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rmdI saw a bunch of movies! Last weekend was the 38th Boston Science Fiction 24 hr Movie Marathon, and the week leading up to that was the Science Fi Film Fest, both at the Somerville Theatre. ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
clauclauclaudia and I got festival passes because we are HUGE NERDS and so we saw a bunch of movies. Long post with lots of movies listed behind the cuts.
Mon:
MARS ET AVRIL
A French-language Canadian film set in future Montreal. Very much in the "fantastical" branch of things, it struck me the wrong way. It's certainly a pretty movie, and has great imagination, but something about it didn't quite click for me. Part of it was that the movie was very much about the men, while Avril is practically reduced to a concept and a plot device. It was about Avril in the same sense that the Maltese Falcon is about a statue.
FOUND IN TIME
This movie was out on the Primer and Memento time-twisted narrative axis of things maybe with a dash of Run Lola Run. In a near-future NYC where psychic street vendors are licensed and controlled, our main character, Chris, finds things and sells them on the street. He gets flashes of the past and future and he starts trying to change the events of his future. I liked this and thought it held together well.
WHEN TIME BECOMES A WOMAN
Apparently this is described as the first Arabic SF film. It's 70 minutes of Zad and an unnamed woman walking around on what I assume are the shores of the Dead Sea. I suspect there are all manner of cultural expectations and tropes and allegorical allusions in there that I'm missing, but, well, I missed them. I'm guessing the repetetive structure of Zad's monologues and the dialogue between Zad and the woman are related to some traditional narrative or poetic structure, in particular. Zad has been looking for her for 3 years! There's nobody else around! Zad was a secret revolutionary! And then he went to space! And another galaxy! And there was time dilation. And then Zad came back and made a lot of clones, where he's apparently out of X chromosomes. And there were many shots of rocks on the coastline. It's a pretty film, well made and well shot, but I found the actual content of the film flat and uninspiring and uninteresting.
Tues: The theme was "Films from the Americas".
THE FINAL SHIFT
This was a locally made film. It was better than any movie I have made, and in the category of "If we move the cow out of the barn, we can put on a show", the bear danced and it was a coherently plotted movie. Speaking completely unironically: Fuck yeah, y'all made a movie. On the other hand, it was pretty mediocre. Somewhere between the script and the performances and the directing and the editing, it ended up being much more Pyramus and Thisbe than Midsummer Night's Dream.
JUAN IN A MILLION
Not as "wacky 1980's" as "Night of the Comet", nor as "what the fuck was that" weird as "The Quiet Earth", in this film Juan Pablo Garcia wakes up and the city is empty. It's a Spanish-language film from (I believe) Chile.
EL XENDRA
Another Spanish-language film, this one from Honduras. Scientists encounter weird things related to the lost/mythical city of "Ciudad Blanca", or "The White City." Fun, on the woo-woo side of things, but the pacing was a bit off in places for my tastes.
Weds: I skipped the fest that night, since I had a metalworking class.
Thurs: I was too wiped out after doing a bunch of stuff earlier in the day.
Friday:
SPACE MILKSHAKE
This was great. It's a silly comedy about an earth-orbit trash facility that takes care of orbital trash. It has a good cast (incl Amanda Tapping and Billy Boyd who plays his ridiculous character completely deadpan straight) and is very silly, and features George Takei as the voice of a very menacing rubber duckie. Yes, really. [edit: I originally posted this with half a sentence about how the humor reminded me of ... and then didn't finish the sentence, and now I don't remember what I was going to say. Oops.]
MOTIVATIONAL GROWTH
So, Ian is this guy who's been in his apartment for way too long. And he tries to kill himself, at which point the mold in his apartment starts talking to him. Jeffrey Combs does the voice. Hijinks ensue. It's sort of like an art film made by Troma. I had a chance to chat with the director a bit, and it was interesting to get the inside scoop on some of it. Some of the basics of the idea for the film went back like 15 years ago when he first moved to LA. The mold is done as a practical effect, and the puppetteering on it is just wonderful.
Saturday:
LOVE & TELEPORTATION
If the folks at the Lifetime channel wanted to make a science fiction romance movie, it might end up looking like this. The foreshadowing was heavy, and disbelief must be suspended, but it tries and for the most part delivers on a workman-like movie. Not great, but okay.
THE HISTORY OF FUTURE FOLK
Oh, this was almost a great movie. General Trius from the planet Hondo has been sent to Earth on a mission. But he discovers music, which Hondo does not have. So, of course, he becomes a bluegrass musician (in his space suit with bucket-like helmet) in Brooklyn where he lives with his wife and kid. But when Kevin, another traveler from Hondo, shows up to assasinate Trius, hijinks ensue as Trius introduces Kevin to music and they become a bluegrass band of two. The actual plot is quite silly, the climactic plan to save everything is, uh, cartoony and ignores most of the laws of physics, but it's mostly a charming little weird movie that includes Dee Snyder as the owner of a club. Except... Except for the INCREDIBLY DATE-RAPEY PART where Kevin sneaks onto the fire escape of a woman he likes, shoots her with a paralyzing dart, drags her into her bedroom, and ... sings a song for her. HA HA HA ISN'T THAT AWESOME AND CUTE WAIT NO, NO IT'S REALLY NOT. So, yeah. That left a bad taste in my brain for the rest of the movie.
WAR OF THE WORLDS: GOLIATH
This animated steampunktastic movie begins at the end of the story of the war of the worlds - the Martians catch a cold and humanity triumphs. Fast forward 15 years to the eve of WWI, and A.R.E.S. is an international military organization ready to protect us if the martians come back with steam-powered walkers and armored zeppelins (how are they still lighter than air? who knows!) based out of a New York City that has all manner of Art Deco buildings and monuments.[1] Unsurprisingly, the martians attack, and there's fighting and plot and then we have Teddy fuckin Roosevelt riding on a steam walker and killing martians with a heat ray gun. Oh hell yes. Very fun stuff. In a nice nod to anther War of the Worlds adaptation, the music for the opening and closing credits are two different covers of Forever Autumn
Thon:
John Carter
It's a shame Disney didn't know how to market this - it's a pretty good adaptation that captures the pulpy spirit of the source material.
Reptilicus
It's a giant reptile movie made in Denmark! This was everything I could hope for a kaiju movie set in Copenhagen to be.
Ghastly Love of Johnny X
This was shot on the last of the (now discontinued) Kodak's black-and-white Plus-X film stock. And a fine send off for it, too. Aliens banished to earth become a juvenile delinquent gang, and then things get weird. And then, it turns out the movie is A MUSICAL! It totally nails that 1950's/1960's "shot for cheap in southern CA" ambiance, the musical numbers are great, and it stars the guy who played Tromeo. The pacing is a bit off in a few places, but overall, I was delighed by this.
War of the Worlds: Goliath
Having already seen it, went skipped the early part and went to dinner and were back in time for the climactic end battle.
A short film called Asternauts, which was amusing.
Battle Royale
I hadn't seen this before, although I knew of it. It was as good as I'd heard, although I was a bit distracted at first because I wasn't sure if the opening - where we meet a Battle winner - was the result of *this* Battle, so I was looking for that girl in this class. Anyways. It was good. It was less gory than I expected.
Safety Not Guaranteed
This reminds me a lot of Happy Accidents, which aired at a 'thon about 10 years ago. It's an adorable small scale movie about a guy who may or may not be building a time machine. It's a very human movie, character driven. I liked it. Also, it was set in Seattle and environs and I ended up having great flashes of homesickness for Seattle.
The classic twilight zone episode with Burl Ives as the glasses wearing guy who has all the time in the world to read after the atom bombs fall. (And fuck you to the guy in the audience who yelled out about the glasses just before it happened. Yeah, it's a well known story, but, really dude?)
Incredible Shrinking Man
I had seen this as a kid on the channel 56 Creature Double Feature on Saturdays. It's sort of existential as 1950's sf movies go.
A short film, Death of a Shadow, which I missed the beginning of because I was walking around a bit to stretch. Moody and well made from what I saw of it, though.
Phase IV
Did you know Saul Bass (mostly known for his title sequences for films) directed a movie of his own? I didn't. It's about ants becoming intelligent and plotting against us. At least they stay the normal ant-size. The ants are actual ants, and there's a whole lot of really well done nature photography going on in it. And it's all edited together wonderfully so that we understand what's going on with the ants. Very 1970's looking. This was the print with the original theatrical ending. Apparently it was possibly going to have a crazy 2001-style special effects laden ending, but it ended up not happening. I've heard that the Alamo Drafthouse managed to get a copy of the (fx-incomplete) originally planned ending, though.
Motivational Growth (again)
Second time around, still weird. A large segment of the crowd really hated this - partly this is because it was 0400, but part of it - I think - had to do with expectations for films at the fest vs at the 'thon. Maybe?
V for Vendetta
I had seen this during its theatrical run. I can see why Alan Moore is pissed off about it - it's much more about American politics and neoconservativism vs liberalism than Thatcherite England and fascism vs anarchy. Still, it's an enjoyable film. I'm amused to note that while it's a film where the main character is a woman and we follow her arc and the film has several well-rounded female characters, it appears to technically fail the Bechdel test.
At this point, we were kind of beat. The last two movies were "Escape From L.A." and "Fifth Element". I was up for seeing Fifth Element with that crowd, but we were tired and Claudia wanted to see "Escape From N.Y." before "Escape From L.A." (we had it from netflix but were distracted by all those other movies that week), so we caught a bus home and sacked out. This is the first time I've left a 'thon early, but I'm okay with that.
[1]I don't care if Susan Sontag is right about Deco being the aesthetic of fascism - it still makes for great monuments and architecture.
clauclauclaudia and I got festival passes because we are HUGE NERDS and so we saw a bunch of movies. Long post with lots of movies listed behind the cuts. Mon:
MARS ET AVRIL
A French-language Canadian film set in future Montreal. Very much in the "fantastical" branch of things, it struck me the wrong way. It's certainly a pretty movie, and has great imagination, but something about it didn't quite click for me. Part of it was that the movie was very much about the men, while Avril is practically reduced to a concept and a plot device. It was about Avril in the same sense that the Maltese Falcon is about a statue.
FOUND IN TIME
This movie was out on the Primer and Memento time-twisted narrative axis of things maybe with a dash of Run Lola Run. In a near-future NYC where psychic street vendors are licensed and controlled, our main character, Chris, finds things and sells them on the street. He gets flashes of the past and future and he starts trying to change the events of his future. I liked this and thought it held together well.
WHEN TIME BECOMES A WOMAN
Apparently this is described as the first Arabic SF film. It's 70 minutes of Zad and an unnamed woman walking around on what I assume are the shores of the Dead Sea. I suspect there are all manner of cultural expectations and tropes and allegorical allusions in there that I'm missing, but, well, I missed them. I'm guessing the repetetive structure of Zad's monologues and the dialogue between Zad and the woman are related to some traditional narrative or poetic structure, in particular. Zad has been looking for her for 3 years! There's nobody else around! Zad was a secret revolutionary! And then he went to space! And another galaxy! And there was time dilation. And then Zad came back and made a lot of clones, where he's apparently out of X chromosomes. And there were many shots of rocks on the coastline. It's a pretty film, well made and well shot, but I found the actual content of the film flat and uninspiring and uninteresting.
Tues: The theme was "Films from the Americas".
THE FINAL SHIFT
This was a locally made film. It was better than any movie I have made, and in the category of "If we move the cow out of the barn, we can put on a show", the bear danced and it was a coherently plotted movie. Speaking completely unironically: Fuck yeah, y'all made a movie. On the other hand, it was pretty mediocre. Somewhere between the script and the performances and the directing and the editing, it ended up being much more Pyramus and Thisbe than Midsummer Night's Dream.
JUAN IN A MILLION
Not as "wacky 1980's" as "Night of the Comet", nor as "what the fuck was that" weird as "The Quiet Earth", in this film Juan Pablo Garcia wakes up and the city is empty. It's a Spanish-language film from (I believe) Chile.
EL XENDRA
Another Spanish-language film, this one from Honduras. Scientists encounter weird things related to the lost/mythical city of "Ciudad Blanca", or "The White City." Fun, on the woo-woo side of things, but the pacing was a bit off in places for my tastes.
Weds: I skipped the fest that night, since I had a metalworking class.
Thurs: I was too wiped out after doing a bunch of stuff earlier in the day.
Friday:
SPACE MILKSHAKE
This was great. It's a silly comedy about an earth-orbit trash facility that takes care of orbital trash. It has a good cast (incl Amanda Tapping and Billy Boyd who plays his ridiculous character completely deadpan straight) and is very silly, and features George Takei as the voice of a very menacing rubber duckie. Yes, really. [edit: I originally posted this with half a sentence about how the humor reminded me of ... and then didn't finish the sentence, and now I don't remember what I was going to say. Oops.]
MOTIVATIONAL GROWTH
So, Ian is this guy who's been in his apartment for way too long. And he tries to kill himself, at which point the mold in his apartment starts talking to him. Jeffrey Combs does the voice. Hijinks ensue. It's sort of like an art film made by Troma. I had a chance to chat with the director a bit, and it was interesting to get the inside scoop on some of it. Some of the basics of the idea for the film went back like 15 years ago when he first moved to LA. The mold is done as a practical effect, and the puppetteering on it is just wonderful.
Saturday:
LOVE & TELEPORTATION
If the folks at the Lifetime channel wanted to make a science fiction romance movie, it might end up looking like this. The foreshadowing was heavy, and disbelief must be suspended, but it tries and for the most part delivers on a workman-like movie. Not great, but okay.
THE HISTORY OF FUTURE FOLK
Oh, this was almost a great movie. General Trius from the planet Hondo has been sent to Earth on a mission. But he discovers music, which Hondo does not have. So, of course, he becomes a bluegrass musician (in his space suit with bucket-like helmet) in Brooklyn where he lives with his wife and kid. But when Kevin, another traveler from Hondo, shows up to assasinate Trius, hijinks ensue as Trius introduces Kevin to music and they become a bluegrass band of two. The actual plot is quite silly, the climactic plan to save everything is, uh, cartoony and ignores most of the laws of physics, but it's mostly a charming little weird movie that includes Dee Snyder as the owner of a club. Except... Except for the INCREDIBLY DATE-RAPEY PART where Kevin sneaks onto the fire escape of a woman he likes, shoots her with a paralyzing dart, drags her into her bedroom, and ... sings a song for her. HA HA HA ISN'T THAT AWESOME AND CUTE WAIT NO, NO IT'S REALLY NOT. So, yeah. That left a bad taste in my brain for the rest of the movie.
WAR OF THE WORLDS: GOLIATH
This animated steampunktastic movie begins at the end of the story of the war of the worlds - the Martians catch a cold and humanity triumphs. Fast forward 15 years to the eve of WWI, and A.R.E.S. is an international military organization ready to protect us if the martians come back with steam-powered walkers and armored zeppelins (how are they still lighter than air? who knows!) based out of a New York City that has all manner of Art Deco buildings and monuments.[1] Unsurprisingly, the martians attack, and there's fighting and plot and then we have Teddy fuckin Roosevelt riding on a steam walker and killing martians with a heat ray gun. Oh hell yes. Very fun stuff. In a nice nod to anther War of the Worlds adaptation, the music for the opening and closing credits are two different covers of Forever Autumn
Thon:
John Carter
It's a shame Disney didn't know how to market this - it's a pretty good adaptation that captures the pulpy spirit of the source material.
Reptilicus
It's a giant reptile movie made in Denmark! This was everything I could hope for a kaiju movie set in Copenhagen to be.
Ghastly Love of Johnny X
This was shot on the last of the (now discontinued) Kodak's black-and-white Plus-X film stock. And a fine send off for it, too. Aliens banished to earth become a juvenile delinquent gang, and then things get weird. And then, it turns out the movie is A MUSICAL! It totally nails that 1950's/1960's "shot for cheap in southern CA" ambiance, the musical numbers are great, and it stars the guy who played Tromeo. The pacing is a bit off in a few places, but overall, I was delighed by this.
War of the Worlds: Goliath
Having already seen it, went skipped the early part and went to dinner and were back in time for the climactic end battle.
A short film called Asternauts, which was amusing.
Battle Royale
I hadn't seen this before, although I knew of it. It was as good as I'd heard, although I was a bit distracted at first because I wasn't sure if the opening - where we meet a Battle winner - was the result of *this* Battle, so I was looking for that girl in this class. Anyways. It was good. It was less gory than I expected.
Safety Not Guaranteed
This reminds me a lot of Happy Accidents, which aired at a 'thon about 10 years ago. It's an adorable small scale movie about a guy who may or may not be building a time machine. It's a very human movie, character driven. I liked it. Also, it was set in Seattle and environs and I ended up having great flashes of homesickness for Seattle.
The classic twilight zone episode with Burl Ives as the glasses wearing guy who has all the time in the world to read after the atom bombs fall. (And fuck you to the guy in the audience who yelled out about the glasses just before it happened. Yeah, it's a well known story, but, really dude?)
Incredible Shrinking Man
I had seen this as a kid on the channel 56 Creature Double Feature on Saturdays. It's sort of existential as 1950's sf movies go.
A short film, Death of a Shadow, which I missed the beginning of because I was walking around a bit to stretch. Moody and well made from what I saw of it, though.
Phase IV
Did you know Saul Bass (mostly known for his title sequences for films) directed a movie of his own? I didn't. It's about ants becoming intelligent and plotting against us. At least they stay the normal ant-size. The ants are actual ants, and there's a whole lot of really well done nature photography going on in it. And it's all edited together wonderfully so that we understand what's going on with the ants. Very 1970's looking. This was the print with the original theatrical ending. Apparently it was possibly going to have a crazy 2001-style special effects laden ending, but it ended up not happening. I've heard that the Alamo Drafthouse managed to get a copy of the (fx-incomplete) originally planned ending, though.
Motivational Growth (again)
Second time around, still weird. A large segment of the crowd really hated this - partly this is because it was 0400, but part of it - I think - had to do with expectations for films at the fest vs at the 'thon. Maybe?
V for Vendetta
I had seen this during its theatrical run. I can see why Alan Moore is pissed off about it - it's much more about American politics and neoconservativism vs liberalism than Thatcherite England and fascism vs anarchy. Still, it's an enjoyable film. I'm amused to note that while it's a film where the main character is a woman and we follow her arc and the film has several well-rounded female characters, it appears to technically fail the Bechdel test.
At this point, we were kind of beat. The last two movies were "Escape From L.A." and "Fifth Element". I was up for seeing Fifth Element with that crowd, but we were tired and Claudia wanted to see "Escape From N.Y." before "Escape From L.A." (we had it from netflix but were distracted by all those other movies that week), so we caught a bus home and sacked out. This is the first time I've left a 'thon early, but I'm okay with that.
[1]I don't care if Susan Sontag is right about Deco being the aesthetic of fascism - it still makes for great monuments and architecture.
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Date: 2013-02-23 05:59 pm (UTC)yes!
Date: 2013-02-23 10:11 pm (UTC)