Tag Archives: SF

Sunday Night Movie: The Day The Earth Stood Still

Yesterday I got the news that award winning actress Patricia Neal has passed away and I resolved to make my Sunday Night Movie The Day The Earth Stood Still.

I have not seen very many films with Patricia Neal, but from what I have seen she was a talented actress of diverse skill and range. The films I know her best from are, of course, The Day The Earth Stood Still, and  A Face In The Crowd.

The first film clearly SF and the second very nearly SF. If you have never seen A Face In The Crowd this is a must see movie. A great, absolutely stellar cast, a pitch-perfect scrip and just as relevant today as when it was made.

Back to last night’s movie.

The Day The Earth Stood Still is a classic of SF films, and is a classic of films in general. Made in 1951 it was ahead of the curve for SF films, leading, along with Destination Moon, the charge into SF films of the 50s. Sadly, most of the films that followed were heavy on ray guns, monsters, and adventure and light in the thought and ideas that science-fiction can explore so well.

Very loosely inspired by the Harry Bates short story, Farewell the Master,  the movie is about the arrival of an alien, Klaatu, and his robot, Gort, to the planet Earth. Klaatu is greeted with gunfire and suspicion. The alien has a mission and message, but refuses to share it with any one nation or people, insisting that it must be heard by representatives of all the peoples and nations of the Earth.

This of course is impossible in a world divided between the United States and the USSR. Frustrated by terran stupidity, Klaatu eascape his captivity to learn more about humans and their fears firsthand.

What follows is in part a message film, in part a lovely look at the Earth through alien eyes, and in part a manhunt. (Or an alien-hunt if you prefer.)

I have problems with the specific message delivered in the film, but that’s okay. It’s a wonderful story, wonderfully told. I am not as allergic to ‘smug aliens’ as some of my friends are.

Of course if you have never seen this movie, I urge you to rent it. I own it on Blu-ray and the effects hold up very well for a film nearly 60 years old.

DO NOT see the remake. There is no remake. I refuse to acknowledge it.

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Amazing CGI

Follow this link to the you tube of the newest Tron Legacy trailer. (Unveiled this week at San Diego Comic-con.) It is astoundingly mind-blowing that digital ‘de-aging’ they have managed to do to Jeff Bridges. I am stunned.

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Hmmm Not as finished as I thought I was

So I was doing more ink-on-paper edits to Cawdor and continued making a mental list scenes required the establish things I used int he payoff at the end of the book. Originally I had figured I needed three or so scenes to plug my narrative holes. (a Narrative hole in my terminology is quite different from a plot hole. A plot hole is a problem that if not resolved destroys the structure of the story. For example is the floating mountains in AVATAR are floating because they are dense with unobtainium, why aren’t the terrans just grabbing these floating mountains and boosting them to orbit? A Narrative hole is a missing scenes that helps fully explain the events or motivations of the characters, but the logic of the story is still sound.)

Anyway I though maybe another 2-3 thousands words to fill in the narrative holes. Today I wrote down my list of scenes and found it was 11 scenes long. (Mainly because a background character stepped up to increase the tension and now she has to be back established to fulfill that function.) Now I figure I may need anywhere from 10 to 15 thousand words to properly full out this story.

I have the room, the manuscript was on the small side and the story will be stronger for it, but *sigh* there are miles to go before I sleep.

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Sunday Night Movie:Ikarie XB1

This past Sunday was a bit different for my Sunday Night Movie feature in that is was a movie I watched together with my Sweetie-wife.

After writing on Saturday about the late lamented Creature Feature from my youth, I went on line to see if Planet Of The Vampire had been re-released on DVD again. (nope, not yet.) However I found the trailer for the movie at YouTube and of course I had to give it a go. While I was watching the trailer for Planet Of The Vampires, I spotted a clip for something from a ‘soviet-style SF film’ about exploring a derelict spaceship. It fascinated me and I wanted to watch the movie it came out of.

There were 198 comments on that YouTube post and a great deal of them were flame-wars over the fact that the film was Czechoslovakian and not Soviet or Russian. However there were very few posts naming the damned movie. Eventually I did discover the film was called Ikarie XB-1 and was made in 1963.

A quick searched showed that the filme was released on DVD in 2006, was out of print, could not be rented and used copies were going to sum too great for me to buy. (I’ll spend money on movies I know, but its rare that I will buy a movie I have never seen unless I get it dirt cheap.)

By the time Sunday came around I laid my hands on a copy of the film and me and my sweetie-wife watched it.

The film is about the flight of the first inter-stellar craft, Ikarie XB-1, en route to Alpha Centauri. (I am told by my lovely wife that Ikarie is Czech for Icarus.) The navigation must have been off on this trip as the round trip will take the ship fifteen years from earth’s perspective but just 28 months by ship-time. Sounds like the ship is going very nearly the speed of light, but round trip to Alpha C would then be about 9 years, not 15 Earth time.

Anyway the ship is manned by forty people, both men and women, single and married. The film is entirely about the trip and the hazards they face. It was a very serious, though flawed, attempt to do dramatic action and not wild action in an SF environment. There is an attempt at showing a different culture than what was standard in 1963. The crew are dealing with a  number of interpersonal issues and the stresses of the close-quarters living.

The derelict spaceship sequence that tripped me onto this title is from about the middle of the movie and really was quite nicely done. It was something much better than what we are normally used to seeing from SF of the late 50s and early 60s.

That said the film was on the slow side and I think the mountain the writers and film-makers set out to conquer was beyond their skills.

Still, I am glad I got a chance to see it. It is always interesting to see genre films of the period made from a decided non-western viewpoint.

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A bygone age

Last night I did not video game as late as usual because I was suffering from pulled muscles that made sitting forward uncomfortable. I ended up surfing the channels on my TV looking for something to watch while I waited to unwind and get ready for bed.
On TCM (Turner Classic Movies) I spotted something that could have been a low-budget horror film from the late 50’s or early 60’s, but alas it was what looked a murder mystery. (Turns out to have been Girls On The Loose)

For the first time in years I thought about my Saturday night as an adolescent in Ft. Pierce Florida. Every Saturday night at 11 pm the local TV station would start Creature Feature. A double bill of horror and genre films that would play into the early morning hours.

I saw many an entertaining movie late Saturday night with a bowl of popcorn by my side. It was on Creature Feature that I first saw many classic movies such as The Creature From The Black Lagoon and quite a few of the Roger Corman ‘Poe’ Movies from the sixties.

Those days are gone. Late night TV now is a collection of infomercials — one of the sins of the Reagan era — and second rate TV shows. There isn’t much in the way of a Creature Feature with classic and cheesy movies I haven’t seen before. Now I know that we have DVD, Blu-ray, Movies on Demand, and Instant View movies on Netflix and I utilize all of those in my movie watching habits, but there is a real shortfall in this aspect of home video. It only shows me movies I have asked it to show me.

I never get surprised or exposed to a new movie this way because I search out the films I want to rent, buy, or view. Oh there is the occasional that I find by surfing the sites or rarely one that is recommended to me by the software actually looks interesting, but this is a different dynamic than the Creature Feature.

Every Saturday night I would lay back on the couch, the rest of the house asleep, and I was watch a genre movie. I usually knew no more than that when the features started. It was genre and that was enough to spark an interest. Sometimes the movies would be so bad or dull I would go to be, most of the time the movies were forgettable and have now been forgotten, but occasionally the movies would leave an impression that echoed through the decades.

I remember watching Planet Of Vampires on Creature Feature, a stylistic though flawed Italian SF movie. Years later I found it on DVD and bought it for a friend. We watched the film and man the makers of Alien were clearly influenced by this movie. Sadly I did not buy a copy of the DVD for myself and it is now out of print. I never would have seen this movie had it not been for Creature Feature.

This is terribly saddens me. Young people growing up today will not get the same exposure to the classic genre films that I got. They’ll see remakes of the really big name movies, such as The Day The Earth Stood Still, and perhaps track down the original, but that random sf/horror film of the weekend is a thing of the past. Many films that are not classics are going to be rarely seen just because of the death of Creature Features across the country. While The Killer Shrews is a film with more flaws than charms I am still happy that I saw the movie and when it turned up in a 50 movies boxed set I bought I was happy to watch it again.

Perhaps this is why I am a fan of our local club, San Diego Vintage SF, though my life has made it tough to attend in months. Every month a genre film from before 1968 is shown, along with a serial and cartoon. (Frankly I could skip the serial as it was never part of my movie going experience.) However SDVSF does not make up for the Creature Feature.

It would be wonderful is TCM did a regular program dedicated to SF,Horror, and Fantasy films. They already have these movies and they play them, but not as part of a generalized programming about them with a host, introduction and such. There is a richness in the genre and it extends beyond the recognized classics. A treasure likely to be rarely seen and forgotten with the years.

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Movie Review: Predators

Last Sunday morning a friend and I took in the movie Predators at the local multiplex theater.

I’m a big fan of the original film. I think Predator was a near perfect summer action movie. The sequel, Predator 2, I saw in the theater and frankly it bored me and I have scarcely any memory of it at all.

The Alien V Predator movies are an even further step down, so when I heard that Robert Rodriguez was getting a crack at revitalizing the franchise I was interested.

I particularly liked that he planned to ignore all the films in the franchise save the first one. This movie is the direct sequel that should have been

If you have seen the trailers and the commercials there won’t be any spoilers in my review, however some plot details, one in said previews, are going to be mentioned.

Rather than rehash the first film by having a Predator return to Earth, as Predator 2 did, (I remember that much.) Rodriguez has the Predators scoop up a number of humans and drop them into a hunting preserve. He wastes zero time in getting the plot started. There is no build up, os scene setting, or even recap of the previous movie. The characters and the audience are dropped straight into the action.

We quickly meet our cast of international characters, and without hesitation the game is on.

The action comes fast and furious — some times a little too fast. We lost one character about a thrid of the way through the film and I had totally missed that he got killed.

Still despite the fast action and the non-stop gunplay, the producers, writers, and directors find time for actual character moments. In fact I dare say this film has more character in it than the first film. We can certainly trace an evolution for Adrian Brody;s character and see the changes he undergoes much more than anything that happened to Dutch in the first film.

Frankly I enjoyed myself and for matinee price I certainly got my money’s worth.

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What an in process Manuscript looks like.

So I’m going over with for I am calling my 1.5 revision. Every page that I am editing has been edited once already. However in the case of some of those pages that first edit was several months ago and ideas I ha about the novel have evolved since then.

Here is a peek at just how massive the edits are, even after a complete pass.

I do think that my life would be easier if I could somehow learn to wtire it correctly the first time.

Of course that really isn’t possible. Aside from the spelling errors and typos that need to be found, there is the little matter that I really don’t understand my novel from my own outline. It is the process of writing the novel that teaches me what it is really about and what I really need to concentrate on.

What made sense three-four months ago is no longer the themes I am pushing.

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Surviving, but not pleasantly

So Today was my first full day back from the convention, but sadly it was not as care-free as I would have liked it to be. I injured myself at the convention and that injury has continued to plague me.

On Saturday morning my sweetie-wife and I were walking back from a spot of breakfast before the convnetion when disaster struck.

I sneezed.

Now you are probably expecting at this point something like I tripped while I sneeze and fell hard to the ground. Or that when I sneezed I lost track of where I was walking and walked into danger or some such exciting event.

Nope, I sneezed and noting more. When I sneezed a sharp pain stabbed me in my side. Very much like a cramp from running too far too fast and I thought I had triggered a cramp. The rest of the day it hurt to walk, to get up from sitting or to go down to a sitting position.

The next day, yesterday, I sneezed again and it was clear that I had strained a muscle or muscle-group in my left side. the pain continued throughout the day.

Today I went and saw Toy Story 3, a fine film and a worthy sequel, it was very funny. That turned out to be not the bets of things. It hurt to laugh. When I sneezed twice today, I really put pain into my left side.

There’s no doubt about it I have injured myself with the power of my own sneezes.

One the plus side I have a new idea for a short story; something fairly subversive in my opinion. It’ll be fun writing it when I am through with Cawdor,

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A Pleasant Surprise

Early this week after I had finished my evening’s writing I found that I could not fall asleep. I spent a fitful twenty minuets in bed, but In knew I wasn’t falling asleep anytime soon. So instead of bothering my sweetie-wife by tossing and turning I got up, de-equiped my CPAP mask and such, and returned to the living room.
I decided to watch a TV show on disc, figuring about 40-50 minutes should put me in a more accepting mode for snoozing. I took out my latest TV acquisition, Star Trek The Original Series Season 3 on blu-ray.
Yeah, yeah, season three the one that gave us space-hippies and Spock’s Brain. However I selected The Tholian Web as my late night Star Trek Fix.
I had seen the episode before of course, but not in like twenty years or more. This is a much better episode and very strongly written. The science isn’t terrible — how nice to see c used as a unit as speed as it should be in this sort of setting — and the character dynamics were very nicely played out.

I had two out of episode thoughts that kept occurring to me.

1) I kept watching James Doohan’s right hand. Scotty has a lot to do in this episode and I marveled as what skill Jimmy Doohan showed in constantly making sure he right hand was out of frame or hidden from the camera.  (Doohan lost a finger in WWII and concealed the fact on camera.)

2) I wondered why they had written an episode with so little Kirk in it. Usually you make sure you get the most out of your stars. They cost big bucks and you pay them even if they aren’t there. I know often episode like this will happen is a star is sick or engaged. I have no idea if this is the case with Shatner and The Tholian Web, but I am happy with the results.

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It warped my little mind

So in an earlier post I told you about the production company, The Asylum, and how they make mockblusters. (Cheap knock titles of big films hoping to ride the coattails to profit. This used to happen a lot with made for TV movie, but now exists in the direct-to-home video market.)

We had lots of fun watching MegaShark versus Giant Octopus. This has caused me to investigate The Asylum’s catalogue for other hidden gems.

I found one.

Sherlock Holmes.

This of course is perfect for The Asylum as the stories and characters are in the public domain and Guy Ritchie can’t say boo to The Asylum and their knockoff with the exact same title.

OF course those old stories are kind of dull and slow for us modern audiences, but that’s okay the fine minds at The Asylum knows exactly what Sherlock Holmes, master detective really needs.

Giant Monsters.

I kid you not. Their Sherlock Holmes has Dinosaurs, Giant Octopuses (Octopi?), Mechanical fire-breathing dragons, and lovely steampunk  powered armor.

Here’s the one sheet.

Who cloud resist that Sherlock Holmes? Fie on Guy Ritchie we’ll go with The Asylum!

(Fish is right we really do need a sarcasm font.)

[Of course I have been describe as a font of sarcasm, but I don’t think that’s really applicable.]

There is of course a trailer…..

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