David Lynch’s Dune (1984) is a flawed masterpiece. When I first saw it, I was deeply disappointed. Frank Herbert’s original novel made a powerful impression on me. I could see Herbert’s world, and Lynch’s vision was not my vision. But when my initial impression faded and I returned to Lynch’s film with an open mind, I found it immensely imaginative and compelling. Even the score by Toto managed to grow on me. (more…)
Tag: science fiction
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2,904 words
Czech version here, French version here
This is the text of my talk at the fourth meeting of the Scandza Forum in Copenhagen, Denmark, on September 15, 2018. In my previous Scandza Forum talk, I argued that we need to craft ethnonationalist messages for all white groups, even Trekkies. This is my Epistle to the Trekkies. I want to thank everybody who was there, and everybody who made the Forum possible. (more…)
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Hunter / Prey
Written & directed by Sandy Collora
Starring Isaac C. Singleton, Jr. & Damion Poitier
(2010)“I sold my comics to make this movie!” — Sandy Collora
Hunter / Prey is an independent sci-fi movie from 2010 by producer Sandy Collora. (more…)
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The Expanse is a SyFy network original series that is now nearing the end of its third season. The Expanse is the most imaginative and absorbing science fiction series since the reboot of Battlestar Galactica (2003–2009). (more…)
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John Krasinksi, probably best known as Jim in the long-running television series The Office, is the director and star of a unique 2018 horror film called A Quiet Place. Krasinki breaks from his typical casting as a smirking “soy boy” to play a gruff and serious survivalist in this post-apocalyptic drama. The film shows us what the world would be like if Earth became infested with monsters who attack any sound louder than a certain unspecified decibel level. These monsters are numerous and they move with lightning speed. The film begins after most of the human population has already been destroyed. (more…)
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Ernst Jünger (1895–1998) was a prominent member of the German nationalist Conservative Revolutionary movement of the 1920s that was opposed to the feckless Weimar Republic. The son of a wealthy chemist, Jünger rejected the staid bourgeois world of his upbringing and instead sought adventure wherever he could find it. Running away from home and joining the French Foreign Legion while a minor, Jünger was sent to Algeria and Morocco. Through the intercession of his father, Jünger got out of the Legion in time to join the German Army at the outbreak of World War I. (more…)
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The Orville is a new science fiction/satire series created by Seth MacFarlane (Fox, 9 p.m., Thursdays). It takes place 300 years in the future, and MacFarlane is captain of a space ship, the Orville.
If Seth MacFarlane hasn’t read The Culture of Critique, he must have guessed what it has to say. (more…)
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It is dangerous work, making a sequel to a classic like Blade Runner, Ridley Scott’s 1982 magnum opus. French Canadian director Denis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049 is a very good film, but it inevitably falls short of the original.
I first discovered Villeneuve’s work with his 2016 science fiction film Arrival (discussed with John Morgan here). Arrival impressed me as a highly imaginative science fiction film with an original visual style, told with an appealingly deliberate art-film pacing, with a stunning plot twist and a powerful emotional payoff. (more…)
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Czech translation here
Ridley Scott’s 1982 movie Blade Runner is a science fiction classic and surely the director’s finest work. Blade Runner excels on all levels. It is a highly imaginative vision of the future realized with a stunning visual style. The script is intelligent, even poetic. The cast is uniformly strong, with a number of powerful performances, particularly Rutger Hauer as Roy Batty. The gripping action sequences are acrobatic, balletic, and brutal. But the key to the film’s unsettling emotional power is its deep mythic subtext. (more…)
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Philip K. Dick’s 1968 science fiction novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is far less famous than Ridley Scott’s 1982 movie Blade Runner, which is loosely based on the novel. A few of the novel’s characters and dramatic situations, as well as bits of dialogue, found their way into Blade Runner, often shorn of the context in which they made sense. But the movie and novel dramatically diverge on the fundamental question of what makes human beings different from androids, and in terms of the “myths” that provide the deep structure of their stories. (more…)
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Editor’s Note:
After reviewing Ridley Scott’s Alien: Covenant, Buttercup Dew decided to revisit its prequel, Prometheus. — Greg Johnson
Prometheus, an omen of the atrocity to come that was Diversity Awakens, is an example of how box office anticipation can propel a franchise into the hands of saboteurs. Unlike the tightly scripted, self-contained stories of the original Alien and exhausting Aliens, (more…)
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I saw Alien: Covenant on the big screen this summer in Budapest. I didn’t write a review then, because another reviewer had it covered. But having seen it for a second time, now on Blu-ray, I feel moved to comment.
Covenant is an excellent film, indeed the best in the series since Scott started it with his path-breaking Alien (1979) — although James Cameron’s Aliens is excellent and iconic in its own right. (more…)
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Quintillian’s “The Future Is White” has been made into a video by VertigoPolitix