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).

Occasionally, driven by some masochistic need, I subject myself to some trash flick knowing only too well that I am going to regret it two hours later. These films are usually bad Sci-Fi films and the reason I keep doing this to myself is to check how they deal with various futurist topics.
In the case of Jumper, which, as I feared it would be, is a mediocre film, the concept of teleportation serves as a backdrop for a boring romantic and action-driven story line with a strong teen accent. The acting is on the most part dreadful, especially Hayden Christensen in the lead role, and one can only wonder why Samuel L. Jackson seems so interested in playing in so many appalling films. Perhaps he just wants to have fun.

It is however interesting to speculate about the possibility of teleportation. Teleportation has always fascinated Sci-Fi aficionados due to the potential that it offers. Who would not want to be at home in Paris and in San Francisco two minutes later for dinner? Just imaging the possibilities, on earth and across space and galaxies, when these are one day populated by our descendents.
In Jumper, some genetic anomaly allows certain people to teleport themselves anywhere simply by visualizing a preferred destination. This teleportation method, sometimes called p-teleportation or psychoportation in Sci-Fi literature, differs from the usual TV or cinema depiction which traditionally relies on the help of some technological device as seen, for example, in both The Fly (1986) and Star Trek (1979). While teleportation through simply wishing it seems a distant possibility, the more conventional vision is actually not too far-fetched. It is today possible to quantum teleport the information contained within photons and atoms. Scientists are not yet able to teleport matter or energy, but there is no reason to think that this will not happen at some point in the near future (especially if we count on the Singularity). Naturally, enormous problems remain to be solved, such as how to capture accurately all the information contained in the human body so that this information can be copied and reconstructed at destination, or how to ensure that even a perfect copy based on atoms, DNA and molecules, is not missing one key ingredient: consciousness. Depending on one’s religious beliefs, the destruction of one’s original body could be seen as unethical, in the same way that cloning is considered by many to be morally wrong. In addition, for these same people, the idea of transferring the soul into a copy, if this were to be feasible, would constitute a serious act of immoral transgression. All of this will obviously not stop the scientific community from further exploring the concept of teleportation until it is one day possible to record, deconstruct, send and reassemble a human being, soul included, in a fraction of a second and to any destination desired.

In quantum healing circles, it is argued that consciousness, and perhaps the soul, is contained, not in some part of the brain or in some abstract location, but rather in every atom and DNA strand of our bodies. Each cell in our organism contains our mind and has the power to affect every other cell, making our brain the messenger rather than the control room for many aspects of our lives. Furthermore, according to Laszlo’s Integral Theory and Connectivity Hypothesis (which i reviewed here), our cells, and thus our mind, are also connected to the cosmos and all that it contains, making the transfer of information between remote places and entities an opportunity that might exist within all of us but that we unfortunately forgot long ago. If this is indeed true, and I believe it is, the teleportation concept described earlier might even be easier to implement since consciousness might not need to be regarded as separate (and if it is, perhaps Mind Uploading can take care of that part). This could also increase the likelihood that psychoportation, as portrayed in Jumper, whereby one person wishes his or her DNA to be somewhere else, will one day be achievable. After all, Charles Fort coined the term teleportation in 1931 in an attempt to describe paranormal phenomenon which traditional science could not explain. Integral theorists also believe that the paranormal and mystical has a place alongside traditional science in trying to understand our world. Paranormal events might only be a part of a reality which we became blind to.

On a closing note, it is worth mentioning that another method of teleportation could too become reality, albeit probably much later. Using wormholes, another favorite of Sci-Fi literature, to go through space-time is an established possibility within scientific circles and could one day allow us to use gates to move easily and instantaneously throughout our universe or across parallel universes. In a recent article for New Scientist, Michio Kaku actually considers both the teleportation of a person and the use of wormholes to be what he refers to as Class II impossibilities. This means that scientists firmly believe that, although out of the reach of today’s knowledge and technology, these feats are certain to become reality within a few centuries.

From a futurist perspective, the possibility that everything in the universe is connected by a quantum vacuum (or Akashic field, or any other name that might help define what remains an elusive theory), from the smallest particles to the largest cosmic phenomenon, is a fascinating idea to contemplate.
Many transhumanists, such as Raymond Kurzweil and Hans Moravec, believe in the concept of a future global consciousness, enabled through the merging of the human brain with technology, particularly artificial intelligence. Already today, many are pointing at the rise of social applications, the increasing use of mobile technology and at the speed at which the Internet is evolving, to draw comparisons with various aspects of the human brain. Could the Internet become conscious? It is indeed a possibility that is not to be discounted.
Likewise, it is very likely that, sooner than most people realize, human beings, through mind upload and the development of AI, will be able to achieve a pooled consciousness, which one can only hope will lead to a betterment of many ills that plague our world today.
Yet, this connectivity exists already today, as it has for as long as the universe has existed. Moreover, if we believe the System Theorist and Integral Theorist Ervin Laszlo, our universe, having benefited from the infinite learning of this connectivity and coherence, is itself only an enhancement of previous universes, thereby explaining the ultimate perfection that enables every aspect of our cosmic life to come together and function.
Laszlo further speculates that every atom in our body is connected to every atom in the universe, including naturally to those of our fellow biological entities. To support these claims of connectivity between human beings and the cosmos, Laszlo provides a plethora of examples and scientific tests that have been performed over the past 100 years. Regrettably, the troubling and fascinating results from these tests have been mostly ignored by the scientific community (and by the medical community as well, as explained by, for example, Deepak Chopra in his books on Quantum Healing) and by the public as a whole, who prefers instead to discount them and to classify them as alternative and mystical belief.

This loss of ‘focus’ keeps us as a species from reaching towards global consciousness and higher states of being, a realm which is today the exclusivity of a very few, usually those practicing meditation or those gifted with certain abilities such as healing, clairvoyance or even deep compassion and empathy. While technology can be the promise for a better future, there is no need to wait for the Singularity and beyond for the merging of our minds with that of machines to reach global consciousness. We can renew a process that was lost a long time ago by reaching out to the cosmos and by embracing the possibilities of the quantum vacuum that exists all around us and within us. Because we are the cosmos.

This channel 4 documentary, narrated by Christopher Sykes provides an overview of Aubrey de Grey’s efforts to defeat aging. An interesting look at the man who believes that we can perhaps abolish death within the next three decades and whose SENS research into aging is the source of much controversy, it nonetheless offers little new information for those of us who follow de Grey’s work on a regular basis.

I personally even found the selection of shots and angles to be at times purposely unflattering towards the various people that make up the anti-aging group by depicting them as a bit wacky and outside of the ‘norm’. In most cases, the pro-de Grey individuals are interviewed in their home or in a ‘non-institutionalized’ setting, which provides more opportunity for personal judgement and subjective conclusions, whereas the anti-longevity group is mainly seen in laboratories or expensive offices filled with books, as if to tell us that these people know what they are talking about and thus, that they should be trusted.

Does one need to be weird to want to live forever? That seems to be what this documentary would want you to believe. It also reinforces the cliché that if you are not within the norm (whatever this means) then you are strange and eccentric.
As I already explained when I reviewed Radical Evolution, it is interesting that the people who tend to be opposed to a drastically increased or to an unlimited lifespan tend to view those who seek to abolish death as mad geniuses who will do the world more harm than good. They also believe that today’s definition of normal is the one that must be upheld forever, the one that must endure. This obviously implies a complete disregard for what used to be considered normal (a very slippery concept when appraised in the context of history and within cultural considerations), and naturally, for what could become normal. It also implies, in my view, a total selfishness and narrow-minded belief that what we have today is as good as it is ever going to get and that our 20th and 21st century values (or rather, their values) are better and more appropriate than past or future values.

The ‘humanistic’ and preferred angle chosen by many who are opposed to eternal life is that death is what gives meaning to it all (see my review of The Fountain). Without death, one wouldn’t fully be alive. Quoting Freeman Dyson, ‘our humanity depends on the old ones getting out of the way’. Perhaps it is so; perhaps our definition of humanity today depends on newer generations replacing the old ones. But at the centre of these discussions is the word humanity. The anti-aging camp, and futurists in general, accept the idea that our humanity, which is what defines us in terms of values, belief systems, qualities and characteristics, can continue to evolve, even if it means abandoning today’s definition. The critics, on the other hand, seem incapable of accepting a future that will have redefined what it means to be human, especially not if we are the ones who have taken over the process of evolution.
Leave it to nature they say. Do not interfere with the natural order of things. But many of the humans race’s great accomplishments have occurred due to its interference with the natural order of things. If this were not the case, we would be living in a very different world today. I believe it is in the nature of Man to seek control over its own destiny. We live at a time when technology has given us the tools to do so with unparalleled assertion, confidence and power. We are now in control and to negate this potential would be foolish. Rather than negation, what we need is proper monitoring and ethical management of these issues and for the sceptics to apply their knowledge and concerns towards ensuring, not that this research does not happen since it will regardless, but rather, that it does happen in the safest and most beneficial way for all.

Documentaries can be very manipulative and can often play to the already established opinions and beliefs of its viewers. While watching ‘Do you want to live Forever?’, I couldn’t help using my own biases to filter the information I was absorbing. And in doing so, I found Sherwin Nuland and Preston Estep’s (despite Etep’s role in anti-aging research) opinions and arguments against de Grey to be filled with the exact same fear, envy and selfishness that they accuse him of. I tremble when I hear Nuland stating that the world could be destroyed by people such as de Grey and I fear that it is instead the Nulands of this world, the people who keep telling others what is best for them and who keep referring to the norm as the ideal mode of living, as if stuck in some 1950’s suburban ideology, whom we must fear the most.

De Grey is an enigmatic character who has made it his purpose to defeat aging. Whatever his reasons are (and this is another aspect of the documentary that I had problems with; this need to connect de Grey’s quest with a lack of love as a child or with some kind of egomaniac drive), his passion is undeniable and his approach, as unorthodox and threatening as it may be to some of the established scientific community, can only bring freshness, challenge, increased awareness and interest, and, let us hope, faster results.

Related websites:

www.Mprize.org
www.ImmInst.org
www.sens.org
www.longevitymeme.org
www.fightaging.org

I am grateful to Francis Lawrence, who previously directed the decent comic book adaptation Constantine (2005), for bringing seriousness, darkness and sobriety to the Hollywood Sci-Fi blockbuster. In a world where the Michael Bays are working hard to reduce the global IQ and EQ levels with mind numbing big budget action, it is refreshing to see a director trying to add cleverness to escapist entertainment.

I am Legend is based on the 1954 influential novel by Richard Matheson, and it is now the third time that this apocalyptic tale of the last man on earth, somehow immune to a virus that has either killed everyone else or turned them into vampire/zombie hybrids, has been made into a film. The Last Man on Earth (1964) with Vincent Price, has become a cult classic and set the standard for all future zombie films (George A. Romero has often credited the novel as his inspiration for Night of the Living Dead (1968)) while The Omega Man (1971) with Charlton Heston, who brings to the film his Planet of the Apes (1968) / Soylent Green (1973) ’screw the world’ cynism, does the original novel less justice and suffers from several problems, least of which is the laughability of its creatures.

One of the most annoying trademarks of Hollywood blockbusters, at least to me, is the supposedly funny one-liners that the hero typically spurts out in the most improbable situations. Normally used to alleviate tension and to bring lightness where there should be none, the blockbuster funny one-liner dumbs down and cheapens the cinematic experience. I was able to count only one in I am Legend (‘I like Shrek’) which is a major improvement over the number that can be found, for example, in two of Will Smith’s previous Sci-Fi efforts, Independence Day (1996) and I, Robot (2004) or in Michael Bay’s most recent disaster, Transformers (2007).
One is also the figure I came up with for the number of really poorly scripted scenes (Bob Marley Sr.), which, again, is quite an achievement for a film this expensive and this heavily marketed.

That is not to say that I am Legend has no other flaws but, again, when measured within the greater considerations of the blockbuster, these seem fairly harmless and do not detract too much from the overall viewing experience. The sobriety is at times reminiscent of The Quiet Earth (1985) while a couple of chilling scenes will bring 28 Days Later (2002) to mind and even The Descent (2005) in one case.

In 2001, Judith Berman stated that Science Fiction literature was suffering from a failure of imagination and that the best most writers could offer us these days is Sci-Fi without the Future. This point was made again more recently by Alex Steffen in WorldChanging. After all, even Sci-Fi and Cyberpunk supremos William Gibson and Neil Stephenson have decided to take a break from the future in favour of the present or the past. In the words of Gibson himself, ‘the future is already here. I have become convinced that it is silly to try to imagine futures these days‘. Some writers now find it difficult, and perhaps also less fun and challenging, to write about a future, the near future at least, that has caught up with us. Cyberpunk’s not dead some might retort, but a strong case can be made that we are today experiencing the future more strongly than ever before.

One man for whom the very near future continues to be a source of inspiration is Vernor Vinge. Vinge, an ex-mathematician and computer science professor from San Diego State University, whose novels A Fire Upon the Deep (92) and A Deepness in the Sky (99) I can highly recommend, achieved notoriety in Futurist circles when he proposed his theory of The Singularity at a NASA conference in 1993. Vinge, along with many other fellow futurists such as Raymond Kurzweil and Nick Bostrom, believes that we are fast approaching the point at which technological advancement will become so rapid that the possibilities will become endless.

In Rainbows End, which won the Hugo prize in 2007, he explores, by way of a cyber thriller, the impact of this exponential growth in technology on the merging of the real world with the 4 scenarios described in the 2007 report The Metaverse Roadmap issued by The Acceleration Studies Foundation: Virtual Worlds, Mirror Worlds, Augmented Reality and Lifelogging.

What makes this novel a convincing and compelling read is not necessarily its big ideas or even the underlying plot. Instead, it is the amount of details that Vinge uses to describe everyday life circa 2025. Almost any field of progress that is being discussed today is represented and elaborated on in Rainbows End, providing for an overall depiction of a richly constructed ‘reality’ that feels extremely believable. While great strides have been made in areas such as health, transportation, building and construction, and genetic engineering, it is around the 4 Metaverse scenarios mentioned earlier that Vinge builds its portrayal of a near-term society. As it is envisioned in The Metaverse Roadmap, reality in 2025 is a mishmash of the ‘real’, the virtual and the augmented, with the later two (both enhanced and complemented by lifelogging) increasingly replacing the first one as the preferred choice for socializing, learning, communicating, and for entertainment. Vinge uses an ‘old-fashioned’ character, Robert Gu, a man born in the 1960s and cured of Alzheimer in 2025, to not only advance the plot of the story, but also to contrast two worlds and sets of beliefs and to attempt to answer the question: what would life be like for a person with prejudices about the future and about technology if this person woke up in 2025? How would he or she deal with a society where most people below a certain age now wear special contact lenses connected to an astounding amount of computer power embedded in their clothing, thereby allowing them to access instantly information about anything they could possibly want to access, to communicate immediately with anyone on the planet, to create whatever virtual spaces they desire to enable this communication and to see in various layers of augmented reality the fruits of their creation or the results of their requests for information and interaction? In short, how would such a person feel if reality as they knew it had pretty much ceased to exist?

But Vinge doesn’t stop there. He also goes into a fair amount of details about the technology itself and about issues that are already important today with regards to the internet and the WWW and that will obviously become even more so in the future: open source vs proprietary, free vs fee-based, security, privacy, gender, identity, laws and regulations, universal currency, trust, reputation…

If this sounds like a lot to chew on, credit must go to Vinge for adroitly incorporating these discussions into the plot and into the daily life of the characters without the dialogue ever sounding preachy or pedagogic. It’s good entertainment all the way but skilfully mixed with all that you might need to know about the technological, social, economical and philosophical benefits and challenges facing humanity within the next 20 to 30 years.

We live in a world where the artificial and the real are merging at an increasing speed. Indeed, the word real started to lose its original meaning many years ago, particularly in the 80s, as exemplified by the works of people such as Beaudrillard and Fukuyama.  Simulation, simulacrum, hyperreal, virtual reality, augmented reality, alternate reality, all different ways to describe variations of what is slowly replacing the real as we used to know it. As i described in this post and in this essay, animation is an ideal tool to explore these alternate realities and to depict visions of the future. But there are different ways of using animation in film, and some are better than others, depending on the criteria that one uses to judge a film.

Robert Zemeckis, who in 1988 was already exploring the merging of real characters and animation with Who Framed Roger Rabbit, brings his Polar Express (04) performance capture technology to Beowulf, the classic 8th century English poem. Performance capture, another term for motion capture, means that ‘real’ actors, equiped with sensors, act out the scenes in front of a bluescreen, which are then rendered as digi-animations. In most cases, performance capture is used to capture movement. In the case of Beowulf, it is also used to capture visual appearance. And this is where Zemeckis lost of a lot of critics.

For these people, watching The Incredibles (04) or Ratatouille (07) is one thing. In these films, it is clear that the animated humans are not real, even if the story takes place in a copy of our world. Therefore, their acting is not judged on the same level as that of a human actor. However, in Beowulf, the digital characters look a bit like Angelina Jolie and Anthony Hopkins. Hence, a natural reaction for many is to expect more from these characters than they would from an animated one. Afterall, acting is an essential element of solid filmmaking. If this acting is not properly conveyed due to technological limitations, then the film naturally suffers. For this reason (and a couple of others connected to the script), films such as Beowulf can not be as effective and impactful on the collective psyche as animated features have become. But it’s probably only a matter of time and Zemeckis must be given credit for pushing the envelope and for playing with the medium.

But Beowulf is also very entertaining and if one can see beyond the limitations mentioned above, there is plenty of action and escapist fun to be had with this tale of warriors, demons and dragons.

I have never drunk a liter of corn syrup, but i can imagine that it must feel pretty similar to watching The Astronaut Farmer. After a very brief initial period of enjoyment, discomfort sets in, followed rapidly by nausea, resulting in the end in sickness.

This film, about a discharged NASA officer turned farmer who still harbors dreams of going into space and decides to build a rocket in his backyard, has enough cliches and cheap, preachy lines to make you want to forget that the Polish brothers once managed to make two decent films: Northfork (2003) and Twin Falls Idaho (1999) . But the Cohen brothers they are not.

It never ceases to amaze me how much bad acting and miscasting (only Virginia Madsen and Bruce Dern are properly cast and deliver interesting performances) and amateurish writing can still make it to the screen.

Some will be able to look beyond the film’s obvious flaws and will find this feel-good tale entertaining. But its cheap sentimentalism and messages of family, heroism, courage and of the importance of role-models will probably hold more appeal to the US market than to us European cynics.

As we approach the fourth and final season of the TV series Battlestar Galactica, based on the 1978 cult Sci-Fi series of the same name, and with the recent release of the excellent Razor, it is worth stating how surprisingly addictive this modern version is. I can’t remember ever following a TV series for three years in a row, but that is exactly what I have been doing with Galactica, even though I initially got into it somewhat reluctantly, assuming that modern television, which I have come to associate for the most part with trash TV, could not possibly deliver on the promise of the original series, and to a larger extent, could not, week after week, year after year, provide intelligent Sci-Fi.

But Galactica has done just that. There have been many moments when the different style and vision of a new director became too obvious and created a disjunction in the viewing experience and, in some cases, resulted in quite boring episodes, but overall, the series has been consistently solid, entertaining and clever.

Being the cynic that I am, I spent the first few episodes listing all the inconsistencies I could find (and there were many) and why certain things such as fashion, books, pens, products designs, allergies, cancer, city architecture, and much more, all looked and felt so terribly 20th century. A civilization that has mastered the ability to build ships that travel across space but that still writes with pens, uses notebooks and can’t find a cure for breast cancer…At that point, I felt that the problem with Galactica was that it failed where so many Sci-Fi films or series have failed before…it failed to effectively and convincingly create the world that it is supposed to create. Whether for budget reasons or for wanting to keep the viewers in an area of familiarity, or simply, for lack of trying, Galactica uses a large number of current human metaphors, traditions, and habits to portray a world that exists far into the future (or into the past)….but that world should in fact look nothing like today’s world. A civilisation that is capable of building faster-than-light ships, a civilisation that split a long time ago from the civilisation that lived on earth, so long ago in fact that new myths have had time to develop, would dress, eat, behave, live, and possibly even look very different from the way we do today.

But I suppose only Sci-Fi nerds like myself would let that bother them, and in all fairness, I fully realize that sustaining a TV series for 4 years without making these types of mistakes would require a higher budget and/or an increasing reliance on animation and, ultimately, the series would probably end up with a much smaller audience due to a lack of familiar, earth-like, frames of reference.

Despite these initial concerns, I found myself slowly captivated and sucked into this world that adroitly combines human and personal stories with larger issues that draw on current events (torture, war, terrorism, tolerance, politics, genetics….) that also seem fairly plausible as potential issues for the future; well, for the near future at least, since if one looks seriously deep into the future, one would expect some of these issues to be resolved, or at least, to have taken on a very different meaning.
Most of the characters are well developed and cast, and each episode (with the occasional exception) has at its core a strong storyline that offers its own rewards but rarely seems disjointed from the overall and consistent thread of the series.

In the end, it is refreshing and pleasing to see a Sci-Fi TV series being handled with such genuineness and earnest. Battlestar Galactica has definitively done its bit towards restoring credibility to televised Sci-Fi and to Sci-Fi in general.

What do Michael Clayton (07) and The Man from Earth, two very different films which I watched this week, have in common?
They are both respectable and honourable efforts with dreadful endings. They both deal with beautiful shades of grey that sadly bend and dissolve under the pressure of the all-too easy and ever so reassuring black and white. They speak of ambiguity, uncertainty and ambivalence, but can only snap back, or break, like a rubber band that has been stretched too far, to the comfort and familiarity of the expected.
The Man from Earth is one of those talking films that relies on one location only, in this case a living room, the type of film that seems to be taken straight out of the world of Theatre. Such films need to be adroitly directed and require a very tight script to keep an audience that’s been trained to expect something else from the film medium, from feeling boredom. I remember being bored to tears once watching the arrogant and tedious, one-room only, Friendship’s Death (87). But The Man from Earth, about a man explaining to his friends that he must move away and leave them because he is 14,000 years old and does not want to see them age (and does not want to attract unwelcome curiosity), is much closer to 12 Angry Men (57), or even the more recent Primer (04), and moves at a good enough pace to keep us interested in the possibilities that the discussion raises. Like the characters in the film, the friends who do not know if they should send this man they have known for 10 years to the asylum (perhaps to hang out with that guy from K-Pax) or if they should believe him, but who at the same time can’t stop themselves from asking him more questions, we find ourselves wanting to hear more of their questions and more of his answers. As mad and implausible as his revelations may sound, the screenplay, completed by Sci-Fi short story writer Jerome Bixby shortly before his death in 1998, is so smartly written and laced with so much sharp and plausible dialogue that one begins to think: why not?
Sadly, as mentioned earlier, this nicely challenging and entertaining low budget film falls apart at the end, closing with two scenes that are simply too sweet, convenient and that seem to exist for no other purpose than to raise the audience’s feel good factor…

Planet Terror has over-indulgent geekiness written all over it. B-movies have always been made with a specific crowd in mind, the type that can easily look beyond the obvious cinematic limitations of the movie and instead can find in it an interesting form of entertainment, and in some cases, the epitome of coolness, whatever that may mean. With the passing of time, these movies also have the potential to attract additional viewers through the ‘nostalgia effect’. When watching such films, one is taken back to the 50s, 60s, or, as it relates to Planet Terror, to the 70s when the Grindhouse double bill developed its legions of followers. Personally, and obviously one can deduce from this that I am not an admirer of these Grindhouse films, I believe that it is the knowledge of going back to a specific point in time, to experience a piece of ‘culture’ from a certain decade and country, that makes some of these films watcheable, and, at times, enjoyable. Most of them were bad films, but they were not always made with the knowledge that they were bad, or if they were, time has taught us to look back on them with anthropological compassion and with some kind of tolerant understanding.
However, when Tarantino and Rodriguez had the bright idea to come up with a deliberately bad double feature called Grindhouse (Planet Terror and Death Proof, marketed separately in Europe), to honor the past, and in Tarantino’s words, to offer viewers something ‘fresh and original’, they either must have assumed that the entire world lives on the same geeky film planet as they do and would rush to the cinemas to see their films, or, as is most likely the case, they just decided that they wanted to please themselves and do something to pay homage to a form of cinema they both love. I can just picture the both of them sitting in some room, writing the script, and telling each other: ‘a machine gun instead of a leg? Right on!’, ‘let’s make the reel look old. Now that’s fresh’, ‘and then the head explodes…how cool is that?’
The problem is that none of this is in fact that fresh or original (unlike both director’s early work). It’s old. And it only works as new for about 15 minutes and then wears off quickly, leaving behind a profusion of mindless and silly gore, and, regrettably, not one iota of scariness…even worse: the film is not funny. What kind of a Zombie film does not make you either laugh or scream?
I said to a friend ‘it’s a bad movie’. To which he responded: ‘That’s the point’. But, no, I believe his answer is the one missing the point. The real point is: it’s a bad movie. The fact that it is an intentional bad movie does not turn it into a good movie. And let us not be deceived by an artsy-fartsy, Rodriguez/Tarantino-can-do-no-wrong-because-they-are-so-cool, you-either-get-it-or-you-don’t temptation to see something that isn’t there. Remove the names of the directors, and the appeal of the film drastically goes down.

Of course, the debate between B-movies lovers and bashers has been raging for decades and it will not be solved today. If Rodriguez and Tarantino were hoping to please the lovers, they probably succeeded. If, on the other hand, they were attempting to attract some of the skeptics, I believe they failed.

If I found The Manchurian Candidate (62) unwilling to go far enough in the treatment of its brilliant and daring concept, I certainly did not hold such opinion after watching Seconds. Despite a couple of moments when John Frankenheimer loses control of its material and over-indulges in wobbly camera movements (the wine orgy scene and, to a lesser extent, the party at home scene), Seconds is an amazingly dark and bold film for 1960s Hollywood (after all, Bonnie and Clyde (67), which represents a milestone in American cinema, was also considered dark and bold, but feels, at least to me, much tamer than Seconds), about a man who is given a chance at a new identity and a new life but slowly realizes that the change only makes him more miserable.

From the disturbing opening titles by Saul Bass to the unrepentant nerve-racking ending, Seconds takes you to some very unpleasant places, while managing to make several interesting points about midlife crises, beauty, identity, happiness and success. Some of these points resonate even more strongly today when beauty and material ‘satisfaction’ seem to be more readily accessible than ever, and increasingly at the cost of a traditional (and possibly archaic) definition of happiness. This quest for beauty is made possible by scientific advancement and Seconds reminds us of Les Yeux Sans Visage (60) and of the more recent Extreme Measures (98) in its portayal of the brilliant scientist or doctor who too easily crosses ethical boundaries in a blind belief in the righteousness of their action.

Rock Hudson is particularly enjoyable to watch and effectively manages to make us forget a hollow reputation acquired by playing mainly in melodramatic roles. The cinematography, aside from suffering on two occasions from the already mentioned overbearing desire to create confusion, does manage nonetheless to craft a very claustrophobic and disturbing environment.

Seconds is not a perfect film, but it certainly is one that has been undeservedly forgotten and should have a place along such classics as The Manchurian Candidate, The Wicker Man (73) or even Don’t Look Now (73).

1950’s Sci-Fi at its best.

It came from Outer Space set the standard in the early days of American cinema for serious and intelligent Sci-Fi by placing a reasonable amount of care in the writing, acting and directing of this film about a man who is rejected by his community after claiming to have seen a spaceship land in the desert where he lives.
The theme of ‘The Other’ is properly explored, as is that of the lone liberal man against a blind, unreasonable and conservative community.
It is regrettable that Universal, the studio behind many Sci-Fi flicks from that period and thus, probably the most open-minded studio in its acceptance of liberal themes, decided to nevertheless add the ‘creature’ after it concluded that the audience would not enjoy watching a 90 minutes film without ever seeing some kind of alien representation. Had they not chosen to do so, and consequently, had they not decided to incorporate this gigantic eye thingie as the terrifying monster, It Came from Outer Space would have been even more so sober and powerful, a pioneering film in ‘what you can’t see is even more creepy’ type horror and suspense cinema.

Shame i can’t find my 3D glasses…

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.

So here I am, at this party in the Hollywood Hills, hanging out with my loser screenplay writer friend, when Michael Bay walks in with a girl around each arm. Out of all the parties in LA, Michael Bay has to walk into mine. Determined not to let it get to me, I undertake a precise and thorough strategy of avoidance, which works for most of the evening, until another loser friend of mine, this time a Foley operator, who mysteriously appears to know Bay, decides to introduce me to this evilest of all evil directors. Doing my best to hide my repulsion, I reluctantly shake the man’s hand and immediately start to feel nauseous all over, as if I had just put on the ring to rule them all, and had acquired the ability to see the darkness and shadows around me, or in this case, in front of me. And, clearly wanting my death, some guy who evidently exists on a different cinematic plane than I, barges in and exclaims some idiocy along the lines of ‘loved your Transformers Michael’, which naturally brings me closer to regurgitating my Shirataki noodles dinner. Not that I would mind plastering Michael Bay with some no-carb, no-fat vomit, but even Themis, the Greek Goddess of Justice, is not on my side this evening, and I must try to take consolation in the belief that, while slightly more successful than me, Michael Bay remains a cinematic barbarian with no appreciation of cinema as an art.

…Equilibrium can only rehash themes already explored in 1984, Fahrenheit 451 and THX 1138. It portrays a future where knowledge and individual thinking are forbidden and are controlled through brainwashing propaganda and drug taking. What is interesting about this film however, is its representation of the authoritarian and totalitarian city. Shot in various locations in Berlin (Olympic Stadium, Postdamer Platz) as well as in Rome, the film’s production design is clearly heavily influenced by Nazi and Fascist architecture. The city of Equilibrium is one that is dominated by order, symmetry (seen throughout the ages as an indication of harmony), and monumental, bare and functional buildings, in the Rohbau style that was so favoured by Hitler and his architect Albert Speer. The bland, smooth, and characterless surfaces of these buildings relies on brick and granite for their effect, echoing Hilter’s words in 1937 that “‘only the great cultural documents of humanity made of granite and marble’ offer stability and certainty…” , and result in effigies whose main purpose it is to lower Man’s sense of individuality. In addition, the citizens of the city tend to gather in open plazas and squares (of rather classicists designs) for worship and meditation, an architectural, urban planning and propaganda stratagem that was at the core of the design of the city of Berlin in the 1930s.

Excerpt from Architectural Representations of the City in Science Fiction Cinema.

Lost Horizon, based on the 1931 novel by James Hilton, cost Columbia 2.5 million dollars, making it the most expensive American film up until 1937. And it was indeed heavily marketed as the mightiest picture of all time, promising adventure, escapism and grandiose visions of utopia. The reputation that Frank Capra obtained thanks to the success of Mr Deeds goes to Town (36) and It happened one night (34) allowed him to get the green light for this extravagant production about a group of men, and one woman, who are kidnapped in Shanghai and taken to the lost city of Shangri-La. There they discover a utopic society deprived of the ills and evils of modern society, a peaceful and fulfilled community that will put to the test each of the character’s resolve, personality and willingness to rediscover traditional values.
In spite of the escapist and moral nature of its theme, Lost Horizon was a commercial failure, and the critics were not too impressed either. In a similar fashion to Things to Come (36), Lost Horizon’s ambitious theme scared many who probably saw communist propaganda in it, and was most likely regarded as too naïve by others. Yet, its message, while clearly self-indulgent at times, is a powerful one that has even more significance today. The increasing power of global markets and the dominance of capitalism at the expense of basic human rights and values was already an important and scary theme to some at the beginning of the 20th century, and even more so after the crash of 1929, and yet, today, in a world where there is plenty of evidence of rising inequalities, the message of Lost Horizon continues to be perceived as naïve…

This British low budget mishmash of cyberpunk, horror and exploitation has become a bit of a cult classic in certain circles. The idea was apparently entirely stolen from a story called Shock! that appeared in the 80s in the comic book 2000AD, which is a bit of a shame since it takes away from one of the film’s main attributes: its originality (in spite of several commonalities with Terminator).
Nonetheless, equipped with a meagre budget of 100,000 dollars, Richard Stanley managed to create quite a dreadful, claustrophobic and apocalyptic atmosphere that effectively captured the spirit of decay, waste and techno-paranoia associated with Cyberpunk. The film also contains several musical references that many connoisseurs will enjoy.
Unfortunately, beyond the visual and musical aspects, and with the exception of a few cheap thrills and a couple of funny cheesy lines, the film has little to offer and feels quite amateurish and boring at times.

For a certain crowd only.

Truffaut’s Fahrenheit 451, based on Bradburry’s novel of the same name, seems to exist outside of the standard city space. More reminiscent of a modern city’s inner suburbs, the architecture on display is eclectic and often cold and lacking humanity.

As with Godard’s Alphaville, the low budget of Fahrenheit 451 meant that all exterior scenes were shot on location (Maidenhead, UK). Truffaut evidently selected buildings that epitomized 1950s and 1960s urban planning gone wrong. The apartment block or tower no longer carries hope of an urban renaissance and as a solver of society’s problems.

Instead, it is portrayed as lacking beauty and humanity, a vertical cage in which to house the less privileged, and, in the context of the film, the non-conformists and dissidents.

Excerpt from Architectural Representations of the City in Science Fiction Cinema.

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.