Category: art

Post-pulp

Thank goodness Jongor can save the wilting white girl from the sub-men!

I don’t have much to say other than to nod along with this io9 article by Charlie Jane Anders, entitled Can You Update Pulp Science Fiction Without Being F-ed Up? but I really want to repost this sentence from the conclusion:

And hey, it bears repeating: None of this would be such a problem if pop culture in general, and science fiction in particular, was about newness and freshness, instead of rehashing. If we were constantly getting excited about new ideas, instead of nostalgia and call-backs to the stories of our youth (or our parents’ youth, in many cases.) We’ve said it before, but no harm in saying it again.

It goes into Tintin in the Congo, Avatar, John Carter et al., The Mandarin (Iron Man’s Fu Manchu villain), and, of course, Jar Jar Binks.

Pumzi—Science Fiction from Kenya

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3elKofS43xM&feature=player_embedded

Three things strike me about this. The first is that it looks gorgeous. The second is that it’s interesting that this “last outpost of humanity that doesn’t know that outside is OK” theme is so resilient — Logan’s Run, The Island (which, OK, was more or less a remake of Logan’s Run), Paranoia, Moon’s busted antenna, THX-1138, and even Planet of the Apes’ Forbidden Zone. It says something about systems of societal control, that we could be exploring the world were it not for the fears we’re fed.

The third is, holy shit, this could be a picture of an Academic:

The brown and grey uniform, the weirdly tall and skinny, the dark skin, the being a woman, the science... I wonder if she has thumbs on her feet.

I wonder if Pumzi interacts with the audience’s knowledge of its ancestors the way Moon interacted with the audience’s assumptions borne of 2001 and a bazillion “OMG IM A CLOEN” stories. It’s probably not fair to judge every indie science fiction movie by the bar Moon set, but shit, if filmmakers are looking at that bar at all, I’m awfully excited.

The Gift

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOZkLIwbRrw

Reportedly, this is already planned as a feature-length film. Has Neill Blomkamp set a precedent here? Is this the way to make movies now? And do you need movie theaters to make it work? Might straight-to-iTunes be a better way to publish?

(Also: I’m not sure why Philips thinks that reducing the resolution is a good way to show off their brand. Assholes.)