The Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Spy, and Superhero Genre

[geronl]

I take it you've never seen Rocky Horror Picture Show, have you?

Nope, even the still pics are repellent. I have no desire to see it.

[uglybiker]

Nope, even the still pics are repellent. I have no desire to see it.

It's not one of those films you see because of the movie itself. You only watch it for the audience experience. When the RKO banner comes on the screen, there's always somebody yelling: "What's a Radio Picture?!". Along with various comments throughout the movie.
Think of it as a live version of Mystery Science Theater 3000.

[Ghost Bear]

an early description of television maybe, since it uses radio waves


Then again, didn't RKO make films... I dunno 

RKO (Radio-Keith-Orpheum) Pictures (also known as RKO Productions, Radio Pictures, RKO Radio Pictures, RKO Teleradio Pictures and, for a short time, RKO Pathé) was an American film production and distribution company. It was one of the Big Five studios of Hollywood's Golden Age.

[sneakypete]

Huh, looks like they've put it up on YouTube. This link was on the IMDB page for the production:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIPckPtYmXk

@Ghost Bear

Thanks for the link. I gotta tell you,I expected to be disappointed because it was a single stage set,but damned if they didn't pull it off. Rocky looked like a macho guy from the neck down,and like a combination of Martha Raye and Lisa Manelli in the face. That is one seriously ugly man with a female man-face. He,Bob,and Janet all have remarkable voices,though.

Columbia and Magneta were both 30 years too old for their roles,but were in insane condition for women of their ages.

On the other hand,Riff Raff was at least 20 years too young for his role. Still,he had the voice and most of the moves.

They must have rehearsed the hell out of it because it went off like a well-oiled machine.

[sneakypete]

Nope, even the still pics are repellent. I have no desire to see it.

@geronl

Your loss,just like it was my loss back in the 70's when I went to see it and thought it was a transvestite freak show based on the people standing in line dressed as characters in the movie.

10 years later I finally figured out it was people just having group fun with a fun movie that has great songs,and that even if there were a tranny or 7 in the audience,it didn't rub off and I wouldn't catch it.

I would have been a perfect Eddy back then. My whole life was wrapped around building and riding Harley's back in the early to late 70's. Could have had a lot of fun and bagged a lot of hot babes,but I had my head up my ass and wasn't thinking.

Seems like all of us sometimes get so wrapped up in life we forget how to sing,dance,and have fun.

[Free Vulcan]

Anyone seen the Renegades series? Lots of Star Trek people in it.

[uglybiker]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIrw_AszBvk


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNFo-DQW6PA


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXFh5rNaDUk

Part 4 is up!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7t16oeXbXY

[uglybiker]

Anyone seen the Renegades series? Lots of Star Trek people in it.

Seen it.
Great story. Good effects. Godawful writing.

[LateForLunch]

Seen it.
Great story. Good effects. Godawful writing.

"The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension"  was another idiotically-titled, poorly-marketed film that was actually not a bad movie at all. Sometimes marketing people take finished films and through advertising give them a public image that does not do them justice, nor attract the audience that would best appreciate them.

Other decent movies to which something similar has been done were, "John Carter of Mars (which may have actually been purposefully harmed by marketing people at the orders of a vindictive studio executive at war with Pixar) and "The Hudsucker Proxy" (worst title for a great movie EVER). 

[Machiavelli]

The Fantastic Ursula K. Le Guin

Julie Phillips
The New Yorker
October 17, 2016

... "I just didn't know what to do with my stuff until I stumbled into science fiction and fantasy," Le Guin says. "And then, of course, they knew what to do with it." "They" were the editors, fans, and fellow-authors who gave her an audience for her work. If science fiction was down-market, it was at least a market. More than that, genre supplied a ready-made set of tools, including spaceships, planets, and aliens, plus a realm--the future--that set no limits on the imagination. She found that science fiction suited what she called, in a letter to her mother, her "peculiar" talent, and she felt a lightheartedness in her writing that had to do with letting go of ambitions and constraints. In the fall of 1966, when she was thirty-seven, Le Guin began "A Wizard of Earthsea." In the next few years--which also saw her march against the Vietnam War and dance in a conga line with Allen Ginsberg, when he came to Portland to read Vedas for peace--she produced her great early work, including, in quick succession, "The Left Hand of Darkness," "The Lathe of Heaven," "The Farthest Shore," and "The Dispossessed," her ambitious novel of anarchist utopia ...

Full article

[kevindavis007]

Anyone seen the Renegades series? Lots of Star Trek people in it.

Seen it but it was horrible... I didn't see the whole thing.

[kevindavis007]

"The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension"  was another idiotically-titled, poorly-marketed film that was actually not a bad movie at all. Sometimes marketing people take finished films and through advertising give them a public image that does not do them justice, nor attract the audience that would best appreciate them.

Other decent movies to which something similar has been done were, "John Carter of Mars (which may have actually been purposefully harmed by marketing people at the orders of a vindictive studio executive at war with Pixar) and "The Hudsucker Proxy" (worst title for a great movie EVER).

John Carter of Mars was a good movie. Not great nor a classic.. But a good film..

[LateForLunch]

The Fantastic Ursula K. Le Guin

Julie Phillips
The New Yorker
October 17, 2016
Full article

That's disturbing. Alan Ginsberg for God's sake? He was arguably the father of rap with his "beat" poetry. Thankfully Le Guin  seems to have lost most if not all of her political interests and stuck to writing as her means of affecting the world. The only thing she sort of never gave up was her pro-homo activism which I can forgive her for since I know a whole bunch of conservative gay people who are not the least bit militant about gay marriage, or any other traditionally leftist gay Daily Cause.

Left Hand of Darkness was a terrific novel and even though it concerned an ambisexual humanoid species, was not even remotely about homo-ness. It was far more closely related to Jungian psychology concerning anima and animus and traditional themes of civilization (Prospero v. Caliban)  that go back to antiquity (or at least to Shakespeare) and have nothing to do with contemporary political context.

Le Guin shares something with Gene Roddenberry and R. Buckminster Fuller in her speculative creation of a global real-wealth-based economic system she called the Ecumenical Society (much like Roddenberry's Earth Federation)as a solution to  some of the more challenging problems presented by nationalism and the seemingly endless sturm und drang of conflict between capitalist and Marxist economic philosophies.

[kevindavis007]

If you get Netflix check this movie out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UwOZgIDo8o


It is a B movie.

[geronl]

OK. Doesn't look quite as bad as I expected

[kevindavis007]

OK. Doesn't look quite as bad as I expected

Well, it was your cliched Sci-Fi B movie.. However, I have seen worse.

[EC]

Well, it was your cliched Sci-Fi B movie.. However, I have seen worse.

In a genre that includes Plan 9 and Sy-fy originals ... that is damning with faint praise indeed. 

(says the guy who is planning to watch Iron Sky tonight .... )

[geronl]

In a genre that includes Plan 9 and Sy-fy originals ... that is damning with faint praise indeed. 

(says the guy who is planning to watch Iron Sky tonight .... )

lol. true.

[Bender2]

Star Trek  (TOS, ENT, TNG), SG1, SGU, Firefly, BSG (old and new), Farscape, and Buck Rodgers are my favorite Sci-fi shows. I'm sure I missed a couple.

I am sure being my age, almost 70, has something to do with it, but some my earliest memories are of going to the drive-ins with my parents until I was in the 3rd or 4th grade when I was allowed to go to the movie by myself.  I recall few weekends that I did not go to a movie and on many week days if my grades were good, I was allowed to go to a late afternoon show after school.

The films that really stand out from the git'go to me from the Sci-Fi genre are:

1951's Howard Hawks' The Thing from Another World

1951's The Day the Earth Stood Still

and

1954's THEM

While I vivid recall seeing THEM at the Ideal Theater in Corsicana, Texas, with my cousins Wick and Skip, I am sure my memory of seeing The Day the Earth Stood Still and The Thing from Another World were in a re-release during the mid-1950s. 

Yet over the 60 plus years since first seeing these, I have never seen another Sci-Fi film that equals either of these three for plot and overall acting excellence.  Yes, Special Effects/CGI have come light years from the state of the arts effects used in 1951 and 1954, but while today's films can show literally just about anything one can imagine, they are story poor.  Some don't have any plot to speak of that makes sense.

Or like they did when rebooting The Day the Earth Stood Still, they went full PC and in effect made a rather large pile of steaming you know what that was an insult to the original.

As to other Sci-Fi films from the 1950s, these four stand out to me:

1950's Rebert A. Heinlein's Destination Moon 

1954's Creature from the Black Lagoon

1956's Forbidden Planet 

1956's Invasion of the Body Snatchers

These seven films are both appealing to children of the 1950s and made sense to the adults that also enjoyed them.  You don't find that today as what passes for Sci-Fi today is made for 8 to 16 year old boys who will go to a movie ten or fifteen times.

Of course, there were many other mid-to-late 1950s Sci-Fi flicks that ranged from passable even to an 8 to 13 year old to down right silly--

All in all, those at the top of my comments still stand as great Science Fiction films that stand with or above the films of today and tomorrow.

[Ghost Bear]

Speaking of films made for 8 to 16 year old boys who will go to a movie ten or fifteen times, Marvel just released a sneak peek of Guardians of the Galaxy 2, which is scheduled for release Summer 2017:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sD9NVxYRrZs

Looks fun! 

[Smokin Joe]

I am sure being my age, almost 70, has something to do with it, but some my earliest memories are of going to the drive-ins with my parents until I was in the 3rd or 4th grade when I was allowed to go to the movie by myself.  I recall few weekends that I did not go to a movie and on many week days if my grades were good, I was allowed to go to a late afternoon show after school.

The films that really stand out from the git'go to me from the Sci-Fi genre are:

1951's Howard Hawks' The Thing from Another World

1951's The Day the Earth Stood Still

and

1954's THEM

While I vivid recall seeing THEM at the Ideal Theater in Corsicana, Texas, with my cousins Wick and Skip, I am sure my memory of seeing The Day the Earth Stood Still and The Thing from Another World were in a re-release during the mid-1950s. 

Yet over the 60 plus years since first seeing these, I have never seen another Sci-Fi film that equals either of these three for plot and overall acting excellence.  Yes, Special Effects/CGI have come light years from the state of the arts effects used in 1951 and 1954, but while today's films can show literally just about anything one can imagine, they are story poor.  Some don't have any plot to speak of that makes sense.

Or like they did when rebooting The Day the Earth Stood Still, they went full PC and in effect made a rather large pile of steaming you know what that was an insult to the original.

As to other Sci-Fi films from the 1950s, these four stand out to me:

1950's Rebert A. Heinlein's Destination Moon 

1954's Creature from the Black Lagoon

1956's Forbidden Planet 

1956's Invasion of the Body Snatchers

These seven films are both appealing to children of the 1950s and made sense to the adults that also enjoyed them.  You don't find that today as what passes for Sci-Fi today is made for 8 to 16 year old boys who will go to a movie ten or fifteen times.

Of course, there were many other mid-to-late 1950s Sci-Fi flicks that ranged from passable even to an 8 to 13 year old to down right silly--

All in all, those at the top of my comments still stand as great Science Fiction films that stand with or above the films of today and tomorrow.

That's a great list. I mostly had to read sci fi, as the nearest theater was 25 miles away and just didn't show sci-fi. By the time this one hit TV, though I could watch it if living black and white (It was years before I finally saw it in color). Still a favorite:

[kevindavis007]

In a genre that includes Plan 9 and Sy-fy originals ... that is damning with faint praise indeed. 

(says the guy who is planning to watch Iron Sky tonight .... )

The last SyFy original I saw was Savage Planet (killer Bears on a different planet). Well Plan 9 makes those movies look like a classic. Also, I saw 'A' movies worse that was bad..

[LateForLunch]

All in all, those at the top of my comments still stand as great Science Fiction films that stand with or above the films of today and tomorrow.

In one of Frank Capra's last interviews, he was asked if he thought that films from his era were superior to modern films and he answered, "Yes. As a rule. There have been some great films in what we call the modern era, but overall I think the energy of the films made in the classic era ('30s-'60s) was greater. That's because largely and increasingly modern films are about things and classic films are about people - characters. You only have a fixed amount of time in a film to make the audience care about what happens to the central characters. If every film becomes focused on making the effects a little more spectacular than other films, the character development gets lost in all of the other production elements. You can generate a great deal of audience interest simply by having a camera follow a little girl through a crowd looking for her parents. It's not necessary to have car chases and things blowing up every thirty seconds to hold audience interest."

[Bender2]

That's a great list. I mostly had to read sci fi, as the nearest theater was 25 miles away and just didn't show sci-fi. By the time this one hit TV, though I could watch it if living black and white (It was years before I finally saw it in color). Still a favorite:

Gadzooks--  How did I miss...    that one?

Still to this day, 63 year later, so much better...    than the 2005 Spielberg/Cruise reboot.

[LateForLunch]

The Cruise/Speilberg remake was brilliant IMO. Largely it was more about characters than about things, which is why it was in some ways superior. The original was intended to be more of a rendering of the radio broadcast by Wells. It was sort of trying to represent visually what people who listened to the broadcast were imagining - especially the emotions of being caught up in a war again -  like the nation had just survived a decade earlier in WWII.

The Spielberg remake was slanted in a different way - it focused as do so many of his films on what the characters in the situation might have realistically gone through. Also many of the visuals of the second film were more true-to-life than the original, mostly because CGI was not available when the first was made, so any attempt to reproduce things like the tripods would have been hokey instead of awe-inspiring.

When the tripod erupts from under the ground and rises into the sky, that is a classic moment of cinema that could not have been accomplished in the era of the first film. Bravo!!

I know it's popular for many to denigrate the remake, but it was arguably superior to the original in many ways - such as the scenes in the basements. The first where the plane crashes was an inspired sequence of cinema and was likely actually taken from a chapter of a book reporting on the real event experience by the son of physicist Hugh Everett (who came up with the Many Worlds Theory as a solution to quantum wave-form collapse). Mark Everett (aka "E") who founded the Eels, wrote about walking through his neighborhood after a passenger airliner crash exactly as portrayed in the movie, in his own autobiography after he became a successful rock musician years after his father had died. I guess that was a little subtle inside-joke from Spielberg (get it? "many worlds"?)

The other basement scene where the character portrayed by Tim Robbins goes nuts and has to be killed by Cruise's character is in some ways far more horrible than all of the alien mayhem.

There was also a very riveting, evocative scene where Dakota Fanning's character is watching bodies floating by in a river that is ghastly and very nicely represents much of the genuine horror of human massacre that is missing from the first, where the human suffering is reduced to a sort of cartoonish, distant thing. Another scene where Cruise's son is breaking away to join the military effort to strike back at the invaders is classic - with Cruise's character torn for his desire to see his son be his own man but also to protect him, where he implores his father," You have to let me go!!!" What parent has not had that agonizing decision to face when their son finally starts to become their own man? Classic.

So I think that the world is big enough to accommodate both films without having to denigrate either.