|
|
Post by Deleted on Sept 14, 2014 20:14:02 GMT -5
Stargate was awesome. I haven't kept up with the sequels and TV shows and such. Any of them worth watching?
|
|
|
|
Post by coke & comics on Oct 13, 2014 13:42:19 GMT -5
I will confess to some neglect of this thread I blame life. 77. Tron (Lisberger, 1982) "Who does he calculate he is?"  Presaging many great movies where a character enters into a virtual world. Except, unlike in later films where characters have their brainwaves scanned and sent into the virtual world a la Neuromancer, here the entire body is broken down and sent into the computer via a process we won't question closely. Inside the computer we encounter anthropomorphized versions of computer programs. Even once you accept that somewhat silly premise, the question of how to make human beings out of computer programs poses some interesting questions. As computer programs have no free will (Do we?). Except computer programs like the Master Control Program who have gained something akin to sentience, something we still have not been able to create, and that science in the main has given up on. The movie's solution to the conundrum was to introduce religion. Computer programs go about their assigned tasks because of a religious devotion to their users. Master Control's attempts to repurpose or destroy the other programs means convincing them their religion is false and that there are no users. And thus we see the world inside a computer. Programs seeking to communicate with users while engaged in rather cool video games. Of course, the champion of these games is the program called Tron. |
|
|
|
Post by coke & comics on Oct 19, 2014 18:03:03 GMT -5
76. Children of Men (Cuaron, 2006) "Once the sounds of the playground faded, the despair set in."  It has been 18 years since the last child was born. And that youngest child, a celebrity by virtue of age, we learn has just been killed by a crazed fan. The future is bleak, and humanity waits to die. Amidst despair is an increase of security, a crackdown on immigration. The story centers on one unlikely hero, who must protect the first pregnant woman and her child. Some want to use this child as a symbol for their political ends, some hope the child will be the secret to saving the human race, and some just want to keep her safe. Surrounded by death, violence, and the collapse of the human spirit, what can one baby do? 75. Soylent Green (Fleischer, 1973)  Unfortunately, somebody had spoiled the ending of this movie long before I had seen it. I will try to spare you the same. This takes away from the weight of a large chunk of the ending, focusing on the investigation into the dark secret behind soylent green. But the powerful images of an overpopulated world where people are treated as disposable cattle and crowds are kept in control by lifting whole groups of people into dump trucks still hold up today. |
|
|
|
Post by Jesse on Oct 19, 2014 21:27:01 GMT -5
75. Soylent Green (Fleischer, 1973) Looking back the last scene with Edward G. Robinson is actually really touching now knowing it was his last film before he died. Great performance by Charlton Heston as well. |
|
|
|
Post by adamwarlock2099 on Oct 22, 2014 8:23:10 GMT -5
The Children of Men concept sounds interesting. I really can't think of movie, where's humanity's extinction stems from infertility. I have not even heard of this movie for it being so recent. I'll have to give it a try at some point.
|
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Oct 22, 2014 8:48:43 GMT -5
Children Of God I definitely vouch for myself. Soylent Green I shamefully haven't seen, despite having read the source novel, Make Room! Make Room!, back in high school, & for that matter (as I've mentioned before) having interviewed the author, Harry Harrison, over beers about 15 years after that.
Haven't seen Tron, either.
|
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Oct 22, 2014 8:49:58 GMT -5
I will confess to some neglect of this thread I blame life. I blame li ce. I know they've been driving you crazy with the itching & all. |
|
|
|
Post by adamwarlock2099 on Oct 22, 2014 10:16:01 GMT -5
I have not seen Tron either. The premise never sounded interesting to me, even with the updated special effects of the newest film. There are some movies that just seem dated, if I never saw them in their prime.
Then there's films that I saw in their prime, and because of that, or the circumstances surrounding them when I watched it, hate them, like E.T.
|
|
Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
Posts: 10,202 
|
Post by Confessor on Oct 22, 2014 11:18:47 GMT -5
Tron bored me rigid as a 10 year old kid (which I was when it came out) and as an adult it damn near made me want to stab my eyeballs out with a butter knife, just to break the tedium. It is a mind numbingly dull film, although the visuals and design aesthetic of the sequences inside the computer are great. As such, I see Tron as pretty much a text book example of great special effects not necessarily equalling a great movie.
I never bothered seeing the recent sequel (why would I?), but the fact that the original sucked so much and flopped so badly, made me wonder why anyone would bother with the sequel in the first place. I wasn't at all surprised when Tron: Legacy also failed to set the box office on fire.
|
|
|
|
Post by Ish Kabbible on Oct 22, 2014 17:57:16 GMT -5
I too avoided watching Tron for decades. No particular reason, it just seemed too juvenile for my tastes. Finally got to see it last year. Shouldn't have bothered since its somewhat boring and silly. Some good special effects for its time and I do like Jeff Bridges. I'd certainly never recommend it
|
|
|
|
Post by wildfire2099 on Oct 28, 2014 22:05:39 GMT -5
Stargate was awesome. I haven't kept up with the sequels and TV shows and such. Any of them worth watching? I've liked what I've seen of the The main show (Which was the beginning, then the end when they brought in Ben Browder and Claudia Black)... lousy ending though. It's worth checking out, anyway, though I'm not sure watching 10 seasons, a few straight to DVD movies ,and the 2 or 3 seasons of Stargate: Atlantis is worth the time committment |
|
|
|
Post by coke & comics on Nov 16, 2014 23:54:22 GMT -5
Some claim Videodrome predicted the rise of reality TV, but I think I can point to any number of things that can just as easily say the same. The rise of reality TV is predicted by our culture and our history. And violent reality entertainment as imagined in these next two films may not be all that far off reality. It wasn't that long ago we watched executions and gladiatorial combat for fun. We now have sanitized--less lethal but still injurious--versions like football and ultimate fighting to watch. 74. Death Race 2000 (Bartel, 1975) "Is winning all you care about?" "Yes. It's the only standard of excellence left."  In the future, there is an annual race from New York to California. The contestants race and try to murder each other and score extra points for any bystanders they kill along the way (100 points for anybody over 75). It is a popular form of entertainment. The widow of the first bystander "scored" wins a fabulous prize. Our hero is Frankenstein, the best racer in its history, who hides his deformed face beneath a mask. His fans all dream of being run over by him. Terrorists seek to end the violent races and an end to the media-controlling dictatorship of the beloved president. 73. Videodrome (Cronenberg, 1983) "Why would anybody watch it? Why did you watch it?"  VIdeodrome is a broadcast television series that appears to depict brutal torture. It is very realistic and may in fact be real. Max thinks it may be what's next. "Then God help us." But there is more to VIdeodrome than its perversity. Exploring it takes Max into an insane conspiracy and into madness. The movie in effect takes what fearmongers had been warning about regarding violent television, and postulates a scenario in which they are right. That watching violent TV can drive you to violence. David Cronenberg is one of the great science fiction directors, with a particular interest in satire, sex, and his own unique form of body horror. Videodrome is a quintessential example of a Cronenberg film. Much later, the idea of violent entertainment will reemerge as a method of dealing with school violence in Battle Royale and as a method of social control in The Hunger Games |
|
|
|
Post by Ish Kabbible on Nov 17, 2014 0:05:45 GMT -5
I watched Death Race 2000 recently, decades after watching it the first time. It has not aged well at all. The plot sounds interesting when boiled down to 2 sentences. But the movie has terrible acting,terrible dialogue,terrible special effects...its real real bad
|
|
|
|
Post by berkley on Nov 17, 2014 0:12:21 GMT -5
Trivia note: the actor who played the guy [spoil]whose head exploded in that famous scene [/spoil] in Scanners was Louis Del Grande, an American-Canadian tv writer and actor who went on to create and star in what I thought was a quite a good (non-SF) series called Seeing Things for the CBC. Looks like some episodes are available on youtube, if anyone's curious.
|
|
|
|
Post by coke & comics on Nov 17, 2014 0:41:25 GMT -5
72. The Thing (Carpenter, 1982) "So, how do we know who's human? If I was an imitation, a perfect imitation, how would you know if it was really me?"  For the most part, I am favoring originality with this list and avoiding sequels and remakes. Yet this is the second adaptation of John W Campbell's "Who Goes There?" to appear on this list, Howard Hawks' "Thing from Another World" having appeared earlier. From a perspective of sci/fi questions, the first film was notable for the argument that mankind's contact with an advanced alien intelligence was more important than the lives of the people on the station. Nobody in this movie makes such an argument. The movie is about people attempting to survive. The notable addition here, is the alien itself. Like in the original story, this alien has the power to mimic anything it consumes, and in fact first appears on the antarctic base in the form of a dog. This leads to people who need to work together unable to trust each other. This idea of an enemy that would look human would later show up--this time with robotots--in film in Christian Duguay's Screamers based on Philip Dick's "Second Variety". The remade Battlestar Galactica TV series would get a lot of mileage out of this theme. The full effect of the scenario is seen at the film's end, when there are two survivors left and the alien may or may not be dead. They will not last long in the harsh conditions with their camp destroyed. Do they trust each other? Is there anything else they can do? This and the original are one of two movie/remake pairs which will appear on this list. |
|
