Tag Archives: SF

Sunday Night: Movie The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra

Last night I was in the mood for something playful, genre, and most of all not infused with important themes. Scanning my library of DVD and Blu-ray I quickly settled on The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra.

Released in 2001 Lost Skeletonis a love letter and satire of the terrible B-movies dealing with aliens, monsters, and scientist from the late 50s through the mid 60s. Shot of video with the color removed and without complex camera tracking movements the film recreates the feel of those productions striving to capture material that lay beyond the filmmaker’s budget and abilities. The dialogue is comically stiff, the acting more wooden than a lumberyard, and the characters exist only in a continuum of stereotypes. All of this combines for a hilarious satire made with love from people who like myself wasted far too many late night hours devouring any sort of SF or horror film.

Dr. Paul Armstrong, a scientist, and his clichéd wife Betty as come to a remote cabin searching for a fallen meteorite made of the rarest of radioactive elements, Atmospherium. Also in the dry parched mountains is Dr. Paul Fleming, an evil scientist who has come searching for the Lost Skeleton in hope of using its ill-defined abilities to become the most powerful man in the world, however to awaken the skeleton from its slumber he requires Atmospherium. Completing the triad of search characters are the space aliens Kro-Bar and his wife Lattice. Their ship was forced to land in these same mountains, their pet mutant has escaped, presenting a lethal danger to everyone on Earth, and the power source of the ship has been depleted. Of course their ship is powered by — you guessed it — Atmospherium. Rounding out the cast as secondary characters as Forest Range Brad, the Lost Skeletonhimself, the Mutant, and Animala played with seductive style wearing a body-suit, gloves, and slippers as an ‘animal’ costume. Hilarity ensures in a story that sets back male/female relations several decades. I think it is worth noting that this film fully passes the Internet’s famed Bechdel Test while never leaving the sexist tropes of the late 50s and early 60s.

I saw this movie in an art-house theater on its initial release and it was quite refreshing to find something this light, this fun, playing in the same venue where deep and serious foreign films often screened. The cast reunited for a sequel, naturally titled The Lost Skeleton Returns Again, and while the follow-up film plays well it is not quite as fresh as that first pure experience. For anyone who loved those bad, cheesy, Black and White genre movies this is something you should give a scan.

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Sunday Night Movie: The Last Starfighter

The mid 1980s, a period when Star Wars dominated studio thinking demanding escapist adventures, and every movie had to have a slew of pop songs imbedded in the soundtrack. Not at all bucking those themes The Last Starfighter did break startling new ground in the realm of visual effects. Utilizing the most advanced super-computers in the world, this movie presented the first feature film to present photo realistic, that phrase used generously, special effects for the big screen.
The story is simple; Alex Rogan is a teenager in a forgotten corner of California. He lives with him mothers and little brother in a tiny trailer park where Alex helps out with the repairs and maintenance while planning to go to college and have a life bigger then just being a super. The Starlight Star Bright trailer park is so devoid of excitement that the entire community turns out to witness Alex’s besting the arcade game Starfighter. Alex’s girlfriend Maggie is torn between hi dreams of a big life in the city, that nebulous unnamed metropolis presumably just over the parched mountains that surround the trailer park, and her fear of leaving home and the great unknown. Needless to say Alex somehow is pulled from the bland, boring existence and is drawn up into a galactic war with the fate of hundreds of worlds hanging on his particular gifts.
Even by the middle of the next decade the cutting edge SFX in The Last Starfighter were surpassed and not by the newest generation of super-computers but by banks of home computers. However one does not watch The Last Starfighter for its visual effects but rather for the charming, innocent, and a little naive story of Alex Rogan and his voyage into destiny. The cast had a number of 80’s up and comers, Lance Guest as Alex, Catherine Mary Stewart as Maggie, a blink and you’ll miss him appearance by Will Wheaton before not only Next Gen but before Stand by Me as well. In addition to the young cast member the films also boasted a pair of Hollywood veterans, Dan O’Hierlihy as Grig the gung-ho iguana and Robert Preston as Centauri an interstellar version of the same character he played in The Music Man.
The Last Starfighter never found the love that many genre films of the 80s acquired. The very dated special effect certainly hurt the film in terms of cable and broadcast airtime leaving this project as film with a small but devoted following. It would be interesting if instead of some studio launching a remake of the property if they simply replaced all the VFX with start of the art CGI and left the rest of the film untouched. IF they do such a thing or not The Last Starfighter remains a movie that I can always turn to in order to raise lowered spirits.

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Movie Review: Annihilation

On Saturday after a trying cold and flu season I finally managed to find the time to get out to the theaters and catch Alex Garland’s latest film Annihilation. Based on the novel with the same name Annihilation was written and directed by Garland who also gave us the fascinating SF film Ex Machina. (Garland also penned the scripts for 28 Days Later, and Dredd.) I have not read the originally novel, though I understand significant changes were made in the adaptation process, and so I will not be commenting on the quality of the adaptation.

Annihilation is about an event called the Shimmer that originated with the impact of an extra-terrestrial object. The Shimmer is centered on a lighthouse and since the object’s impact has been expanding, consuming more territory within its borders. All devices and teams sent into the Shimmer lose communication and none have returned, leaving the zone a mystery. The lead character is Lena, a biologist who is pulled into the secret of the Shimmer when her husband mysteriously returns. In order to try to determine what has happened to her husband, Lena volunteers to accompany the next team being sent into the zone. This team, unlike all the others, is comprised entirely of women and represents a number of disciplines and skills. Inside the zone the women are confronted with a bizarre and difficult to understand environment as things living in the effect take on radically new forms. Cut off from communication and help, frayed by their own psychological issues, the team pushes deeper in the Shimmer towards the lighthouse and hopefully the answers to the mystery.

The cast of Annihilation is top shelf, Natalie Portman plays the lead Lena and she is supported by Gina Rodriguez, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Tessa Thompson with Oscar Isaac playing Lena’s husband Kane. All of these actors are skilled and have played in some of the biggest films of the last decade. Tessa Thompson took people by storm with her portrayal of Valkyrie in Thor: Ragnarok. Her character here is very removed from the boisterous on top of things Valkyrie demonstrating a range that I think we have only begun to experience.

Annihilation is never going to be a mass-market success. Unlike many films this one requires active interpretation. Ex Machina left its ending open to audience interpretation but Annihilation the entire final act is more akin to something one might see in an art house film. It is more accessible than say a David Lynch movie this is not a movie that spells out for you what it means or what precisely has transpired. As such this is not a movie for everyone. I enjoyed it, I am glad I saw it in the theater, but it is unlikely to find a home in my library. More than most films you mileage may vary and if it works for you or not will depend greatly on your personal tastes.

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I’m Going to Hate the Kessel Run

In 1977 I was sixteen, already a print and media science-fiction fan, when, along with everyone else, my horizons were suddenly exploded outward with the release of Star Wars. That film helped launch the modern blocker buster and spawned a franchise that continues to dominate the box office to the current day. Later this year one of the spin-off movies we’ll get is Solo, the story of a young Han Solo and I expected, in fact I will be shocked if we do not, we’ll be treated to a cinematic rendering of the ‘Kessel Run.’

Back when Star Wars was first released there was no Internet, no home video, and information about the movie’s production could only be glimmered in interviews, publicity materials, and tie-in books. One of the fascinating bits I remember reading was the on stage story of how cast members repeatedly information George Lucas referring to Solos; now famous boasting that parsecs were a measure of distance and not time. In these stories Lucas always responded that he was well aware of that fact.

If you watch the scene I think it is quite clear what is going on. Solo thinks he has a couple of dirt farmer ignorant about space and he’s trying the BS them about how good his ship really is. He does not expect them to know what a parsec is. Obi-Wan’s face during the negation give it all away, he’s not buying that load of crap but he needs this passage and is not calling out Solo on his tall tales. It’s actually a wonderful bit of character as well as advancing the plot forward.

Somewhere fans decided that Solo must be telling a truth not BS and they began construct elaborate fan theories about what the ‘Kessel Run’ was and how Solo flew it in under a dozen parsecs. The delightful character moment has now been transformed into a piece of bad pseudo-science double talk and Obi Wan’s reaction ignored into insignificance.

I am certain that Disney/Lucas Film will make the ‘Kessel Run’ reality closing forever the original interpretation of that class and memorable scene. I plan to see Solo, I may even love the movie, but I will hate the Kessel Run.

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On Remakes and Reboots

Next month Netflix unveils their SF television series Lost in Space a reboot of the 60’s show of the same title. Again the premise of the show is essentially The Swiss Family Robinson but in space.

In the original series the Robinson family is departing for Alpha Centauri to start humanity’s first interstellar colony. The logistic of the premise is laughable. A single family founding a colony, the genetics are a nightmare. For reasons a hostile foreign power, never identified as to which power or why, attempts the sabotage the mission. The saboteur is trapped aboard the vessel at launch and ends up trapped with the Robinsons when their ship veers wildly off course and they are lost in the unmapped vastness of the cosmos.

Very quickly an ensemble show transformed into a children’s program focused on Will Robinson, the precocious young boy of the series, the ship’s robot, and Dr. Smith, the saboteur but now a character of comic relief and defanged of all serious threat. The show ran three years and produced classic SF ideas such as a rebellion of vegetables. The show was bad.

So if I did not care for the original, does that mean I will be skipped this reboot? No. Here is my core rule for remakes and reboots; they should only remake material that was bad.

If you attempt to remake a good show or movie, particularly if we are talking a classic, you are almost certainly going to do worse. It’s hard enough to make good narrative material, it’s harder to improve on material that has already achieved quality and that should be avoided. However, bad source material, well, you might find a way to make something good out of that.

Given that Netflix’s original series may indeed salvage something worthwhile from the concept. After all, the original, The Swiss Family Robinson, itself was a remake of Robinson Crusoe but with a good god-fearing Christian family as the principal characters. (In the book the family was not named Robinson, but Irwin Allen was never known for subtlety.)

I shall keep my expectations low, but I will give at least the pilot a go.

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And the Draft is Done

Well, technically I completed the first draft of my latest novel a week ago, but only now am I talking about it here.

This is the next novel in my military/sf adventure series. My agent is shopping the first book in the series and I went ahead and produced the second. The title and synopsis is of course under wraps but it deals with an American officer serving in the 3rd European Union’s interstellar forces. I refer to the setting of these stories as Nationalized Space as this is an imagined future where mankind spreads out into the cosmos without ever having unified. In addition it is a future where sometime in the early 21st century the United States took a wrong turn, never recovered, and ended up a minor power. After all, all empires fade.

Now that the draft is done, currently at 99,000 words, I am going to take a few weeks off from working on the novel. First I am going to play on my new Xbox One S and lose a lot of matches of Player’s Unknown Battlegrounds. Second I am going to work on some short pieces, including trying my hand at a pulp styled adventure, but in short story form, and then after I have achieved some distance I will return to the novel for the revision processes.

I’m confident that the book has no major flaws that will require a complete rewrite, but I have been wrong on that before. I anticipate that the revision will be principally tightening, clarifying, and of course hunting and killing the dreaded spelling and grammar flaws.

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Streaming Review: The Cloverfield Paradox

This past weekend I finally got my new televisions set, a large 55″ 4K display with High Dynamic range. Naturally that meant I had to find some 4K content to watch on it the evening it was set up and ready. With a couple of friends over and after we had finished out board and card games for the evening we settled in for a movie.

Browsing through the selections on Netflix I suggested The Cloverfield Paradox, the next entry in the SF/Horror film anthology. I enjoyed Cloverfield, and 10 Cloverfield Lane, so I had decent hopes that this movie would not be a waste of time.

I was wrong.

Populated by decent actors who are entertaining to watch, The Cloverfield Paradox is ultimately a silly movie that more than strain disbelief it shatters its bones and grinds them into an abrasive power then flings that into your eyes.

The story set up is that in the near future Earth is running out of energy all our supplies are nearly exhausted. (That concept itself feels very 70s.) The only hope for humanity is an orbiting particle accelerator that if it works will supply limitless power to the entire plant. (Never mind such minor issue as a distribution grid and the like. All they need is for the thing to work.) The nations of the world are moving rapidly towards war of the lack of energy and time is running out for the station and her brave international crew.

Of course when the system is turned on there is the predicted catastrophe that had been ignored and now all manner of super strange stuff is going on. This is one of the SF movies where the writers feel that the phrase ‘Quantum Mechanics’ is an incantation that allows anything at all to happen, not matter how stupid or impossible.

Very quickly the crewmembers turn on one another and there are special effects driven deaths and injuries until this all leads to the principal character making their fateful decision and growing through their rather predictable arc.

Watching the film could have been more tedious had my friends and I not fallen into MST3K mode, but still this one is a miss. However, the space scenes and the visuals were beautiful so the TV works great!

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Movie Review: Black Panther

Ten years ago I went to the theater and watched Iron Man the little film derided at the time by mainstream Hollywood that launched the Marvel Cinematic Universe, yesterday my sweetie-wife and I watched the latest release in the global phenomenon Black Panther.

Introduced into the MCU as a principal character in Captain America: Civil War, Black Panther continues the storyline of T’Challa (The Black Panther) as he returned home after the death of his father to assume the mantel of King of Wakanda. Wakanda is a mythical African kingdom in the MCU that is home to a reclusive and secretive people who possess both high technology and the only access to the metal Vibranium. (The material that gives Captain America’s shield it physics defying properties.) Once home T’challa is confronted with truths that have been withheld from his entire life, the complicated relationship with his ex-love Nakia, challenges to his rule, and deep moral question of what do we owe to our fellow human beings?

These story elements while clothed in comic-book action sequences, but are propelled by character and given depth by philosophy. The writing is spot on with characters having a distinct personality illuminated by dialogue and action that makes each person pop out the moment that appear on the screen. The history or Wakanda, its cultures, and the characters give a sense of deep world-building bringing verisimilitude to the fantastic setting and story, The actors are all wonderful in their performances, shining with talent and intelligence and I have my own suspicions on who will become fan favorites.

Aside from a few minor quibbles with SFX shots that are not quite up to par for the rest of the movie and a couple of gags that broke my willing suspension of disbelief this movie has set a high bar for the rest of the MCU films to follow. Of the 18 films so far released my favorites are Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Captain America: Civil War and now Black Panther. If you want me to rank them 1 thru 3 I cannot because which one takes the top spot will always be up to my mood at that moment.

Black Panther is worth full price IMAX tickets, go see this movie. It is fun, it is emotional, and it has interestingly things to say. In our current political environment we do not deserve Black Panther but we are fortunate enough to have it just the same.

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Movie Review: The Shape of Water

I have been a fan, but not a devoted one, of Guillermo del Torro since I had the good fortune to catch Chronos during its theatrical run and from the first trailers The Shape of Water, is a movie I wanted to see.

Sadly I spent weeks in December and January sick with colds and flu, but this weekend I finally managed to make the time to go see the movie, properly in a theater.

The Shape of Water, clearly inspired by the classic Universal film The Creature from the Black Lagoon, takes place in a mythical USA, someplace between 1957 and 1961, when the country was locked in a spacer-ace and the cold war with the USSR. Elisa and Zelda work as janitorial staff in a secret government facility just outside of Baltimore when a new asset, the amphibian man is brought into the center. The new security officer, Strickland, is flat portrayal of 50’s white, heterosexual, patriarchy dominance and very much the villain and antagonist of the movie. Over the course of the story Elisa and others from marginalized communities, discover the humanity in that which is not human and the inhumanity in their own species.

The film is a fairly tale, one of del Torro’s favorite areas to work in, and the opening narration places within that genre as surely as if it had intoned, ‘One upon a time.’ The film is photographic beautifully, and the period is rendered in loving detail. The performances, over all, are sharp, layered, and nuanced. Strickland, for my tastes, is presented in a too one-dimensional manner and this weakens an otherwise strong script. I found it easier to accept a song and dance number deep within the movie than the broad, stereotypical villain. Still, it is a very enjoyable film, and one well worth seeing in a comfortable theater with good sound and image.

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Sunday Night Movie: Fantastic Voyage

I have an interesting relationship with the movie Fantastic Voyage. In the early 70’s shortly after I discovered reading SF, I read Isaac Asimov’s adaptation of the screenplay into a novel. (It also had an amusing essay by Asimov on why the science in the story was terrible but how he kept to the concepts anyway. A sort of ‘don’t blame me’ disclaimer for the terrible science.)

After reading the novel I really really wanted to see the movie. For young people today it is hard to emotionally understand just how frustrating that was at the time. There was no streaming services, no Internet, no home video market at all. The best one could do, if you had the equipment and the funds, was to order a 16mm copy of the movie and watch it on an honest to god film projector. That was not an option for me. All I could do was grab the weekly edition of TV guide and read it cover to cover hoping that some station would broadcast the film.

They never did.

It was literally decades before I managed to see the movie and the startling changed from script to novel still make the experience rough. Sunday Night scanning was available from HBO Now for streaming I stumbled across Fantastic Voyage and took the nostalgic plunge.

The story is an interesting one. A scientist, irreplaceable in his knowledge, had been spirited out from behind the Iron Curtain. (Kids, go ask your parents) Just before he reaches safety an assassination attempt leaving him comatose with an inoperable blood clot in his brain. Well, inoperable from the outside. Turns out that the government has been developing a process to shrink materials and personal down to the size of microbes. An experimental submarine is crewed with two doctors, an assistant, a naval officer to drive it, and a security man to make sure no enemy agents has slipped aboard, is shrunk down and injected into the scientist to cut away the clot from the inside.

There is a lot of interesting and nearly on target science in the movie, but there are great stretches of hand-waving as well. (Where does all that mass go? Never addressed at all.) That aside Fantastic Voyage is a decent flick with a fine cast. Of course things go wrong, not much drama if that didn’t happen, and of course these is an enemy agent aboard. The special effects are pretty impressive for 1966 and the opening credit scrawl may have inspired the opening of 1971’s The Andromeda Strain.

This is worth watching at least once and particularly if you have HBO Now and can just stream it.

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