Movies

Murder As Entertainment In Darabont’s Future Reality Project

Frank Darabont recently let it slip that he owns the rights to The Long Walk, which was a short story included in Stephen King’s The Bachman Books back in 1979. It’s an extremely dark tale set in the near future about a new form of entertainment that has the whole country held in rapt attention,…

Logan’s Run Remake Finally Happening … Maybe

Logan’s Run is one the only few films that was firmly rooted in the science fiction genre and wasn’t titled Star Wars to come out of the 1970s. It’s also been stuck running in place in Hollywood’s favorite prison: development hell. Will the remake actually happen this time? Directors ranging from Skip Wood to Bryan…

WTF He’s Wearing Kirk’s Jacket On Top of His Shiny Thing

Image from /Film.

The Savior in Science Fiction Films

There have been a recent rash of websites posting about the Christ-like similarities that some of the major figures in science fiction films exhibit. Everyone from Paul Atreides in Dune, to Neo in The Matrix, to Spock in Star Trek, and even Doctor Who seem to have the same messianic properties, but is it case…

Time Travel Is Like Heroin in Primer

Four corporate drones trying to spinoff a cool startup accidentally discover time travel in Shane Carruth’s dark SF flick Primer, a Sundance hit in 2004. Carruth’s tale explores what happens when time travel doesn’t work quite the way you’d expect — to travel back in time 6 hours, you have to sit in a cramped…

Harlan Ellison Not Happy About Star Trek Movie Rumors

If you’ve been reading anything about the upcoming J.J. Abrams Star Trek remake online, then it’s probably been boring stuff like casting rumors. However, plot details have started to surface over the past few days, and at least one person out there isn’t happy about it. Fair warning: there be potential spoilers ahead. Harlan Ellison,…

Joss Whedon Says the Strike Isn’t About Money

Joss Whedon appeared on the Hollywood picket lines in a rather rakish Australian Akubra hat to show his support for the strike, and broke down what it’s all about. While he says residuals aren’t really about the money, the translation is: yes, it’s all about the money. He uses the analogy of a baker getting…

Man Hops Off A Freight Train At 7,000 KPH In Space

Rockets may be a thing of the past one of these days. Instead, we may use huge electromagnetic "rail guns" to escape from the gravity of a body such as Earth or the Moon. But this concept hasn’t appeared much in movies or TV yet. Hence this new short film (which is still in development,…

Astro Boy Will Be “Dark Pinocchio” Story Of Robot Violence

The animated Astro Boy movie, due out in 2009, will be a gorgeous and painterly homage to Hiyao Miyazaki and early George Lucas, director Colin Brady tells FirstShowing.net. This “dark Pinocchio” story (about a robot who can never become human) will feature hardcore robot-on-robot violence. And judging from the first concept art, it’ll be gorgeous.…

Super-Rabies Turns LA Building Into Death Trap In Quarantined

Plagues are the new monsters. Just look at Quarantined, the movie Screen Gems just green-lighted about a reporter and her camera crew, trapped inside a building where a deadly new strain of rabies rages. It sounds very 28 Days Later, but also like a zoom-lens on the future of our overpopulated and psychotic global village.…

Psychedelic Dante 01 Trailer — Gorgeous But Familiar

Marc Caro, probably best known from his collaborative directing with Jean Pierre Jeunet on such films like The City Of Lost Children and Delicatessen, has a new scifi film coming out called Dante 01. It combines the visual look of THX 1138, Aliens (especially the third entry in that series), and even Danny Boyle’s underrated…

Fahrenheit 451 Is “The Most Relevant Piece Of Literature Ever Written”

Director Frank Darabont has made a career out of adapting kooky and off-beat novel and short stories, most of them from the hand of Stephen King. He impressively turned the very thin story “Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption” into a film that holds his own, and now he’s attempting to do the same with Ray…

Video Evidence Tells You Not To Walk Into The Mist

Whenever someone says “DON’T DO X!” in a movie, where X is go into an abandoned building, open a mystical old book, or walk into a creepy mist, you know someone just has to do it. Of course, we have the advantage of knowing that The Mist is bad from the get go, but come…

TV Makes You Kill in “The Signal”

The Signal is an upcoming flick (Feb 2008) about a TV signal that gives you “the crazy” and makes you murder people in creative ways that Hostel director Eli Roth could only dream of. Directed by three different people working in the low-budget, buckets-of-ironic-blood style popularized by Roth, The Signal follows in the footsteps of…

Guillermo Del Toro Tackles Telepathic British Spies

Three spies crash-land in the Himalayas, where a monk gives them telepathic powers in The Champions, a forgotten British show from 1968. Now fantasy/horror mastermind Guillermo Del Toro is adapting it into a movie for Universal. Del Toro is one of the few auteurs you can trust to update this material without uncritically including the…

The Bad Astrology And Universe Today forum has a hilarious list of the Top 5 Sci-Fi Aircraft That Would Fall Like A Rock. Turns out the laws of aerodynamics still apply, even in the future. Image by Franz66

Has Southland Tales Shaken The Suck Factor?

Director Richard Kelly brought us the cult hit Donnie Darko, and he’s been hard at work on Southland Tales, a weird mix of science fiction, music, comedy, and drama set against a post-apocalyptic Los Angeles. Sounds like the perfect backdrop for a light-hearted romp, right? We say he’s been hard at work, because this film…

Can A “BaadAssss” Time Traveler Prevent The Apocalypse?

A second-generation blaxploitation director plans to tackle science fiction. Mario Van Peebles is writing and directing The Uniter, an epic about a political fugitive from the future who journeys back to our time to prevent an apocalypse in 2012. The time traveler aims to stop the disaster before it happens by training a 13-year-old to…

Must Read: X-Men: New X-Men Omnibus

Must-read comics are futuristic classics that shouldn’t be missed. Of course, not every must-read is perfect. That’s why we’ve rated them 1-5 on the patented “crunchy goodness” scale. Title: New X-Men Omnibus Date: 2007 (reprinting material from 2001 – 2004). Vitals: Given the task of refocusing Marvel’s X-Men franchise in the wake of the first…

Must Read: X-Men: Days of Future Past

Must-read comics are futuristic classics that shouldn’t be missed. Of course, not every must-read is perfect. That’s why we’ve rated them 1-5 on the patented “crunchy goodness” scale. Title: X-Men: Days Of Future Past Date: 2004 (reprinting material from 1980) Vitals: Not content with rewriting superhero comics’ DNA with their groundbreaking three-year collaboration on Marvel…