
NO. Fricking film industry has ruined enough good novels. I hope they leave Neuromancer alone.
I think a Neuromancer project has been in turnaround for the past 25 years. Too bad, as it would make a great film.
I hated, hated, hated, The Martian and Gravity, both were light Hollywood schlock without the redeeming fun dialogue, fun, multi-celebrity, cast, (Armageddon) and gratuitous violence. I still love Matt Damon, lefty though he is, Bourne movies are da bomb. I very much like Sandra Bullock, I think her portrayal of Harper Lee was deserving of an Oscar and I also like George Clooney, who is an adequate actor who is in interesting films, (Three Kings, The Men Who Stare at Goats) but those 2 movies I just did not enjoy. Maybe I am just joyless! A caller to the PBS radio show, Car Talk once said that if Click and Clack couldn't bring joy to someone, maybe there was no joy in them.
I concur on Invasion of the Body Snatchers – both of them – the remake was one of Leonard Nimoy’s best roles ever. And Andromeda Strain (an early Michael Crighton novel) has always been one of my favorites. It was an interesting, intelligent, and well-made movie. I’ve always thought of John Carpenter’s The Thing as more of a horror film (in the body-horror genre), but it is very effective as that; its hands-down the scariest movie I’ve ever seen.
Another good sci-fi movie I recommend is The Forbin Project, which I imagine was an influence on Cameron’s Terminator movies. Also, I rather like The Arrival, a somewhat strange, off-beat alien-invasion movie.
“The “virtual fence” was suggested. Trump needs to suggest they become virtual congressmen.”
Well said.
Browse through your local bookstore, in the Sci-Fi/Fantasy section. The overwhelming amount of books are by women, with titles like "Fashionista Werewolf" or stories about lesbian were-seals in space. No I am not making that up. Or Dinosaur porn. Not making that one up either.
What's happened is that women burst into Sci-Fi/Fantasy in a big way, first by publishing houses eager to subsidize loss-making books for "diversity" points and second as a way to make "legitimate" pr0n. This stuff is mostly just slash fiction that found a publisher. See Fifty Shades of Grey.
There is nothing like the Michael Moorcock novels, or the ripping adventure novels of Philip Jose Farmer, or the fantasy of Tim Powers ("Drawing of the Dark"). Its all about feelz. Which is most popular entertainment these days, even Star Wars with female leads feelz-ing.
Agree. Where are the current female novels as good as Stand on Zanzibar or Bug Jack Baron or Lords of Light or Moorcock’s Jerry Cornelius series, to say nothing about Isaac Asimov or Cordwainer Smith (great name)? I dislike the Dune novels but they were well written.
“Hey, it worked for Spielberg in Close Encounters. You can do that for hours as long as there’s a payoff at the end.”
Or if it is as intriguingly, beautifully, and masterfully filmed as Close Encounters was. As a story, JAWS was Spielberg’s best movie. As a film, i.e., something to watch and marvel at, Close Encounters was.
And actually, it did have some action: car chases, helicopter chases, etc.
But then 'Star Wars' was released and everyone forgot about the dearth of Sci-Fi movies.
“But then ‘Star Wars’ was released and everyone forgot about the dearth of Sci-Fi movies.”
Star Wars wasn’t really sci-fi. It was a fantasy story set in space. And of course, Lucas managed to kill the whole thing by the second act of the sequel. And not being content to have done that, he stomped on the corpse and then pissed on the grave with the prequels.
Browse through your local bookstore, in the Sci-Fi/Fantasy section. The overwhelming amount of books are by women, with titles like "Fashionista Werewolf" or stories about lesbian were-seals in space. No I am not making that up. Or Dinosaur porn. Not making that one up either.
What's happened is that women burst into Sci-Fi/Fantasy in a big way, first by publishing houses eager to subsidize loss-making books for "diversity" points and second as a way to make "legitimate" pr0n. This stuff is mostly just slash fiction that found a publisher. See Fifty Shades of Grey.
There is nothing like the Michael Moorcock novels, or the ripping adventure novels of Philip Jose Farmer, or the fantasy of Tim Powers ("Drawing of the Dark"). Its all about feelz. Which is most popular entertainment these days, even Star Wars with female leads feelz-ing.
I tend to agree, right now the quality of sci-fi films are terrible. Hollywood’s love affair with PC/MC has ruined a lot of movies. Some were just bad to begin with like Interstellar that just pissed me off – the robot had more personality than the human characters. The retconned Star Wars and Star Trek are just gag fests fit for only low wattage neck beards living in their parents basements. Serenity which a lot of people loved was just a female empowerment flick. Independence Day Resurgence was terrible, no real plot, script, nothing but a a** load of CGI.
In general modern Sci-Fi/horror TV shows follows the SVU model, the top alpha dog is some female surrounded by some beta males that are basically old school red shirts(disposable). The only current horror shows that don’t follow it is “Supernatural” and “Grimm” . Most of the series on the Sci-fi channel have a dominant female lead and weak kneed white guys. Most make no attempt at even being remotely accurate on science. Replace their space ships with cars and you get the idea.
The Walking Dead and Fear the Walking Dead are just cringe worthy and morose, especially the latter with it’s urban pant load white males(which I think is accurate but these sorts are correctly killed off in the first 10 minutes of any apocalypse). Really folks basing a TV series off a comic book?
In terms of SCI-FI literature there’s a lot of garbage out there because PC/MC and feminist pressure. John C. Wright one of the current Sci-fi top dogs put out a book criticizing this insane movement and it’s characters: “Transhuman and Subhuman”
Supernatural is way past its prime and has abandoned horror completely. The first seasons are still the best.
Actually I think the whole cosplay thing is what is driving it.
There are female nerd types. Even some that aren’t nerdy are into the whole thing.
But if you go past the see and be seen areas, to the parts where they are playing D&D or whatever, the female population drops.
Filk is pretty cool too, and that seems to have higher participation by the ladies than the gaming tables.
But the cosplay thing really seems to appeal to women. I’d say they are … 60%, maybe higher, of the serious cosplay people.
Love to see a thread here where people post cosplay pictures (some of them are really good). But you have to know the subject matter to get it (for example I can recognize a Sailor Moon outfit though I have not the slightest knowledge of that anime).
Actually Sci Fiction/Fantasy and Comics conventions are incredibly cool. Given the sorta autistic types that are common in this fandom, it is kind of odd.
Wouldn’t you expect this kind of thing to be common with people into theater or something? But it isn’t.
I agree. It was, as you say, rather imaginative. Especially compared to a big, noisy, stupid movie like Independence Day
As a rule I neither read nor watch science fiction; I just don’t like it very much. But about 18 years ago my mother’s employer lent me his copies of Stephen R. Donaldson’s The Gap cycle. I was hooked. I tore through each of the 500+ page novels in a weekend.
So naturally I thought about a possible film adaptation and who I would “cast” in the production. I thought at the time that Sylvester Stallone would be awesome in the lead as Angus Thermopyle. He’s too old now of course, but man that would have been a great movie.
Really good sci-fi movies are extremely rare. The movie cannot be ludicrous to someone who understands any one of the hard sciences, cannot be ludicrous to someone who understands male/female relationships, and cannot be ludicrous to someone who understands the deployment of violence in war and in cop v. robber situations. Since it would be fairly simple for even a modestly intelligent team to get the non-ludicrousness right on all three parameters, and since in almost every movie that I know of they do not get the non-ludicrousness right on more than one parameter, I can only assume that we are in an age for Science Fiction movies that roughly parallels the Yugo and Passat age of passenger cars. (Gravity and the Martian are not really science fiction movies, by the way – they are movies about more or less contemporary technology, no different than jet plane movies in the 50s, or an Apollo 13 movie if it had been made in the 70s. “Interstellar”, which I liked, only badly messes up one parameter – propulsion – and that does not happen until the last hour, so it is a great movie for the first ninety minutes. As for First Contact movies, they are generally not real science fiction movies, they are generally just parables about the Other, not really distinct from the familiar shtick of the Munsters and I Dream of Jeannie or The Trouble With Angels – all very good in their way, but not science fiction).
You can have good sci-fi without there even being male/female at all. It may be the most important question, but it's not the only question.
Geneticist Ricki Lewis says Trump voters are evolving into a race of maladaptive "Morlocks," then deletes the blog post.
Until a few minutes ago it was here:
http://blogs.plos.org/dnascience/2016/11/10/donald-trump-and-the-new-morlock-nation/
H/t Rod Dreher
Google Cache Remembers.
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:3P_mOwICdqUJ:blogs.plos.org/dnascience/2016/11/10/donald-trump-and-the-new-morlock-nation/
https://goo.gl/WtcVvv
http://tinyurl.com/z25wpct
Genius Ta-Nehisi Coats is getting in on the action with a blockbuster run on Marvel’s Black Panther comic book.
Truly a genius at work as Black Panther drops bodies of “people who didnt know they were white”
https://www.amazon.com/Black-Panther-Nation-Under-Feet/dp/1302900536
Yesterday a visitor to pol claimed to be a screenwriter and asked what kind of movies pol wants to see Hollywood focus on. Subtracting unsupported minority positions and impossible or joshing submissions, a clear majority asked for:
– a return to Story, especially at the expense of ideology, nudging and virtue signalling.
– renewed respect and attention to great but under-exploited authors like HP Lovecraft or his pen pal Robert E Howard. One anon said just buy up all the mid-century pulps in a used book shop, read them all, and rework the details. I remember reading a never-filmed Dashiell Hammett short story I had never heard of, that could easily become a multi-year TV series, in which a swank forties Southern Californian gambling racket is rolled up because of a careless mistake.
– by a large margin the majority wanted well done intellectually respectable science fiction, with “real” special effects instead of CGI.
While ya’ll are blabbering about some science-chixen tapeworm , anti-Trump protests are spreading like a supernova vomit:
https://postimg.org/image/nznsymyzh/
https://s22.postimg.org/81f38i4rl/DEEPLY_SPACED_DEAD_SERIOUS_ON_ARRIVAL.jpg
[url=https://postimg.org/image/nznsymyzh/][img]https://s22.postimg.org/nznsymyzh/DEEPLY_SPACED_DEAD_SERIOUS_ON_ARRIVAL.jpg/img/url
[url=https://postimg.org/image/nznsymyzh/][img]https://s22.postimg.org/81f38i4rl/DEEPLY_SPACED_DEAD_SERIOUS_ON_ARRIVAL.jpg/img/urlurl=https://postimage.org/app.phpscreenshot on pc[/url]
Where are the parents? Why are they raising their kids to be shallow vapid idiots staring into mirror all day?
Girls like to look pretty. This is evolutionarily quite natural and does not mean they are vapid or dumb.
Right, that's why parents have to provide the counter-balance and lead them to real culture and respect for nature.
It's like kids love cookies and candy, so parents need to control that stuff and make kids appreciate healthier foods.
Also, it's the sheer artificiality that bothers me. Instead of appreciation of natural beauty, it's all fake eyelashes and cosmetics and hair dyeing.
Why can't womenfolk be more Vera Miles in THE SEARCHERS? Real.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBxIE7NH9Vk
I don’t know. The Japanese have become a third-rate power, moody male antiheroes are no longer kosher, and the ‘net is no longer science fiction.
Browse through your local bookstore, in the Sci-Fi/Fantasy section. The overwhelming amount of books are by women, with titles like "Fashionista Werewolf" or stories about lesbian were-seals in space. No I am not making that up. Or Dinosaur porn. Not making that one up either.
What's happened is that women burst into Sci-Fi/Fantasy in a big way, first by publishing houses eager to subsidize loss-making books for "diversity" points and second as a way to make "legitimate" pr0n. This stuff is mostly just slash fiction that found a publisher. See Fifty Shades of Grey.
There is nothing like the Michael Moorcock novels, or the ripping adventure novels of Philip Jose Farmer, or the fantasy of Tim Powers ("Drawing of the Dark"). Its all about feelz. Which is most popular entertainment these days, even Star Wars with female leads feelz-ing.
I probably should make fun of you for complaining about white women again, but I have to admit we’d never see Elric today.
I'll probably watch Arrival, because I like Sci-fi movies, but I don't have high expectations.....
They are pygmies standing on the corpses of giants. They don’t even reach the worst of the great’s much less their average.
I’m not going to watch the damn movie. Looks like lifetime movies could do it as well.
Just out of curiosity, why? I'm considering giving it up too, at this point I'm finding it redundant.
The Passion of the Glenn.
Normalization of portrayals of extreme brutality.
Storywise, TWD is spinning its wheels at this point. Another bad guy has them in a bad place, the characters are going to have emotional discussions about it. We've seen that two or three times already
Valmont (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098575/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_71) is another version of the same story but much better. It has Colin Firth for the girls and Annette Benning for the boys.
"At some unspecified date in the near future, an unknown force causes the Moon to shatter into seven pieces. As the shattered remnants of the Moon begin to collide with one another, astronomer and science popularizer "Doc" Dubois Harris calculates that the number of collisions will increase exponentially."
As if we don't have enough problems on earth, we gotta worry about the moon cracking up into 7 pieces?
LOL
Peter Brimelow’s review: http://takimag.com/article/doom_fiction_john_derbyshire/print#axzz3do12MMyv
https://postimg.org/image/nznsymyzh/
https://s22.postimg.org/81f38i4rl/DEEPLY_SPACED_DEAD_SERIOUS_ON_ARRIVAL.jpg
[url=https://postimg.org/image/nznsymyzh/][img]https://s22.postimg.org/nznsymyzh/DEEPLY_SPACED_DEAD_SERIOUS_ON_ARRIVAL.jpg[/img][/url]
[url=https://postimg.org/image/nznsymyzh/][img]https://s22.postimg.org/81f38i4rl/DEEPLY_SPACED_DEAD_SERIOUS_ON_ARRIVAL.jpg[/img][/url][url=https://postimage.org/app.php]screenshot on pc[/url]
It’s America. People protest. Having a First Amendment means people get to say things you don’t like. Lately it’s the left that has a problem with this. Usually.
In general modern Sci-Fi/horror TV shows follows the SVU model, the top alpha dog is some female surrounded by some beta males that are basically old school red shirts(disposable). The only current horror shows that don't follow it is "Supernatural" and "Grimm" . Most of the series on the Sci-fi channel have a dominant female lead and weak kneed white guys. Most make no attempt at even being remotely accurate on science. Replace their space ships with cars and you get the idea.
The Walking Dead and Fear the Walking Dead are just cringe worthy and morose, especially the latter with it's urban pant load white males(which I think is accurate but these sorts are correctly killed off in the first 10 minutes of any apocalypse). Really folks basing a TV series off a comic book?
In terms of SCI-FI literature there's a lot of garbage out there because PC/MC and feminist pressure. John C. Wright one of the current Sci-fi top dogs put out a book criticizing this insane movement and it's characters: "Transhuman and Subhuman"
OK I give up. What does PC/MC mean? I assume PC is politically correct. But MC?
The quality of new releases has finally ticked up this year.
Movie theaters seem to be shrinking the number of seats when they remodel.
The recently revamped Century 8 / Cinemark theater in Valley Village is now sold out much of the time. They took out the old chairs from 1990 and replaced them with huge leather recliners. I’m sure that cut capacity by 25% or so.
It’s kind of like how baseball stadiums are cutting capacity. Dodger Stadium, for example, this claims a theoretical capacity of 56,000, but they junked the tight 1962 plastic seats a few years ago and replaced them with more comfortable seats, and the best guess is that capacity is now a little over 53,000. Cleveland cut their capacity from something like 44k to 38k.
“Not so good”? Why Not? Prime the pump with the worst, most hard-to-argue-against examples.
It'd be great if he took a break from his constant doom masturbation before declaring how its all over before the man is sworn in.
Most of them don't require a lot of knowledge of American culture or history. Also nerds are somewhat cross culture -- similar material is going to appeal to sci-fi fans in Russia and China.
“Arrival” has an important Chinese character in it. Russia is mentioned repeatedly. That seems pretty common for sci-fi movies recently.
People are also getting fatter.
Check out the headline at The Huffington Post right now (Sunday evening):
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/
I think part of it is that special effects are good and cheap enough now that you can make a lot of plausible looking sci fi movies that you were never able to in the past. Until relatively recently, you had rubber suits and models, which looked terrible and fake. Sometimes you could have very realistic looking movies with models, like 2001 A Space Odyssey, but even there, because they were using models, the scenes were relatively static and not very dynamic, some of the stuff like the monkey suits were very fake looking.
"This may be a golden age for science fiction novels."
Is this really true? The Alt-Right (ex: Vox Day) says the exact opposite: that science fiction has been taken over by progressive political writers, and what is coming out, and what is being awarded, is pc garbage (all gay rights, minority rights, and women empowerment/romance disguised as science fiction).
I'm not keeping up with scifi, so I don't know. I've read a few books I like in the last ten years (Vernor Vinge, and Neal Stephenson), and have seen a few that seem like garbage.
joeyjoejoe
“This may be a golden age for science fiction novels.”
No, I said movies.
There are signs that the mock epic/mock heroic has finally run it's course for awhile, which may open up some better possibilities.
No, I said movies."
Dave Pinsen, in comment 3, said novels.
Yep, none of which have anything to do with science.
Asimov wrote some great science fiction, and his understanding of male/female relationships was less than zero, at least judging by the (rare) dialogue that got into it.
You can have good sci-fi without there even being male/female at all. It may be the most important question, but it’s not the only question.
They’re better than most other movies, but regrettably that’s a lowish bar.
There are signs that the mock epic/mock heroic has finally run it’s course for awhile, which may open up some better possibilities.
Those are a big upgrade, apart from the greater sense of intimacy.
Did you even try to open any of links, before mediocrely schoollhouserocking my comment?
I just realized from reading the comments here that this movie is based on Story of Your Life by Ted Chiang. I read this story years ago. You could read it for free online; possibly still can.
Without a doubt, this is one of the best sci-fi short stories ever. It’s quite sad though and contains very little action. Not really a movie material. They must have added tons of extra stuff in the movie and likely removed the sad parts.
Most of them don't require a lot of knowledge of American culture or history. Also nerds are somewhat cross culture -- similar material is going to appeal to sci-fi fans in Russia and China.
It’s not a sci-fi film, but apparently the latest Bourne movie had so little dialogue in it so that it could be better marketed to an international audience. So I think it’s films in general.
Yep – and the obvious problem is that it’s teenagers’ job not to fit the rubric comfortably – that’s how the rubric gets improved.
Instead, they junk the whole thing and get lost either trying to re-invent the wheel from scratch or fit into the current_year rubric that everyone seems to think is the thing but instead leaves them feeling mysteriously empty.
Perfect enemy of the good.
The final scene is among the most haunting in cinema.
Much needed interrogation (as the po-mos say) of anti-colonial cant.
“The final scene is among the most haunting in cinema.”
Yeah, that scene took my breath away.
Without a doubt, this is one of the best sci-fi short stories ever. It's quite sad though and contains very little action. Not really a movie material. They must have added tons of extra stuff in the movie and likely removed the sad parts.
Yes, it’s based on Ted Chiang’s short story and the screenplay was adapted by a man, and the movie was directed by a man too. But it’s very much a movie centered around Amy Adams’ character. Even among actresses, Amy Adams is particularly feminine/maternal.
Loss and inevitability, and inevitability of loss, is a motif that goes through most of Ted Chiang's stories. For example, here is another great story where these themes are applied not to a single person but to a whole civilization.
Exhalation
Mirror-image of Bale's masculinity shining through his own dross.
Without a doubt, this is one of the best sci-fi short stories ever. It's quite sad though and contains very little action. Not really a movie material. They must have added tons of extra stuff in the movie and likely removed the sad parts.
I doubt it.
Seven Kill Tiger has an important Chinese character in it as well.
Flashpoint Titan has an important Japanese character in it.
Both were written by Chinese people and both are real Science Fiction.
I quit after this season’s first episode as well. I’m tired of seeing people tortured. 15 years ago that scene would have earned any move a hard NC-17 rating. Now it’s normal.
Storywise, TWD is spinning its wheels at this point. Another bad guy has them in a bad place, the characters are going to have emotional discussions about it. We’ve seen that two or three times already
"At some unspecified date in the near future, an unknown force causes the Moon to shatter into seven pieces. As the shattered remnants of the Moon begin to collide with one another, astronomer and science popularizer "Doc" Dubois Harris calculates that the number of collisions will increase exponentially."
As if we don't have enough problems on earth, we gotta worry about the moon cracking up into 7 pieces?
LOL
Just finished it sat morn the disintegrating moon wipes the surface of the earth of life for 4000 yrs those surviving in space are reduced to 7 fertile women by a evil lady pres. And a tumblr sjw culture.
Storywise, TWD is spinning its wheels at this point. Another bad guy has them in a bad place, the characters are going to have emotional discussions about it. We've seen that two or three times already
Absolutely: that scene wouldn’t have been allowed in an R movie 15 years ago and now it’s on basic cable. Desensitizing people to extreme violence may have consequences in the real world.
I wish that they would get the friggin science right. Presumably, the aliens come from our universe, then their spaceship must obey the laws of physics of our universe. We all know that there is no way in this universe that one can get a several thousand ton craft to "hover" a few feet over the earth's gravitational pull. The science would have been plausible if the damned craft had just crash landed into the earth. I still may go see the movie, though.
I thought the same thing about Luke Skywalker’s car in Star Wars.
I rarely go to the cinema, so I’ve been slowly catching up. I agree there is more and decent stuff out there these days; the last two by Tom Cruise were particularly surprisingly good.
Lots of it is schlock. Interstellar, for example, was fun to look at, but as a movie it was atrocious. Bad characterization, dumb plot and way too much faux depth and crying. And for all the “hard science” the science was terrible also.
Underappreciated: Cargo (2009) -first Swiss SF movie. Get the subtitled version; the dubbing is awful.
Most movies these days are pretty unrealistic, so SF is just another flavor of unrealistic escapism. Lots of 110lb Kung Fu secret agent ladies, James Bond types doing parkour on skyscrapers, Marvel superheroes and wacky fantasy supernatural stuff. The type of movie that doesn’t actually get made any more: Mel Brooks level comedies, movies for serious adults and adventure movies. Stuff like they made in the first half of the 70s.
But this is even more true about the short story. It’s really about loss and inevitability, and how people feel about that, so having woman as a protagonist makes sense. In the story, the stuff about aliens is merely a mumbo-jumbo explanation of how the main character came to have her abilities. Chiang deals with that in just a few paragraphs.
Loss and inevitability, and inevitability of loss, is a motif that goes through most of Ted Chiang’s stories. For example, here is another great story where these themes are applied not to a single person but to a whole civilization.
Exhalation
Star Wars wasn't really sci-fi. It was a fantasy story set in space. And of course, Lucas managed to kill the whole thing by the second act of the sequel. And not being content to have done that, he stomped on the corpse and then pissed on the grave with the prequels.
It’s space opera harking back to the early days of sci-fi.
https://postimg.org/image/nznsymyzh/
https://s22.postimg.org/81f38i4rl/DEEPLY_SPACED_DEAD_SERIOUS_ON_ARRIVAL.jpg
[url=https://postimg.org/image/nznsymyzh/][img]https://s22.postimg.org/nznsymyzh/DEEPLY_SPACED_DEAD_SERIOUS_ON_ARRIVAL.jpg[/img][/url]
[url=https://postimg.org/image/nznsymyzh/][img]https://s22.postimg.org/81f38i4rl/DEEPLY_SPACED_DEAD_SERIOUS_ON_ARRIVAL.jpg[/img][/url][url=https://postimage.org/app.php]screenshot on pc[/url]
I’m cool with it. The protests are in Democratic-run urban areas. The citizens of those cities can either put up with daily riots or tell their politicians to crack down on them. My guess is the citizens will eventually get tired of sweeping up broken glass and paying insurance premiums.
Just think of early history of NBA.
The same goes for newly established National Protesters League; from on-ground organizing,daily cash-in-hand wages, food, beverages,bussing, boarding, train tickets,signage,fliers, legal costs,tents,medical injury bills, soc.media marketing to camo balaclavas, tacky Fawkes facemasks, and , yes, baseball bats- everything has to be be piggy-banked by some wealthy source.
The bigger source requires the bigger bank.
And the bigger pig.
In order to keep your job of highly ranked willing Sauron's executioner you need to astroturf arrival of aliens and fringes on daily basis.
And since your lousy October Surprise didn't work well, all you can do is just to continue to stuff your November-Not-So-Much-of- Surprises down the sixty million throats.
Eventually, all these bigoted Americans will start throwing up that racist, misogynist, homophobic, and fascist Thanksgiving turkey of theirs.
I can bet you that Van Jones, as National Commissioner of the NPL, provides Open Society HQ with weekly results such as:Why do you think that ESPN, regardless of their severe revenue hemorrhaging, continues to televise NPL's hearted causes without viewers consent?
Just think of early history of NBA.
The same goes for newly established National Protesters League; from on-ground organizing,daily cash-in-hand wages, food, beverages,bussing, boarding, train tickets,signage,fliers, legal costs,tents,medical injury bills, soc.media marketing to camo balaclavas, tacky Fawkes facemasks, and , yes, baseball bats- everything has to be be piggy-banked by some wealthy source.
The bigger source requires the bigger bank.
And the bigger pig.
In order to keep your job of highly ranked willing Sauron's executioner you need to astroturf arrival of aliens and fringes on daily basis.
And since your lousy October Surprise didn't work well, all you can do is just to continue to stuff your November-Not-So-Much-of- Surprises down the sixty million throats.
Eventually, all these bigoted Americans will start throwing up that racist, misogynist, homophobic, and fascist Thanksgiving turkey of theirs.
I can bet you that Van Jones, as National Commissioner of the NPL, provides Open Society HQ with weekly results such as:Why do you think that ESPN, regardless of their severe revenue hemorrhaging, continues to televise NPL's hearted causes without viewers consent?
I channel-surfed past Walking Dead once, and saw someone methodically hacking the limbs off some zombie. After that, I never even lingered on the channel. I guess they’ve graduated to showing over-the-top violence perpetrated against non-zombie people. The very idea of the show I find loathesome and degenerate. And – as an added bonus – it’s shown on Sunday, which I think is done for maximum offence to Christians.
Sunday evenings are one of the primetimes for popular shows because lots of people are at home and watch TV then before the work week starts. It's not an anti-Christian media conspiracy.
That’s what people watch the show for, the gruesome hacking scenes.
Sunday evenings are one of the primetimes for popular shows because lots of people are at home and watch TV then before the work week starts. It’s not an anti-Christian media conspiracy.
Found that “Contact” had more of the weighty style of Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind, rather than being female-oriented scifi per se. Wasn’t “Alien” more the archetype for female centered scifi, or at least feminist warrior scifi?
The next scifi film that has the potential to be truly great is the sequel to Prometheus. Ridley Scott will need to redeem himself for bungling several aspects of the last film, and save the franchise. The past 5 yrs have been good, but not great for scifi. Interstellar, Gravity, The Martian, even that prequel to “The Thing”…..all were fine in parts, but fell down by succumbing to sticky sweet melodrama flourishes. Somebody has to pick up where John Carpenter left off with scifi like Escape from New York. It would captivating to see a compelling vision of a future not 80 or 100 yrs from now, but just say, 30 years. Maybe a bravely non-PC reboot of Soylent Green?
Reminder that Chrisnonymous was the guy who made sure to let us know every post that there was no way Trump could win.
It’d be great if he took a break from his constant doom masturbation before declaring how its all over before the man is sworn in.
You guys are evil Vader sequel nazis and we are the rebel alliance.
Brexit and trumps election are the empire strikes back but we will win in the ends
Yeah, in your “new diverse America”, everyone must think alike or be imprisoned for crimethink. The best scifi analogue for your ilk is The Borg.
Isn’t this basically contact?
Or maybe its Dan Brown book about mutating encryption.
Or is it more like sphere / event horizon.
The central “mechanism” that the movie ultimately hinges on (which I won’t spoil for people who haven’t seen it) is utterly vapid. It’s for people who think we’ll eventually get 1MW/m^2 out of solar panels eventually, because “science”.
Philip K. Dick wrote good stories by taking interesting ideas to logical, if occasionally far-fetched, conclusions. “Arrival” was written for (and likely by) people for whom science is indistinguishable from magic. The writers of “Arrival” want to believe that the 1.1 SD achievement gap can be closed with the right teaching techniques, and this movie is for the masses who want to believe that, too.
However, that is a great tagline.
CGI, sepiotoned lighting, mumble core, dynamic shots have all jumped the shark for me, I find it hard to go to the movie theater and watch movies now adays.
I’d like to see more natural lighting without color filters, more set shots with less camera movement and blurry special effects, and dialog that is loud and clear but still smooth.
Amen.
The next scifi film that has the potential to be truly great is the sequel to Prometheus. Ridley Scott will need to redeem himself for bungling several aspects of the last film, and save the franchise. The past 5 yrs have been good, but not great for scifi. Interstellar, Gravity, The Martian, even that prequel to "The Thing".....all were fine in parts, but fell down by succumbing to sticky sweet melodrama flourishes. Somebody has to pick up where John Carpenter left off with scifi like Escape from New York. It would captivating to see a compelling vision of a future not 80 or 100 yrs from now, but just say, 30 years. Maybe a bravely non-PC reboot of Soylent Green?
I thought gravity was lame. Imo
She is. Daughter Calivinist was just the right age for Enchanted, also starring Ms Adams. We watched it more than once . . . I recall thinking that it was really Amy Adams that made that movie work; even for a children’s movie, the plot was pretty thin and silly, and her character had to combine childishly naivete with romantic attractiveness. She pulled it off admirably. I think I’ll try to see Arrival.
Sunday evenings are one of the primetimes for popular shows because lots of people are at home and watch TV then before the work week starts. It's not an anti-Christian media conspiracy.
“That’s what people watch the show for, the gruesome hacking scenes.”
Then they should ask themselves why they do that. Explaining degeneracy doesn’t make it any less degenerate.
“It’s not an anti-Christian media conspiracy.”
Who says? How do you know. Sunday has always been the first day of the week. And programming on Sundays used to consist of things like Disney and first-run movies. Now it consists of people getting their heads smashed in with baseball bats. I don’t think it’s an accident.
You sound like a snarky amoral creep.
Sunday has never been the first day of the work week. Because Monday is the first day of the work week, more people tend to stay in Sunday evening and not go out or do errands.
You sound like a pathetic beta male who shrieks and faints when you get a paper cut.
I'd like to see more natural lighting without color filters, more set shots with less camera movement and blurry special effects, and dialog that is loud and clear but still smooth.
“CGI, sepiotoned lighting, mumble core, dynamic shots have all jumped the shark for me, I find it hard to go to the movie theater and watch movies now adays. I’d like to see more natural lighting without color filters, more set shots with less camera movement and blurry special effects, and dialog that is loud and clear but still smooth.”
Amen.
“It’s space opera harking back to the early days of sci-fi.”
In part, but I think it owes some to Tolkien as well as to Buck Rogers.
But it’s very much a movie centered around Amy Adams’ character. Even among actresses, Amy Adams is particularly feminine/maternal.”
Her dad is an Air Force vet (Amy was born in Italy while her dad was stationed there). She was raised a Mormon in flyover country. Whatever her current politics, her upbringing was a bit more conservative than your average Hollywood actress. She’s one of the best female leads in Hollywood today.
I'd like to see more natural lighting without color filters, more set shots with less camera movement and blurry special effects, and dialog that is loud and clear but still smooth.
“Homeland” is mostly lightweight and PC. Obama claims he watches it. Anyway, the most recent season five takes place in Germany and was very good. While the latest Jason Bourne was a repetitive dud.
More likely to men displaced from their masculinity (either by ideology or circumstance) who can only identify with a female lead.
Unlikely. Women (on the whole) aren’t drawn to sci-fi.
The Hunger Games are sci-fi aren’t they? I never saw one of these movies.
Girls go along because girls like to do what they're supposed to do, and current_year says that they're supposed to like that sort of thing. Conform or be cast out.
In general modern Sci-Fi/horror TV shows follows the SVU model, the top alpha dog is some female surrounded by some beta males that are basically old school red shirts(disposable). The only current horror shows that don't follow it is "Supernatural" and "Grimm" . Most of the series on the Sci-fi channel have a dominant female lead and weak kneed white guys. Most make no attempt at even being remotely accurate on science. Replace their space ships with cars and you get the idea.
The Walking Dead and Fear the Walking Dead are just cringe worthy and morose, especially the latter with it's urban pant load white males(which I think is accurate but these sorts are correctly killed off in the first 10 minutes of any apocalypse). Really folks basing a TV series off a comic book?
In terms of SCI-FI literature there's a lot of garbage out there because PC/MC and feminist pressure. John C. Wright one of the current Sci-fi top dogs put out a book criticizing this insane movement and it's characters: "Transhuman and Subhuman"
I can point to one exception on TV, though… The Expanse. I can’t recommend it enough. It’s really well done and avoids shoehorning in today’s social justice issues by inventing its own with thin, emaciated White people.
Supernatural is way past its prime and has abandoned horror completely. The first seasons are still the best.
In general modern Sci-Fi/horror TV shows follows the SVU model, the top alpha dog is some female surrounded by some beta males that are basically old school red shirts(disposable). The only current horror shows that don't follow it is "Supernatural" and "Grimm" . Most of the series on the Sci-fi channel have a dominant female lead and weak kneed white guys. Most make no attempt at even being remotely accurate on science. Replace their space ships with cars and you get the idea.
The Walking Dead and Fear the Walking Dead are just cringe worthy and morose, especially the latter with it's urban pant load white males(which I think is accurate but these sorts are correctly killed off in the first 10 minutes of any apocalypse). Really folks basing a TV series off a comic book?
In terms of SCI-FI literature there's a lot of garbage out there because PC/MC and feminist pressure. John C. Wright one of the current Sci-fi top dogs put out a book criticizing this insane movement and it's characters: "Transhuman and Subhuman"
I get the feeling that we’re seeing people taking advantage of wiggle room for better horror and sci-fi to emerge. You have comic book adaptations, on the one hand, like The Walking Dead (which is undergoing SJW-ification) and Outcast, from the same author, which is genuinely creepy and well made. On the other hand, you have alternate reality series, like The Man in the High Castle and the upcoming SS-GB, on a murder mystery in Nazi-occupied Britain. If our reality is an enlightened one where, until now, we thought that we are on a mopping up operation against deplorables, then it makes sense for the alternate reality to go full 1488, literally, and politically incorrect. I liked the fact that The Man in the High Castle’s trailer on safe streets and the traditional family was supposed to be bone chilling and triggering, but it had people and trolls in the comments section going “this sounds pretty good” to the horror of the snowflakes.
““This may be a golden age for science fiction novels.”
No, I said movies.”
Dave Pinsen, in comment 3, said novels.
You guys are evil Vader sequel nazis and we are the rebel alliance.
Brexit and trumps election are the empire strikes back but we will win in the ends
Hey TD, nice to have you back. I think we were all worried you suffered a terminal triggering after the election.
Re your Star Wars analogy: obviously Hillary was the Death Star and just got blown up in the last few minutes against all odds.
But its just your first post back. You’ll find your groove again.
"This may be a golden age for science fiction novels."
Is this really true? The Alt-Right (ex: Vox Day) says the exact opposite: that science fiction has been taken over by progressive political writers, and what is coming out, and what is being awarded, is pc garbage (all gay rights, minority rights, and women empowerment/romance disguised as science fiction).
I'm not keeping up with scifi, so I don't know. I've read a few books I like in the last ten years (Vernor Vinge, and Neal Stephenson), and have seen a few that seem like garbage.
joeyjoejoe
Of the three recent novels I mentioned, Kim Stanley Robinson is an old school California environmentalist, so there’s a bit of global warming business, but it’s a very small part of the book. Most of Aurora is set on a “generation ship”. To borrow Derb’s term from his review of Seveneves, there’s a good amount of “engineering fiction” — in this case, detailed working out of how to keep an ecosystem humming on a century-plus long trip.
There’s also speculation about political and sociological effects, not much of which maps to current events.
Seveneves contains, like Derb said, engineering fiction too. But most of it is set in the very near future. Even so, I wouldn’t describe it as PC. There’s a bit of HBD in it, for example.
I haven’t finished The Three Body Problem yet, but so far it seems to be pretty right-leaning. Pax Dickinson liked it.
Supernatural is way past its prime and has abandoned horror completely. The first seasons are still the best.
I also enjoyed The Expanse and am looking forward to the second season next year. Though the characterization was a bit lacking, I found the story, setting and technology intriguing and surprisingly plausible. It was definitely a pleasant surprise for me.
I think Star Wars also owes a lot to E.E. Doc Smith’s Lensmen series, the pulp origins of which predated LoTR but first became available as books around the same time as LoTR at just the right time for a young George Lucas to have read them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lensman_series
Heinlein was a friend and rival of EE Smith and wanted to push sci-fi forward beyond Smith’s 1920s space opera stuff.
The next scifi film that has the potential to be truly great is the sequel to Prometheus. Ridley Scott will need to redeem himself for bungling several aspects of the last film, and save the franchise. The past 5 yrs have been good, but not great for scifi. Interstellar, Gravity, The Martian, even that prequel to "The Thing".....all were fine in parts, but fell down by succumbing to sticky sweet melodrama flourishes. Somebody has to pick up where John Carpenter left off with scifi like Escape from New York. It would captivating to see a compelling vision of a future not 80 or 100 yrs from now, but just say, 30 years. Maybe a bravely non-PC reboot of Soylent Green?
Several aspects . . . .almost all of them.
That’s it. Thank you!
You’re right. I need a new hobby.
I wish that they would get the friggin science right. Presumably, the aliens come from our universe, then their spaceship must obey the laws of physics of our universe. We all know that there is no way in this universe that one can get a several thousand ton craft to "hover" a few feet over the earth's gravitational pull. The science would have been plausible if the damned craft had just crash landed into the earth. I still may go see the movie, though.
We all know that there is no way for information or matter to travel faster than light, and at the scales involved, any interstellar travel will take orders of magnitude more time than any civilization can exists.
“Aliens” of any kind at all are unscientific.
As well the new, politically-correct NFL. I gave up the NFL this year and haven’t watched one game. Don’t miss it.
Which is what made American Hustle poignant.
Mirror-image of Bale’s masculinity shining through his own dross.
The Hunger Games are sci-fi aren't they? I never saw one of these movies.
In the sense that all alternative realities, especially those set in the future, count as sci-fi. Not much science involved though, and the same sort of marketing to displaced boys disguised as female empowerment.
Girls go along because girls like to do what they’re supposed to do, and current_year says that they’re supposed to like that sort of thing. Conform or be cast out.
So that they never work in this town again!!!
And you know who really voted Trump/Pence? Many of the support people behind the scenes when movies are made. People in lighting, hairdressers, gaffers, equipment managers, CGI guys, accountants and so on. I hear 100% of the stuntmen voted for The Donald!
Pat Hannagan is never to be confused with Apt Hagganah.
I absoapocaliptociously agree on this one:
“The Passion of Headcrashing Tupamaros” is vintage Mel that requires proper cellaring.
Here in flyover country, the big trend is theaters that have a full bar, and food menu, and some of which even have full waiter/waitress service to your seats. It’s a nice complement to the experience.
And best of all, some of them even enforce civil behavior:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/24/business/media/24adco.html
The next scifi film that has the potential to be truly great is the sequel to Prometheus. Ridley Scott will need to redeem himself for bungling several aspects of the last film, and save the franchise. The past 5 yrs have been good, but not great for scifi. Interstellar, Gravity, The Martian, even that prequel to "The Thing".....all were fine in parts, but fell down by succumbing to sticky sweet melodrama flourishes. Somebody has to pick up where John Carpenter left off with scifi like Escape from New York. It would captivating to see a compelling vision of a future not 80 or 100 yrs from now, but just say, 30 years. Maybe a bravely non-PC reboot of Soylent Green?
Listen. We’ve gotta tell’em! Magic dirt is people!
Hah! That's good.
Philip K. Dick wrote good stories by taking interesting ideas to logical, if occasionally far-fetched, conclusions. "Arrival" was written for (and likely by) people for whom science is indistinguishable from magic. The writers of "Arrival" want to believe that the 1.1 SD achievement gap can be closed with the right teaching techniques, and this movie is for the masses who want to believe that, too.
Well, if you put them close enough to the sun …
However, that is a great tagline.
“Listen. We’ve gotta tell’em! Magic dirt is people!”
Hah! That’s good.
Probably Multi-cultural. Think “diverse”.
I always watch movie credits usually to see who has Personal Assistants. You also see more CGI being done offshore and some 0f it qualifying for tax credits in the country where the work is done. Faster computers and better graphics cards speed up the process, but there is still a mind-boggling amount of work in painting backgrounds, making models, etc.
Apocalyto is simply the best movie so far this century.
Inventing and bankrolling new associations is an expensive sport that some altruistic soul has to do at the beginning.
Just think of early history of NBA.
The same goes for newly established National Protesters League; from on-ground organizing,daily cash-in-hand wages, food, beverages,bussing, boarding, train tickets,signage,fliers, legal costs,tents,medical injury bills, soc.media marketing to camo balaclavas, tacky Fawkes facemasks, and , yes, baseball bats- everything has to be be piggy-banked by some wealthy source.
The bigger source requires the bigger bank.
And the bigger pig.
In order to keep your job of highly ranked willing Sauron’s executioner you need to astroturf arrival of aliens and fringes on daily basis.
And since your lousy October Surprise didn’t work well, all you can do is just to continue to stuff your November-Not-So-Much-of- Surprises down the sixty million throats.
Eventually, all these bigoted Americans will start throwing up that racist, misogynist, homophobic, and fascist Thanksgiving turkey of theirs.
I can bet you that Van Jones, as National Commissioner of the NPL, provides Open Society HQ with weekly results such as:
Why do you think that ESPN, regardless of their severe revenue hemorrhaging, continues to televise NPL’s hearted causes without viewers consent?
You guys are evil Vader sequel nazis and we are the rebel alliance.
Brexit and trumps election are the empire strikes back but we will win in the ends
One of the few interesting articles ever published in the Weekly Standard was Jonathan Last’s “The Case for the Empire.”
“Girls like to look pretty. This is evolutionarily quite natural and does not mean they are vapid or dumb.”
Right, that’s why parents have to provide the counter-balance and lead them to real culture and respect for nature.
It’s like kids love cookies and candy, so parents need to control that stuff and make kids appreciate healthier foods.
Also, it’s the sheer artificiality that bothers me. Instead of appreciation of natural beauty, it’s all fake eyelashes and cosmetics and hair dyeing.
Why can’t womenfolk be more Vera Miles in THE SEARCHERS? Real.
I really enjoyed Tom Cruise’s Live, Die, Repeat, [the movie formerly known as Edge of Tomorrow]. Cruise was really funny in that role.
Inventing and bankrolling new associations is an expensive sport that some altruistic soul has to do at the beginning.
Just think of early history of NBA.
The same goes for newly established National Protesters League; from on-ground organizing,daily cash-in-hand wages, food, beverages,bussing, boarding, train tickets,signage,fliers, legal costs,tents,medical injury bills, soc.media marketing to camo balaclavas, tacky Fawkes facemasks, and , yes, baseball bats- everything has to be be piggy-banked by some wealthy source.
The bigger source requires the bigger bank.
And the bigger pig.
In order to keep your job of highly ranked willing Sauron’s executioner you need to astroturf arrival of aliens and fringes on daily basis.
And since your lousy October Surprise didn’t work well, all you can do is just to continue to stuff your November-Not-So-Much-of- Surprises down the sixty million throats.
Eventually, all these bigoted Americans will start throwing up that racist, misogynist, homophobic, and fascist Thanksgiving turkey of theirs.
I can bet you that Van Jones, as National Commissioner of the NPL, provides Open Society HQ with weekly results such as:
Why do you think that ESPN, regardless of their severe revenue hemorrhaging, continues to televise NPL’s hearted causes without viewers consent?
Oh yeah, Scott Locklin reminded me of Cruise’s Oblivion too. That was also surprisingly good.
You guys are evil Vader sequel nazis and we are the rebel alliance.
Brexit and trumps election are the empire strikes back but we will win in the ends
Jawas can stay, but the Sand People will have to go !
And, you Tiny D, will be allowed to have your wet dream coming to its final fulfillment:
Trump will let you to be devoured by the Universe biggest vagina dentata-The mighty Sarlacc of the Great Pit of Carkoon .
Also, as long as Democratic National Convention mirrors Mos Eisley Cantina annual gathering of documented and undocumented fringy denizens, our glorious Lord Trump and his 60.000.000 loyal storm troopers can calmly focus on the constructive solutions for our galaxy’s problem:
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Walker_barrier
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/High-gravity_trap
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Pit_trap
Bonus:
http://www.vdare.com/articles/rnc-vs-dnc-ocean-of-whiteness-vs-star-wars-cantina
You can fight back against this “females are as tough or tougher than men” nonsense in a small way that really gets the point across. When you meet a woman, shake her hand with the same grip you’d shake a man’s hand with. Unless you’ve got a dead fish grip to begin with, you’ll probably shock them. When they complain, tell them that you’re just treating them as an equal.
Some of the stuff on Ash vs Evil Dead would probably get the NC-17 rating, too, though that isn’t on basic cable.
I couldn’t get past the first Bourne movie. As I watched it I just kept thinking, “The CIA [or whoever] is supposed to be competent enough to produce someone like Bourne? Really?” I couldn’t break through that barrier.
Gawd, I hope!!! During the Oscar Grant riots, the Black Moroccan owner of a really lovely restaurant lost so much money because her customers would not come to downtown Oakland during riots. She told me that she sometimes longed for a more “repressive” government in the US. Crack downs without the torture! She ended up selling her restaurant, which became a Pakistani one. The current owners are now experiencing the very same issues the Moroccan lady did.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CxGW0UqWIAAqL9w.jpg:large
They rang the doorbell but Sadaam Husein wasn’t home?
It’s a show about zombies. What do you expect? The zombies having a tea party or something?
Sunday has never been the first day of the work week. Because Monday is the first day of the work week, more people tend to stay in Sunday evening and not go out or do errands.
You sound like a pathetic beta male who shrieks and faints when you get a paper cut.
I didn't say it was, nitwit."Because Monday is the first day of the work week, more people tend to stay in Sunday evening and not go out or do errands."And they didn't used to watch peoples' heads getting smashed in with baseball bats."You sound like a pathetic beta male who shrieks and faints when you get a paper cut."No, I'm just not an amoral degenerate like, apparently, you.
Robocop was also a story about the loss of loved ones disguised as a sci-fi movie. Females, of both sexes, hate it anyway. Strange.
C'mon, it was a Paul Verhoeven movie - it was about what all his movies are about: violence, sadism, blood-letting, and shallow euro-left social commentary.
To the extent they are, they're as displaced from their femininity as the boys are from their masculinity.
As always, there are exceptions, but the rule holds.
Has nothing to do with the current year, actually. It’s just that cosplay is one of the few semi- socially acceptable excuses to dress up in pretty, fun, hyper- feminine costumes.
Girls go along because girls like to do what they're supposed to do, and current_year says that they're supposed to like that sort of thing. Conform or be cast out.
Conform or be cast out is today’s Hollywood/Entertainment industry. I know many of them voted for Trump but no one had the cojones to say so. Due to fear of being blackballed.
So that they never work in this town again!!!
And you know who really voted Trump/Pence? Many of the support people behind the scenes when movies are made. People in lighting, hairdressers, gaffers, equipment managers, CGI guys, accountants and so on. I hear 100% of the stuntmen voted for The Donald!
I never watch vampire, zombie movies and TV shows. I have zero interest in them. I saw the Dawn of the Dead when it came out and this was enough. 1979. Once you seen one zombie you seen ‘em all.
Sunday has never been the first day of the work week. Because Monday is the first day of the work week, more people tend to stay in Sunday evening and not go out or do errands.
You sound like a pathetic beta male who shrieks and faints when you get a paper cut.
“It’s a show about zombies. What do you expect? The zombies having a tea party or something?”
Why does there have to be a show about zombies? What do I expect? That a show that features extreme violence not be shown on basic-cable on Sunday afternoon.
“Sunday has never been the first day of the work week.”
I didn’t say it was, nitwit.
“Because Monday is the first day of the work week, more people tend to stay in Sunday evening and not go out or do errands.”
And they didn’t used to watch peoples’ heads getting smashed in with baseball bats.
“You sound like a pathetic beta male who shrieks and faints when you get a paper cut.”
No, I’m just not an amoral degenerate like, apparently, you.
“Contact” had to be the dumbest sci-fi aliens flick ever. After the longest and dullest build up ever, Jodie Foster actually makes contact with aliens, and then – returns to find no one believes her at all.
“Gravity” is practically hate mail against the Space Program. It destroys the International Space Station, the Space Shuttle, a Chinese Space Station, the Hubble Telescope, and even the satellite that downloads Netflix. All the trained astronauts are fragged and only a newsie without any flight training at all pushing buttons randomly actually survives. They HATE NASA don’t they? These neo-luddite tree hugging owl fetishists just HATE technology. TECHNOPHOBIA, that’s what it is.
This film has all the characteristics of touchy feely PC propaganda too. Either these aliens will turn out to be some bunch of space hippies looking for love as undocumented aliens, or some anti-tech racism or “xenophobia” crap will be spliced all through it. That holding up a sign looks sadly similar to those rapefugee supporting idiots “welcoming” gang-rapists to Europe.
“Robocop was also a story about the loss of loved ones disguised as a sci-fi movie.”
C’mon, it was a Paul Verhoeven movie – it was about what all his movies are about: violence, sadism, blood-letting, and shallow euro-left social commentary.