Sunday, July 25, 2021 at 5:10PM By Ben Miller
One of the most anticipated films of the year is Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of Frank Herbert’s epic science fiction saga Dune. We already had a Pink Floyd-scored teaser, a series of poster releases and a Venice Film Festival premeire date, but now we have a full trailer. There is a lot to this trailer, so let’s play our Yes, No, Maybe So™ game ...
Monday, June 21, 2021 at 5:33PM by Lynn Lee
If you’re old enough to remember the Challenger explosion – my earliest memory of watching a national disaster on TV – you may, like me, see it as the de facto end of the Space Age. Not that NASA abandoned its mission or that space ever completely lost its grip on the public imagination. One need only look to the Mars Rovers and the recent advances made by SpaceX and Blue Origin for evidence to the contrary. But even the most exciting breakthroughs no longer command the universal attention that the Apollo missions or, yes, the Challenger debacle did back in their day. There’s also a growing sense that space travel has become the province of the ultrarich, and that as a species we should– taking a page out of Gil Scott-Heron – maybe think about fixing our problems here on Earth before laying claim to other worlds.
For those who hold onto the ideal of outer space as a gauntlet for human progress, there’s a tendency to look back wistfully at the golden age of space exploration, notwithstanding the more uncomfortable facts underlying the myth...
Thursday, June 10, 2021 at 8:00AM by Nathaniel R
the cast of Super 8
Remember Super 8? The sci-fi adventure was released ten years ago today. It was supposed to be a big Spielberg-size event (he produced it) and establish JJ Abrams as a successor. Things didn't quite work out that way, even though it was a decent-sized hit. Abrams retreated back into other people's franchises (Star Wars) where he'd begun as a film director (Mission Impossible and Star Trek). Super 8 grossed $127 million domestically (and another $100 million plus overseas) making it a success but probably not what Paramount was expecting stateside. Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked and The Smurfs both outgrossed it, keeping it outside the top 20 of its year. Still the sci-fi adventure had its fans and people by and large loved the young cast. And who knows. Perhaps it reengineered pop culture's DNA enough that five years later audiences turned Stranger Things into a phenomenon. Both are about a quartet of nerdy young boys, and the girl they're in awe of / a bit scared by, dealing with otherwordly forces in the Midwest. They're even set just four years apart Super 8 in 1979 and Stranger Things begins in 1983.
Super 8 is streaming on Paramount+ at the moment. We didn't have time to rewatch the whole movie though we skimmed to refresh the memory. Elle's "acting" debut in the movie within the movie is still a terrifically explosive scene. Anyway, we thought it might be interesting to see how the cast is faring today in their mid-twenties. Let's take them in billing order...
Elle Fanning, JJ Abrams, Joel Courtney, Super 8, sci-fi fantasy Saturday, May 1, 2021 at 11:00PM 
Shamier Anderson is the titular "Stowaway"
One common trope in space movies is daddy issues. Whether it involves trying to find one’s dad in space or a sad father dealing family issues, as this 2019 Vulture article points out, it's a constant in outer-space movies. That's been especially true of this last decade with First Man, Interstellar, Ad Astra, and Netflix’s very recent space venture The Midnight Sky. But a surprise development! The new space movie Stowaway, from writer/director Joe Penna, is the rare film to abandon that trend altogether. The central quartet have struggles but not one of them is a daddy issue.
Commander Marina Barnett (Toni Collette), botanist David Kim (Daniel Dae Kim), and medical researcher Zoe Levensen (Anna Kendrick) barely touch on their respective home lives as they make their way to Mars for a two-year space mission...
Friday, April 16, 2021 at 11:59PM Let's take a brief look at the Hugo Award nominees. They're mostly focused on sci-fi and fantasy literature but they do have one movie category and the nominees go like so...
Long Form Dramatic Presentation" (aka movies)
We hadn't thought of Eurovision Song Contest as a 'sci-fi fantasy' film but there are unseen elves so...
