May 5th, 2006
Sci-Fi Films: The Guardian’s Top 10
Via this post we discovered that the Infactah boys have different views of it. Colm says it’s “the most boring movie” he’s ever seen while Cahony liked the “sparsity of the experience”. Martin calls it “absolutely stunning”. I fell asleep during it (twice) and the folk on the Guardian’s Culture Vulture blog aren’t fans either.
What is it? 2001: A Space Odyssey
Regardless of the mixed views around these parts, it ranks as number two in the Top Ten Sci-Fi Films in The Guardian. Top of the list, deservedly, is Blade Runner but I’m surprised to see Terminator and The Matrix in there. What about The Thing or Invasion of the Body Snatchers? I don’t suppose Dr. Strangelove qualifies as sci-fi even in the most tenuous way?
May 5th, 2006 at 3:19 pm
Don’t let the two babbly sequels sway you, viewed as a standalone, the first Matrix is top quality sci-fi…
May 5th, 2006 at 5:42 pm
Films, dont yer just luv em hey? I know I do becasue I was watching a few the other night whilst supping a few brews in an art gallery at the bottom of Francis Street Sinead me arl mate yet to meet in reality, if yers know wharra mean like dare girl.
Only having a giggle and tinkling the the plassy squares in the shop/office/home from home by the Hapenny Bridge. Well I am thinking up something else to bore you with but I can’t think up anything to bore you with except to say that the man next to me is not a man at all, but a tramp called Jane who is dressed very scruffily and communicating with me via ESP that she is trapped, lonely and depressed in her ……Sam Beckett was a genius who was a bit sparse whan he? Well I am not a genius, although I was once described as such by my mother, who adopted me from the nun factory where she scrubbed floors and got whatsis with the fella in a beret, or was it a trilby? I can barely remeber.
Thank you for letting me deposit
If you have any questions about Jane, please do not hesitate to get in touch here at the clinic with Dr Des the nut nut knobhead whose a right waffler going on about zero and the state of twoness inherent in the binary principle, whilst also being connected to Hegelian dialectics of threenes and onenes what do you think?
May 5th, 2006 at 6:39 pm
Damn right, the Matrix is a classic even if it is a wholly unapologetic thievry of everything thats good in the cyber-punk vien. And that’s exactly why Terminiator is such a good movie, instead of lifting from any particular ouevre it sets its own imagery and stylistic flourishes in a rather brilliant retaking of the sci fi movie and leaving enough paranoid gibberish about the danger of mega-corporations monopolosing new technologies to fuel a whole slew of cyber-punk fiction. Bleeding loved it I did.
May 5th, 2006 at 7:01 pm
The original Matrix is truly excellent and really original and The thing scared the crap out of me, as did the original Alien, but Blade Runner let me down a bit-except for the score- and I am sorry to say I quite liked The Fifth Element.
May 6th, 2006 at 3:24 am
I saw Space Odyssey 2001 in London during the summer of 1972 and was amused by the computer Hal, who had a mind of his own. The longshots of the space station waltzing around to the accompaniment of Strauss orchestrations are my other abiding memory.
May 6th, 2006 at 4:56 pm
You’re absolutely right James, there’s nothing particularly new in the Matrix but it brought all that stuff together so well you’ve got to love it. Of course then they made those sequels and fucked it *right* up…
Still, sci-fi is always eating it’s own tale. Alien is a remake of “IT! Terror from Beyond Space” but they kind of forgot to mention that. And Terminator is a classic too. Although, it owes a lot to Harlan Ellison’s ‘Outer Limits’ episode “Soldier”. So much so in fact that after legal action Ellison now has a credit in the end titles if you look…
I could go on but I’ll finish with a special mention for 2000ad, who’ve been ripped off a few times but they seem content to get revenge by borrowing back from TV & film.
May 6th, 2006 at 11:11 pm
I saw the original Solaris/Solyaris recently and it was superb. Slow like 2001 but with an actual storyline.
May 9th, 2006 at 12:53 am
@Martin: It’s not just SciFi, it’s all culture. Culture is always consuming and regurgitating itself, like Oruboros eating its tail. Once culture is stopped from doing that, it dies.