I hear Will Smith was offered the part of Marcus Wright in Terminator Salvation but decided to turn it down due to the softness of the ’spirit of giving’ angle. Instead, Smith went for the soapy Seven Pounds (08). Too bad as i can imagine very well Will Smith playing an existentially troubled machine that thinks it is human and that decides to donate its heart to the main protagonist, John Connor.

If i just made up the part about Will Smith, it is only to illustrate how silly of a film Terminator Salvation is. While i respect Will Smith, i found Seven Pounds to be way over the top in terms of cheese factor and this latest Terminator is not far behind, although, after just a bit of reflection, i might have to say that Seven Pounds is a better film. So way to go Will, you have once again chosen wisely. The same can not be said for Christian Bale whose performance in this film certainly did not warrant his much publicized verbal assault on a crew member during the shoot. Ever since The Machinist (04), Bale has built a reputation for strongly getting ‘in-role’ and for his Method Acting intensity, but lately that does not seem to translate into a whole lot. His Bruce Wayne is uneventful and dull, as is his John Connor. But Bale is not a bad actor. He just needs to start choosing better roles.

Terminator Salvation is a poorly written film with lasily developed characters and some of the worst editing i have seen recently. Scenes jump from one to the next without much logic and with very little smoothness. Much of the script is driven by the action without much regard for plausibility and common sense. For example, the resistance penetrates Skynet with such ease, it makes you wonder what the whole fuss with the machines has been about. Then there is the sexy female character who so conveniently meets the machine and falls so madly in love with it that she makes a fairly ridiculous decision that has no other purpose than to drive the action forward. My list of complaints goes on.

McG, the director, recently had a feud with Michael Bay, my old nemesis. I suggest that instead of fighting over who has the biggest robot, they should go have a beer and exchange ideas on how to make crappy films. Bay still has the most knowledge in this area, but it looks like McG is catching up fast.

Before the uniqueness of Mad Max (1979), before the madness of Burning Man, and long before the flatness of Waterworld (1995), came the inventiveness of A Boy and his Dog. An unjustly forgotten apocalyptic tale of a young man and his telepathic dog wandering the desert in search of food and sex after the world has blown itself to smithereens, this film has become a cult classic and should be mandatory viewing for any Sci-Fi aficionados.

Satirical, disturbing, funny, unpleasant, anarchistic with strong macho undertones, critical of a petty middle class suburban mentality, A Boy and his Dog has got enough ammunition to rub many people the wrong way. Its social satire of the present is much more powerful than its representation of the future, and like other Sci-Fi films from the 70s, such as Logan’s Run (1976) and THX 1138 (1971), it certainly makes clear that our individual freedom and personal choice must prevail over potential collective, conservative and hygienic visions of the future.

So here I am, hanging out in the flavellas of Rio de Janeiro, taking some well deserved time off from my busy schedule and hoping to find inspiration for my next screenplay, when, sadly, I come across a film shoot: Hulk número duas.
I observe silently for a few minutes until Louis Letterier comes over, greets me and proceeds to tell me about how this Hulk movie is going to kick some serious ass but also how it will skilfully marry action, adventure, mystery and emotional depth. A new level in comic book adaptation, a work of such intensity that people will quickly forget the mediocrity of Ang Lee’s first Hulk, he says…a portrayal of emotionally troubled creatures who long for the acceptance of the world and the normalness of others…a story of love, betrayal, courage and sacrifice…a timeless piece that, yada yada yada yada…

At that moment, feeling a sudden craving for a Mojito, I pull one of my best disappearing acts, leaving this man behind who is still talking to no one, and knowing only too well that this Hulk film is going to be a disaster of monstrous proportions.

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).

Ava Gardner, Gregory Peck, Anthony Perkins and Fred Astair, in one of the bleakest films produced by Hollywood during that period.

With the exception of Australia, the entire planet has been decimated by nuclear war, the origin and details of which are adroitly never explained, and simply blamed on the absurdity and stupidity of humankind. A US submarine escaped the devastation and makes its way towards Melbourne where the locals have only a few months to live until the radiation reaches their country.

Tightly directed by Stanley Kramer, the director of Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967), On the Beach maintains its serious and dark premise until the end, never letting cheap and easy sentimentalism take over and never trying to provide a false sense of hope or of a greater moral truth. In addition, and that is commendable for a film from that period, it does not choose sides and refuses to engage in ‘we are better than them’ or ‘it’s all their fault’ type messages.

Instead, the film focuses on a handful of people and how they choose to spend their last months of life and the decisions they face during that time. While the overall emotional intensity feels a bit subdued at times, a feeling reinforced by the decision to avoid showing scenes of madness, folly or desperation (unlike, for example, in The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961), another serious film from that period that deals with somewhat similar themes, where various scenes of chaos and rioting are shown, or in The Day After (1983), the made for TV film that shocked America with its realistic and disturbing scenes of apocalypse, or even in Peter Watkins’s groundbreaking docu-drama The War Game (1965)), the narrative nonetheless works effectively by keeping it all fairly understated, and, well, bleak.

Gardner and Peck are quite a charismatic couple to watch and I can only admire their liberal willingness to play in such a film.

I am offended as I was misled. I was misled to believe that Sunshine is a grown-up, serious and spiritual Sci-Fi flick. Never mind that that I had the chance to visit the set in London and that I read the script in its early stages, thinking that it felt a lot like many other movies I had already watched. I am still offended. Especially considering that Sunshine is fairly grown-up, restrained and ‘realistic’ for about 70% of the film, and thus raises our expectations and gives us the impression that we might just be watching some quality Sci-Fi, until that seriousness dissolves into a explosion of pseudo-horror nonsense that unfortunately brings nothing to the film, and on the contrary, takes much away from its chances at passing on any kind of spiritual message. Instead of aiming for a Solaris or a 2001, it ends feeling like a not very scary Event Horizon. Pity, as Sunshine offered plenty of quality moments, some impactful visuals, and so much potential for raising the bar of Science Fiction cinema…

Peter Bradshaw and Philip French of the Guardian rarely surprise me with their reviews, especially when it comes to Science Fiction, but they certainly did in the case of Sunshine (http://film.guardian.co.uk/Film_Page/0,,2029236,00.html). A case of misplaced British pride?

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.

Roger Corman is one of Hollywood’s most amazing personalities and a producer’s favourite case study.

Throughout the 60’s and 70’s, he was churning out films by the dozens, drawing on an ability to discern and understand public taste, trends and fears. His films cost very little to make but generated fairly high returns. He can easily be considered the father of the B movie and continues to influence a large group of filmmakers, producers, and studio execs. He also happens to have given Coppola, Scorcese, Bogdanovich and many others, at the dawn of their careers, a chance to practice, experiment and direct by using his cameras or left-over film stock from his productions.
The Day the World Ended is one of his better films, meaning that it must have taken him 2 weeks to shoot instead of 2 days. The film depicts a post nuclear world where, in addition to struggling to find non-contaminated goods and resources, survivors must also deal with some annoying and incredibly cheap looking mutated animals…

This is all terribly and poorly done and it is hard to think of Corman in a good light when watching this pile of nonsense….

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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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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While The Day the Earth Caught Fire was filmed and released in 1961, the idea first came to director Val Guest in 1954, two years after England detonated its first nuclear device.

He wrote an initial screenplay, which, in spite of Guest’s established reputation thanks to films such as The Quatermass Xperiment (1955) and The Abominable Snowman (1957), was turned down by several studios before finally being accepted by British Lion.

It is therefore within a context of 50’s and early 60’s cold war and nuclear paranoia that The Day the Earth Caught Fire must be appreciated.

Recipient of a British Academy Award for best screenplay in 1961, the film is in fact a very serious treatise not only on the foolishness of nuclear activity by scientists and governments, but also on the potential impact such activities could have on the climate and on social structures.

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