Last night we went to see a screening of Twelve Monkeys, still one of my favorites. There was an odd moment in the middle, though. In the scene in which Bruce Willis and Madeline Stowe are attacked in the abandoned theater, just after Willis’ character kills the attacker, is this exchange:
“You killed him!”
“All I see are dead people.”
Nervous laughter cascaded around the theater as the audience flashed forward to The Sixth Sense and its signature catch-phrase.
There are certain ideas that I find completely acceptable in the context of science-fiction, but completely looney in the context of actual science.
Take, for instance, Erich von Däniken’s premise that gods were really ancient alien astronauts. It’s an interesting idea, but it’s way out there in terms of science. It assumes that (a) myths are historically accurate, (b) aliens exist, and (c) low-tech humans couldn’t possibly have created things like Stonehenge, pyramids, giant stone heads, etc. Not to say it’s not possible that aliens visited the planet in the distant past—just that comparative mythology and architecture aren’t exactly compelling evidence.
On the other hand, I have no problem with the concept in science-fiction. It’s the basic premise of Stargate. The movie and early seasons of SG-1 focused on Egyptian mythology and technology, and in subsequent seasons of the show, just about every ancient legend has turned out to have an alien race behind it. It also figures into the backstory of Babylon 5, with the Vorlons having visited nearly every known race in ancient times, insinuating themselves into local religions and engineering telepaths over the course of centuries.
(via Sclerotic Rings and *** Dave)
OK, so we know Serenity didn’t do that well at the box office (despite being an excellent movie), but the DVD sales seem to be doing great. Last Thursday, just two days after release, Best Buy not only had it on its Best Seller shelf, they were actually sold out of the widescreen version. And Amazon.com’s DVD rankings show Serenity at #2 and Firefly at #3. Considering that the Firefly DVDs have been out for something like two years, and everything else on the 25-item list is either a new release or a new special edition, the obvious conclusion is that Amazon’s “Buy this DVD with Firefly” ploy is working—or that people are (again) watching the movie and then coming back for more.
Is Fox TV eligible for the “Turning down the Beatles” award yet?
CNET has an article on various websites related to Lost. Among them are official sites for Oceanic Airlines and The Hanso Foundation and fan sites for Mega Lotto Jackpot and Charile’s band, Drive Shaft.
I’d seen the Drive Shaft site last year (or at least a Drive Shaft site), though it seems to have exceeded its bandwidth for this month.
The official sites don’t have much detail, but they do have easter eggs…
Update (April 2010): Four and a half years later, as the show barrels toward its conclusion, only the Drive Shaft fan site is still around. Oceanic Air now redirects to ABC’s page for the show, the Hanso Foundation isn’t responding at all, and Mega Lotto Jackpot seems to have been picked up by a domain squatter.
Update (Feb 2017): In the years since I last checked, the Drive Shaft page was also taken over by a squatter, and has since gone offline.
It’s refreshing when a movie you’ve anticipated for years actually lives up to your expectations. It’s unprecedented when it happens twice in one weekend. MirrorMask and Serenity were both amazing.
The MirrorMask theater listing looks like a tour schedule, with the film opening in a few more cities each week. Unfortunately, at least some theaters that have it now won’t have it by next weekend, so we’re going to have to catch it again one night this week. Then we’ll seek Serenity again on the weekend. Somewhere in there we’ll find time for the other movies we wanted to see.
We’ve got a more thorough review of Serenity planned…
