All posts tagged with “movies”


science fiction movies trailers Puzmi

Trailer for Puzmi, from the 2010 Sundance Film Festival

A dystopia with shades of THX-1138 and Moon. Looks very cool. (via Wired’s Underwire blog)


anathem books movies neal stephenson science fiction infodump

Regarding Anathem and the dreaded science fiction infodump

I received Neal Stephenson’s new opus Anathem for Christmas. It’s a big, beautiful, absolutely glorious SF book. Maybe I should qualify that with a “so far,” since the book is nearly 900 pages long and I’m only about 150 in. Regardless, it’s a wonderful and I am thoroughly enjoying it.1

But what’s curious about the book is its approach to the dreaded SF convention of the infodump. You’ve seen them before — the few paragraphs of text (often in italics) that quickly bring readers up to speed, telling them about the robots/hyperdrive/fractious interstellar politics that will drive the story. SF movies are particularly bad about this. Take the famous opening crawl of Star Wars, for example, or the beginning of Alien or Blade Runner. Terminator 2 features a bit of opening narration.

Anathem, on the other hand, doesn’t use this crutch. Well, sort of. It’s set on a fictional world that, unlike most in SF, has a long history of several thousand years. In order to bring the reader up to speed with the strange politics, religions, and history, the book has:

  • An author’s note, complete with a four-page, 6,000-year timeline
  • Dictionary definitions of made-up words spaced liberally throughout the text
  • A glossary of terms
  • Three appendices

That’s quite a lot! But all this information is more helpful to the reader, in the end, than doing it any other way. It helps preserve the integrity of the narrative and — here’s the best part — gives readers options. Those who want to forgo the timeline and endnotes and blah blah blah can just dive in and let the story reveal itself to them. Others2 can take the big picture approach. This isn’t as elegant as a solution as Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell’s footnotes, but then again Neal Stephenson’s world is quite a bit more complex than the alternate history dreamed up by Susanna Clarke.

In a way, Anathem reminds me of The Name of the Rose — the monastery-like setting, the world poised on the edge of disaster, the young and naïve (and overeducated) narrator. I hope that the end satisfies just as much.

  1. Not just the text of the book, either. Despite what has been said here about the coming death of print, Morrow Publishing has created a wonderfully physical object. The text is beautifully set, with lots of little embellishments and accents. And if one removes the (pretty typical) dust jacket, one finds a wonderfully foil-stamped cover that would probably warm the heart of a mathic avout, or at least any terrestrial bibliophile unfortunate enough to live in the 21st century. ↩

  2. Like me, who can hardly make it through a book without reading the last page first. So far I’ve read all the appendices but managed to hold off glancing at the last page. I don’t think my willpower will hold out much longer. ↩


science fiction movies
It was my private little joke. I never discussed this angle with Blaustein or Wise because I didn’t want it expressed. I had originally hoped that the Christ comparison would be subliminal.
Screenwriter Edmund Nort discussing his take on the original Day the Earth Stood Still’s Klaatu. Even after 50+ years the film still stands up. (That Christ comparison, by the way, is pretty apparent even on casual viewing.)

movies tropes stereotypes

16 films featuring Manic Pixie Dream Girls

Like the Magical Negro, the Manic Pixie Dream Girl archetype is largely defined by secondary status and lack of an inner life. She’s on hand to lift a gloomy male protagonist out of the doldrums, not to pursue her own happiness.

Via jaundicedeye.


journalism style funny movies
They wind up in London’s crowded Waterloo station where they have to dodge bullets from a CIA sniper, that of course is the sort of thing which happens to us all the time. But there are inaccuracies. The Guardian stylebook clearly states that if you are under a hail of bullets in a public place from an assassin run by a deniable intelligence unit, you have to duck into the nearest internet cafe and start blogging about it to keep the readers informed.
From The Guardian’s review of The Borne Ultimatum, via here.

Chronicles of Riddick Pitch Black movies science fiction sequels John Scalzi

The Ridiculousness of Riddick, or, How Not to Make a SciFi Sequel

John Scalzi examines the failures of The Chronicles of Riddick. This reminds me — I need to add Pitch Black to my Amazon wish list.


hollywood movies stupid people

Addressing the didn't-see-'em factor

This little nugget of insanity has been making the rounds on the Web lately.

These are some of the best movies that the filmmaking culture is turning out now. Every year there are at least 20 or 25 films that are somewhere between excellent, very good or good enough to watch and think about later. If regular people in Boston and Saskatchewan are living such insulated and cut-off lives that they can’t be bothered to go to some of these films unless it has an advertised ‘happy pill’ vibe then the hell with them. They’re children. I have no time for childishness, and neither does anyone else of any worth. Life is short.

While I suppose it’s comforting to think that movies are some great piece of the human experience, or whatever, consuming them really isn’t all that necessary to being a decent human being. Why does going to see a movie have to be a chore? What’s wrong with people wanting to go see a movie for pure escapism?

Seriously, this high-minded contempt of the so-called philistines of middle America is getting old. Living in a cultural capital doesn’t make people any better than the rest of humanity. It just apparently makes them snobs.