film: October 2005 Archives

Science fiction, no matter how far into the future it’s set or how bizarre is the alternate universe it inhabits, is always about its own time, about the cultural fears of the era in which it is produced. So, for example, all the invading aliens and giant bugs of the 1950s were expressions of nervousness and paranoia over the Cold War and Communism. Are those flicks scarier if you first saw them at just the right time in the culture as well as in your own life? If the golden age of science fiction is, as some wag noted, 12, and you were a 12-year-old kid at just the right time to be steeped in the anxieties of the 1950s, do movies like Them! and The Day the Earth Stood Still have a particular resonance for you that’s unique to your generation? I suspect it does.

So: I was 12 in 1981. I came of age -- as did all of Generation X -- in a world in which medicine and technology and advancing scientific knowledge were altering our understanding of how our bodies work, how they can be made to fail, and how we may be able to change who we are on a fundamental level, none of which were particularly pleasant lessons to learn. Not only could devices and drugs meant to help us suddenly turn on us, either inadvertently (tampons causing toxic shock syndrome) or by deliberate design (tampered-with Tylenol killing people with headaches), but we were playing with the stuff of life (test-tube babies) while our genes were reshuffling on their own to attack our bodies (AIDS).

In my review of George Romero’s Land of the Dead, just out on DVD, I discussed the sorta despondent feeling that’s permeating pop culture lately, that we’re standing at the edge of a cultural abyss, and in relation to this terrific film, how the idea of a zombie apocalypse is actually pretty darn relevant -- at least in a metaphoric sense -- to the world today.

And it seems I’m not the only one who feels that way. The crack investigative reporting team at The Onion has uncovered the terrible truth about a Midwestern city:

Not so inconceivable: Geek touchstone The Princess Bride is coming to Broadway. Not sure how to feel about that... though I guess if Monty Python can make the transition intact, the Dread Pirate Westley can do it.

Game nowhere near over: Geek filmmaker -- and creator of many a cinematic geek touchstone -- Steven Spielberg is jumping into gaming as a hands-on producer. I do suspect that games are going to morph more into serious interactive fiction or a new kind of community art -- or both; think massive multiparticipant entertainment -- and the involvement of one of Hollywood’s biggest players could well be a step in that direction. I have no doubt that there will be great Xer artists whose medium is what we would consider “a game.”

Must-see skiffy: Writer John Scalzi has published his book The Rough Guide to Sci-Fi Movies, in which he chooses his geek film canon, the 50 “most significant” SF films of all time. The list is posted at John’s blog, but you should buy the book too, cuz John’s a cool guy and has lots of interesting things to say about movies and SF. (I’ve been on panels at SF conventions with John, and have heard him speak about SF movies -- he knows his stuff.)

Remembered to Gallifrey, at last: The BBC is making a Doctor Who for grownups. About bloody time the Beeb realized which side its toast is buttered on.

This is one of the most brilliant examples of geek creativity I’ve come across in a long time: it’s The Lord of the Rings told entirely through quotes from The Princess Bride. It’s hard to pick a favorite line, and I don’t want to spoil it for you, so here’s how it starts:

Prologue:
PETER JACKSON: Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up:

And then it’s just keeps getting funnier.

If you’re interested in movies and you like my stuff, you should be checking out the Cinemarati blog, where I make a couple of posts a week about movie-related goodness. Those posts aren’t always Xer or geek related, but sometimes they are, if only obliquely, like the thing I just posted about the fake trailer for the film The Shining, which is a great example of how geeks take pop culture and make it their own. I have no idea who created the fake trailer, or what generational zeitgeist that person might identify with, but anyone who would make a fake trailer for a real movie that manages to be funny while commenting on Hollywood culture is by definition a geek.

Guess we’re still waiting for the geek revolution: Serenity, which last week I’d speculated might herald the coming of a new geek utopia, fared rather poorly at the box office this weekend, earning only a little over $10 million. Now, I hate the industry’s emphasis on opening-weekend numbers as pretty much the be-all and end-all marker of success, but the sad fact is that Hollywood will look at that paltry $10 million and conclude that audiences don’t want smart SF films, no matter how well the film does over the long run and how many damn DVDs it eventually ends up moving.

Maybe part of the problem is that folks just can’t get past the idea of geekiness as something to be laughed at. The review of Serenity in the San Francisco Chronicle starts off like this: