Donnie Darko was an ambitious film that successfully managed to live up to its ambition. Richard Kelly’s latest, The Box, is even more ambitious than DK, but unfortunately, only partly lives up to its grand aspirations.
The premise is simple and original: one day, someone comes to your house with a box that has a big red button on it. A man tells you that you have 24 hours to push the button. If you do, somewhere, someone whom you do not know will die. And you will receive one million dollars. If you don’t push the button, the box will go to someone else. What would you do?
This disturbing concept holds the movie very well for 30 to 45 minutes. But there has to be a greater explanation for the idea and this is where Kelly starts to lose us. Although never completely off the mark, the film feels stretched and tries hard to overachieve. We are never fully convinced by the connections to NASA, Aliens, the afterlife and by the film’s attempts to enter into philosophical discussions about good and evil. Too many angles and too many stories to tell. The Astronaut’s Wife meets Invasion of the Body Snatchers meets The Arrival. So despite good intentions and obvious signs of an intelligent director who wants to challenge us, here are a few questionable things i learned from The Box:

- it is usually women who push the button
- visiting the afterlife is akin to taking a cold shower
- highly evolved alien civilizations can’t decide whether to exterminate us so they first make us play a little game, the results of which could make them change their mind (a bit like that super intelligent alien dressed as Keanu Reeves in the awful remake of the Day the Earth Stood Still, who suddenly changes his mind after seeing a sign of human empathy - don’t these aliens do their homework before they get here?)
- these same aliens have mastered highly complex technologies, such as the ability to travel across the universe, to control minds, to give us a glimpse of life after death, and to give eternal life to their ‘human’ emissary, but somehow, they can’t fix the huge hole in his face
- if you keep asking people, especially teenagers, to constantly tilt their head forward and stare at you with their eyes rolled upward into their skull, at some point, they are bound to become spooky (a fact already established in Donnie Darko)
- NASA seems to be a pretty laid back place where everyone does whatever they want

It would be naive to assume that Avatar only works because of the technology. There is little doubt that, in this case, the 3D aspect enhances the filmic experience. However, as Michael Bay and George Lucas, and countless others, remind us too often, placing most of the focus of a film on CGI and visual effects while neglecting everything else, can have disastrous consequences.
James Cameron, while not king of the world, is probably one of Hollywood’s princes of perfection. His reputation as a very hard man to please make him a respected, yet also apparently often disliked director who is not afraid to ask for expensive sets to be completely redone in a very short amount of time and for staff members to be dismissed right away if they fail to comply. It is somewhat unfortunate that these types, whether in Hollywood or not, are often rewarded for being unpleasant but the positive side is that it is exactly what makes them difficult that also allows them to create interesting works.

Avatar provides a fairly average story with extremely cliche characters. The acting is nothing special, the soundtrack is over the top, even a bit annoying, and some of the dialogues are ‘cheesy’. So what works? As mentioned earlier, despite the fact that the CGI and visual effects are of the highest caliber, this in itself is usually not enough to carry a film. Cameron has succeeded in creating an overall experience that is so enthralling that the mediocre aspect of some of its parts is forgiven. A bit like Star Wars in 1977, a film which after all was fairly amateurish at times, Avatar immerses us in a very believable world of fantasy, legends and myths. The acting may not make much sense but the details of the world do. It is this meticulously crafted visual and non-visual environment that succeeds in transporting us to a very interesting place for 160 minutes or so.

While i like intelligent, cerebral and artsy cinema, i also love when cinema just entertains and when it does it well. Avatar has sucked all that it could from the little book of entertaining cinema and offers perhaps the best visual effects ever created on film. But more importantly, it works thanks to the clarity of an artistic vision and thanks to the perfectionism of James Cameron.

I had the pleasure of watching the German premiere of District 9 as part of the Berlin Fantasy Film Festival. It is not often that a Sci-Fi film rises above the ocean of mediocrity that plagues the genre so when it does happen, it is worth praising it.

District 9 is the debut film of Neill Blomkamp, Peter Jackson’s 29 years old protege. An action flick with a heart and a bit of social critic, the film revolves around issues of intergration between the residents of Johannesburg and a community of weakened Alien creatures that landed on Earth 20 years earlier and were forced to live in the slums of the South African city.

Made on what is today a fairly modest budget of $30 million, District 9 feels much bigger and better than most sci-fi films that cost two or three times that amount. The 600 visual effect shots are for the most part splendid and the level of detail impressive. Add to this some quality acting (Sharlto Copley is a lot of fun to watch), solid directing on the part of a young and ‘in’experienced director and a cinema verite documentary style of filming that is effective in building a sense of the real in the film while covering up nicely for potential errors, and you have a cult favorite in the making.

Yet, it is not the masterpiece that many have talked about. A few inconsistencies and one major (in my opinion) gap in the storyline prevent it from becoming already one of the best Sci-Fi films ever. Attention Spoilers Ahead. I am referring to the liquid that allows for the shuttle to return to the ship. I found it a bit of a stretch that this liquid also happens to turn a human into an alien through inhalation. Perhaps there was a good explanation for it in the film and i missed it. In which case i would need to edit this blog entry at a later date. In the meantime, i was a bit disappointed that they could not find a better way to handle the transition between the two ‘halves’ of the film. I also picked up a few other things, albeit small, which made me realize that the film still felt a tad amateurish at times. For this reason, it certaintly should not be discussed in the same vein as 2001 or Blade Runner or Alien…

But perhaps time will prove me wrong. In the meantime, District 9 is a very good film and a breath of fresh air in the otherwise usually boring and unsurprising Sci-Fi film landscape.

Some films continue to be made as they were meant to, that is, within an artistic and philosophical framework and mindset. Some others are developed as products, with profit and entertainment as the main objective. Clearly some artistic films can be entertaining but rarely is a ‘product’ film very artistic or philosophical.

When Robert Wise directed Star Trek: The Motion Picture in 1979, the blockbuster was only a few years old and auteur films were still prominent. Wise’s effort remains today one of the most serious undertakings at meaningful, earnest and reputable Sci-Fi. 30 years later, one of Hollywood’s hottest properties, J.J. Abrams, has tried to bring his magic touch to your parents’ favourite space saga. Undoubtebly inspired by the success of rejuvenated James Bond and Batman, the producers of Star Trek felt that it was time for the franchise to become more ‘modern’ and to draw on current cinematic trends and on overall changes in cinematic tastes

As I discussed this latest instalment of Star Trek with a colleague who had really enjoyed the film, I struggled to articulate why a movie filled with quality action, decent acting, top-notch visual effects and with an overall obvious respect for the franchise and what it represents, could have left me so disappointed. But it became clear to me after a while that the reason was simple: this film was developed as a product, and not as a piece of art. As such, it felt convenient, easy, and at times superficial and fluffy. It was made of pre-existing parts that one can assemble together to shape the product. Now, it must be said, Hollywood can produce both good and bad products and this Star Trek happens to be a good product, a well-crafted one built by experts. But it is a product nonetheless. A product for entertainment purposes, for immediate consumption and limited cognitive depth. The creativity goes into the action sequences and the special effects but is barely present in the script and in the overall storyline. There is nothing fresh about time travel and parallel universes, at least not in the way it was presented to us in this film. And as a friend of mine pointed out, there was little creativity in coming up with an interesting enemy or nemesis. Let’s just put a bit of make up on Bana’s face and have him snarl at the camera.

A few sequences made me whinge, as when Spock saves the members of his family who looked like they were having tea and cookies nonchalentely while their planet crumbled around them. Thank god Spock showed them how to exit their own cave or else it appears that they would have gone on with whatever it is they were doing before Spock barged in. And then there is the whole sequence about old Spock meeting Kirk miraculously in some cave. Somehow Spock happens to have a torch to repel the monster that had been chasing Kirk through the snow (Empire Strikes Back anyone?). Spock also knows about the outpost next door where they find, you guessed it, beam me up Scotty. So that’s how it all happened. Just like that. People who liked the film will say that it had to be all explained and that Abrams did just that. But i will say that it should not have been all explained, not if it means having to stich sequences together in a way that feels forced and artificial. Indeed, Abrams explained it all and he still managed to provide 120 minutes of jokes and action. I say, something had to give.

Star Trek is far from being a bad film, and i might even watch it again some day. It is definitively better than many films i have reviewed on this blog. Yet, it is also quite inferior to recent Sci-Fi efforts such as Watchmen or The Dark Knight or even to the Battlestar Galactica series

For your viewing pleasure, a fun short from the masters at Pixar …

The Day the Earth Stood Still is a pathetic film. As I much as I love Hollywood for its mystic, history, glamour and for the fact that it continues year after year to enable the creation of marvellous films, I also sometimes hate it for being able to not only green light such trash but also for purposefully creating in the first place such a non-sensical and emotionally deficient waste, tailored to please the common denominator, thus totally disregarding in the process good acting, scene plausibility, intelligent dialogues and well developed characters. I won’t even get into the dishonour a bad remake does to the original film upon which it is based, in this case, one of the best Science Fiction films of all time.

Stiff Keanu Reeves as the stoic Alien already tells us that we are embarking on a risky adventure. Some might see a certain logic in casting someone who does not know how to act (although once in a while Reeves is capable of raising his acting to the level of ‘enjoyable enough’ as in The Gift (2000)) for the part of an alien who supposedly does not initially understand emotions, but I would rather classify this as bad and naïve casting. Or more likely as marketing-based casting. After all, Brad Pitt, who has since shown that he is capable of good acting in such films as Kalifornia (1993), Fight Club (1999), Snatch (2000), 12 Monkeys (1995), The Assassination of Jesse James (2007) and Burn after Reading (2008), proved through his horrid performances in Interview with a Vampire (1994) and Meet Joe Black (1998) that playing blasé and stoic characters (as well as an Austrian character in Seven Years in Tibet (1997)) is not the stuff of average actors.

With the addition of the money-driven and inappropriate casting of Keanu Reeves, The Day the Earth Stood Still also boasts an impressive list of clichés, issued straight out the bad blockbuster manual: the racially mixed infuriating child who will do the most maddening things at the most inopportune moments but who, as even the average viewer will have guessed from the start, will finally overcome his emotional issues and become only slightly less annoying; the bright and single mother who has problems raising that irritating little…mentioned earlier and who seems to know all the right people since she will become the main point of contact for the alien (someone in this whole disaster of a production still had enough good sense to ensure that she does not end up falling in love with the alien); the know-it-all and closed minded politicians who will of course make all the wrong decisions; the beyond repair and impotent military establishment which, as usual, will find bigger and bigger rockets to throw at the problem; the good, tolerant and just scientists who, if it weren’t for the politicians and military, could make the world a much better place; and last but not least, the alien who is so intelligent that, after some small, uninteresting and morally infantile chats with a couple of people, discovers the meaning of emotions and realizes that humans are not such a bad lot after all. My son is 19 months old and has an EQ far superior to the level of this film.

In comparison to the relevance of this film to contemporary environmental issues (its superficial message that we are killing our earth and its ending that seems to lightly suggest – and this was not made very clear - that stopping all technology is the answer to these issues, are an affront to the problems we truly face), Emmerich’s The Day after Tomorrow (2004) seems like a scientific treatise, which of course does not say a whole lot about Hollywood’s ability to take these issues seriously.

I am a lover of great cinema but also of great cinematic trash. This, on the other hand, is bad trash and as such deserves every single bit of negative press it has so far received. In the meantime, I shall pull out the 1951 version of The Day the Earth Stood Still from my DVD shelf for a little trip down nostalgia lane…

Back in 1989, i went to The Rolling Stones’ Steel Wheels reunion concert, and i remember feeling torn between accepting that some people feel the need to ‘do it again’ or to ‘do it one more time’, and not understanding why some do not seem to realize that their best is behind them and that by refusing to let bygones be bygones they run the risk of destroying something that was previously precious. It turns out that The Stones still had a few years left in them, and not everyone had been as unimpressed as i was.

Unimpressed is also the word i would use to describe my reaction after watching Indiana Jones 4. Or perhaps unenthusiastic. Or unconvinced. Or indifferent. There is enough quality in IJ4 to keep one fairly entertained, but there is also something crucial missing, something that was at the core of the previous Indiana Jones films (at least number 1 and 3). Like the Star Wars prequels, which emphasized action and visual effects over character development and dialog, Indiana Jones lost its heart (and wit) and became an unemotional succession of well-choreographed but soulless and stereotypical action scenes.

It is hard to believe that it took so long for Ford, Lucas and Spielberg to agree on the script and to finally end up with this sub par effort that for the most part recycles previous material.

Once in a while, one stumbles upon a work of such quality that one cannot help but to be baffled at how such a work could escape one’s notice for so long. Diaspora, written in 1997 by Greg Egan, is one of the most powerful, mind bending and far reaching book I have ever read.

As I have posted several times before, one of the drawbacks of many Sci-Fi representations and stories brought to the silver screen, is the difficulty in reaching the right balance between depicting a credible future, sometimes a distant future, while at the same time preserving some sense of ‘normality’ as well as traditional frames of references in order to not alienate the viewer. Unfortunately, this balance is rarely reached and most of Hollywood’s visualizations tend to be very limited and writers or directors seem content to show us the same old humans with the same old problems, values and physical characteristics, regardless of when in the future the story might be occurring. Just place these archaic visions of the past in front of a couple of futuristic looking buildings, add some fancy cars with doors that slide vertically and complete the package with the occasional gismo to obtain your average run-of-the-mill Sci-Fi flick.

While Sci-Fi literature offers many possibilities for more credible, fleshed out and geeky visions of the future, there has still been an over-reliance on ‘traditional’ humans as lead or even as only characters. This seems to have changed in the past few years, and the implications of Transhumanisn are increasingly being used as material for many Sci-Fi books. In Diaspora, Greg Egan describes in great detail how the ‘human race’ might split and evolve towards a post human future. While the process of becoming more than human will most likely be very gradual, with humans combining with machines and vice versa (a process that has already started with the adoption of pacemakers, Cochlear implants, prosthetic limbs, or even the mobile phone which has become a natural extension of ourselves), Egan portrays a future a few hundred years hence dominated by three main forms of beings: the Fleshers, ‘traditional’ humans with or without genetic modifications, the Gleisner Robots, robotic shells inhabited by human minds, and the Polis Citizens, the uploaded minds of humans ‘living’ in computer and simulated worlds. In addition, on rare occasions, the polis creates a new mind, a purely artificially conceived one, albeit very human in many ways.

Over a period of several thousand years, Egan traces the quest of some of these Polis Citizens as they attempt to prevent and then escape the destruction of our universe (an early consequence of this destruction is the end of the Fleshers, and thus, the end of humanity as we know it today). This quest will lead these highly advanced non-physical entities, our descendants, to some of the most far-reaching destinations the mind could possibly conceive.

Egan doesn’t shy away from grand mathematical and physical speculation, and for the average reader, his lengthy descriptions of the universe’s most innate workings will seem a bit tedious at times. But sticking through these sections is quite worth it as one is rewarded by an avalanche of fantastic and awe-inspiring concepts. There is plenty to ponder in Diaspora and anyone interested in what existence might be like as an uploaded mind, in a possible direction for the future of the human race, in parallel universes and multi-dimensions, in the potential for alien life, or simply in the infinite mystery and beauty of the cosmos, then this book is an absolute must-read.

I am still somewhat perplexed by Ken MacLeod’s decision to conspicuously display ‘A Space Opera’ on the cover of his book, directly below the title. Is he trying to inform us from the very start that because it is a space opera, we shouldn’t take some of its content too seriously? Is this a way to excuse or justify a certain lightness and comic approach to this story about the future of the human race 400 years from now, after a singularity-type explosion of technological advancement has led to war on earth and to the splitting of the remaining humans in various gangs that compete with one another in space? If yes, is this disclaimer powerful enough to lessen one’s disappointment when reading that the future will be led by a gang of swearing Capitalist Scots or by some East-Asian Communist community of terraformers? Is this fun for 300 pages? I certainly didn’t think so and was bored after 50. The ideas brought forth in Newton’s Wake do not feel challenging and thought provoking enough or have been better depicted in other novels. They seem to rely on a very 20th century understanding of human nature, communication and social interactions. In addition, the lead characters are all quite uninspiring and, in fact, not really likeable, as exemplified by one of the stories which revolves around two musicians who are, in my opinion, two of the most boring characters I have read in a book recently.
In conclusion, my first exposure to the work of a man who is supposedly a new force in Sci-Fi and transhumanist literature has not been a very enjoyable one and it might be a while before I attempt to read another one of his books.

I recently asked a New Yorker if he had watched I am Legend (2007). His reply was that since 9/11, he has had no desire to watch any film that deals with the destruction of his city. While I am Legend didn’t draw obvious parallels to that fateful day seven years ago, it is however difficult to miss them in Cloverfield and to consequently not feel at times slightly uncomfortable at the sight of people dying and being trapped in situations in which they have absolutely no control over their fate.

Cloverfield is an old-fashioned 1950’s monster flick (see my post on sci-fi/horror and the city) that draws heavily on current filmmaking and social trends, especially in its depiction of a YouTube/Facebook need to document and share everything about one’s self, one’s experiences, even possibly about one’s death (everything leading up to death that is, which is clearly a lot more voyeuristic and contemporary than wanting to document what happens after death, which was the premise of the 80’s film Brainstorm (1983)). The Blair Witch Project (1999) had already caught on to these ‘self-documenting’ trends years ago, and as such, proved to be a groundbreaking film. Cloverfield, on the other hand, can only rehash what has been done before, and puts the documenting so much in the foreground that it often takes away from the believability of some of the scenes. It feels too much that the story is built around the idea of documenting whereas in The Blair Witch Project documenting was more seamlessly integrated into a solid narrative. In addition, the intensity and the wobbliness of the camera movements, while effective for the most part, can sometimes be confusing and even tiring.

Yet, Cloverfield also manages to keep us on the edge of our seat and to deliver an overall intense, and at times, frightening experience. The first half of the movie is the most effective since we are left guessing as to what exactly is terrorizing the city. One of the many things that Alien (1979) taught us (its impact on the horror/sci-fi genre has been inestimable) is that one can probably create more tension and suspense by showing less and by letting the potent powers of the imagination do the visualizing, which is most often based on one’s worst fears. Once we have become acquainted with the monster(s) of Cloverfied, the film starts to lose some of its pace and power, a fact reinforced by the increasing silliness of the protagonists’ decision-making. But a nice twist in the last ten minutes saves us from the unexpected dreadful and predictable ending.

In the end, running at a short 85 minutes, Cloverfield turns out to be a decently enjoyable viewing experience that is clearly in a higher league than recent monster films and remakes such as the dreadful Godzilla (1998).

Take a bland and decent looking actor, place a silly and useless woman at his side whose sole role it is to shriek every five minutes, pair him with a crazy and hyper, but brilliant inventor, use lots of ridiculous costumes and utterly preposterous plastic and latex things like flowers, rocks, bubbly tanks and Martians, place it all in a Victorian context, and you get an unfortunately overly used recipe for making terrible Sci-Fi B movies.

I have never read this novel by HG Wells, but I sincerely hope that this film, about that crazy threesome mentioned earlier getting to the moon long before the first astronauts, has taken plenty of freedom with the original story, as i would hate to think that Wells was capable of such silliness…

This silliness is even more so highlighted when one considers that Planet of the Apes (68) and Kubrick’s 2001 (68) both came out only four years after First Men in the Moon.
The only people who are going to enjoy this film are the ones who watched it when they were children and still remember fondly the absurd Martian latex costumes. For the rest of us, well, let us just keep an open mind.

A decent 1950’s Sci-Fi effort. The film has its share of silly moments but it tries very hard to deal seriously with a potential invasion of earth by UFOs.

Imagine Independence Day 40 years earlier, with some nasty aliens in foam suits trying to destroy earth and most of its recognizable monuments. Only the ingenuity of a human scientist keeps the invaders from succeeding with their not-very-well-thought-through plan.
The ‘special effects’ were produced by the father of stop motion in cinema, Ray Harryhausen, who would later work on the visual effects for Jason and the Argonauts, One Million Years BC and Clash of the Titans. The UFO’s and their laser beams are particularly well done. The rest is, well, it’s 50’s sci-fi. So let’s not beat a dead horse.

Many scenes reminded me of Tim Burton’s Mars Attacks. It is likely that Earth vs the Flying Saucers is one of the many films that inspired Burton to make his homage.

Isaac Asimov has published over 400 books in his lifetime. This is, apparently, more than anyone else has ever published, in any literary genre. My first reaction when I learned this, is that when someone churns out books so quickly, they are bound to come up at some point (or regularly) with less than average material. Stephen King, for example, is one of these authors whose great works are starting to become invisible in the middle of an ever-growing pile of nonsense.

The Gods Themselves is not one of Asimov’s bests (Asimov declared, however, that this was his favorite novel). It feels to me as if he came up with a great central idea but had to force himself to build a story around it.

This story revolves around the idea of parallel universes and the exchange of energy between these two universes.

‘Aliens’ in a parallel universe find a way to contact earth and to get the people of earth to build a Proton Pump. This pump allows each universe to get a free source of unlimited energy, something that, for different reasons, both sides need badly. But, in each universe, someone realizes that this will come at a cost and tries to stop the pump.

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A winner on several occasions of various ‘worst film ever’ competitions, this film does indeed live up to its reputation.

No efforts were spared for this extravagant science fiction saga in which aliens from space decide to exterminate the human race by turning its dead into zombies…

The costumes are ravishing, the acting of the highest calibre and the production design surely must have had an influence on Ridley Scott and Stanley Kubrick…

Or maybe not…it’s all bad and cheap but, perhaps because I have seen Tim Burton’s film Ed Wood, i couldn’t help but smile at the naivety of it all…

And if one watches long enough, it almost becomes…cute.

I am bewildered that this film actually received several positive reviews. And it is because of these reviews that I decided to watch it. Roger Ebert even called it ‘smart Science Fiction’. What is he smoking? I should know better than to trust him, but still, my curiosity was aroused. Yet, the film is clichés and inconsistencies-ridden and Charlie Sheen couldn’t look more out of place as the nerd who discovers the aliens’ secrets if he were playing a priest preaching abstinence. And of course, the Aliens walk on two legs, carry guns (hello?), resort to all types of absurd killing methods that never succeed (enough to make Dr Evil proud), and, last but not least, have decided that Man is a menace and must be eliminated through….the terraforming of earth. I guess these are nature loving aliens…

Film architecture and design has existed almost as long as cinema itself. In 1976, Leon Barsacq argued in Caligari’s Cabinet And Other Grand Illusions that the fantasist sets developed by Georges Melies at the beginning of the 20th century were a considerable improvement over anything that had been done previously in that they created a deeper reality and gave the image a more substantial meaning. He further added that cinema escaped its primitive phase once it moved away from simple backdrops to three-dimensional sets, thereby creating an architectural space within cinema[1]. Post World War I, the German Expressionists fully explored this new architectural space through the creation of sets that attempted to reflect the inner emotions of the characters in the films. And David O. Selznik’s use of the term ‘production design’ in reference to the work of the American director and set designer William Cameron Menzies on Gone with the Wind (1939), finally helped film design and architecture gain the official recognition and visibility that has since become an integral part of the cinematic experience and of the output of most film industries.

Following fairly closely the emergence of production values in the history of cinema has been the rise and acceptance of science fiction cinema. It is indisputable that the two are interconnected and that a process exists where both feed off from one another. Cinema learns from architecture and architecture learns from cinema. As far back as 1926, many architects were said to have been impressed and influenced by Metropolis (1926). Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 (1968) also apparently became a source of inspiration for the world of architecture, with the director himself having sourced a lot of his inspiration from several existing architectural and design trends and concepts. Today, terms like ‘science fiction architecture’, ‘high-tech architecture’ or ‘cyber architecture’ are commonly used to refer to a new and ‘modern’ style of architecture that draws heavily on science fiction and new technologies. For many architects, ‘science fiction is an imaginative form of design’[2], making its visualizations worth studying.

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In the tradition of The Happiness of the Katakuris, this film is a concoction of gore, suspense, comedy, action (but no singing)…Surreal, bizarre, engaging, quirky, it is not for everyone’s taste but should please all those craving for something different and exotic (and well put together).

Winner of an academy award for best special effects in 1954, this film is a precursor to the modern day blockbuster and a brave attempt at bringing Wells’ classic novel to the screen.
As with many Sci-Fi films from the 50’s, one has to alter one’s field of judgment and critical sphere to account for the passing of time.
Yet, other films from that time such as The Day the Earth Stood Still, The Thing from Another World or Invasion of the Body Snatchers have endured much better and continue to appeal to modern audiences.

British Science Fiction cinema has always lived in the shadow of its American counterpart, either as a result of a direct effort to emulate an American style to enable the films to reach broader markets or as an indirect consequence of the fact that, since the 50’s, Science Fiction cinema has been associated with America, drawing on its rich heritage of comics and magazines.

But British Science Fiction cinema has in fact a much greater legacy than is often given credit to. Since the beginning of the 20th century, various British directors and producers have explored the genre, often taking it into new directions, pushing its boundaries, and drawing on the wealth of ideas and masterful works which British Science Fiction writers like H.G Wells, George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, Arthur C. Clarke, John Wyndham and Michael Moorcock have produced over the years.

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After the release of Dr. Strangelove in 1964, Kubrick set his sights on Science Fiction.

At that time, America and Russia were fully engaged in a space race that had already witnessed the first men (and woman) in space, and the first unmanned probes to the moon.

The first space walks were only one year away. But more importantly, in the context of 2001, theories abounded about extra terrestrial life and the possibility of ‘alien’ intelligence in the cosmos.

Kubrick was fascinated by this concept and decided it was time to make a serious film about the relationship between Man and the Universe.

He did not take any of the previous science fiction films seriously and was eager to create a vision that would be perfectly plausible and convincing. He enlisted the help of one of the most praised science fiction writer and scientific mind of that time, Arthur C. Clarke. They embarked on 18 months of preparation, with Clarke first writing a novel based on one of his short stories from 1948 (The Sentinel).

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In 1951, Howard Hawks’ The Thing introduced audiences to horror science fiction. While the genre would prove quite popular with the public, it would also unfortunately be too often associated with cheap and amateurish B-movies.

British efforts, frequently more serious in intent than their American counterparts, provided a few solid entries into the genre, including The Quatermass Xperiment (55), Village of the Damned (60) and Unearthly Stranger (63).

But Ridley Scott’s Alien (79) marked the first time horror and science fiction were masterfully combined to create a realistic, serious, and truly scary film.

When the film came out in 1979, Ridley Scott was a relatively unknown director. With only the magnificently atmospheric film The Duelists (77) to his credit, Scott created The horror film in space, one whose premise and style continue to be an influence on many filmmakers, writers, production designers and audiences today.

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Unearthly Stranger (63) is a remarkable example of solid and intelligent science fiction, reminding us that low budget is not always synonymous with cheap and funny.

John Krish, whose past credits included episodes of The Avengers and The Saint, was fully aware of the limitations placed on him by a low budget, and decided to do what Val Guest did in The Day the Earth Caught Fire (61), that is, to make a sci-fi film that relies on rigorous direction, serious acting, and sharp and clever dialogues.

The result is one of the best British sci-fi films of the 60’s.

The film includes superb performances by John Neville, who continued to struggle as an actor until 1988 when Terry Gilliam cast him for the lead role in The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (88), thereby revitalizing Neville’s career, and by Philip Stone who worked with Stanley Kubrick three times in a career that included mostly television.
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