Wolverine is coming, even if they haven’t built the full site yet. Or even the home page; this was the only link I pulled out of the page source that gave me anything on the screen tonight. Maybe by next month. A fully realized movie home page is Cyborg She, also known as Cyborg Girl or Boku no kanojo wa saibôgu. It would be just another robot girlfriend/time travel/disaster/superhero/romantic comedy, if it wasn’t for the world-class acting, good special effects and cinematography, and fun story line. You made need to explain a few details to viewers who have trouble following simultaneous personal and linear timelines, but it is an enjoyable film even for the temporally challenged.
Terrestrial Human
Or at least the Sci-Fi Flicks for the Thinking Man, which makes sense, since Rotten Tomatoes put this 10 best list together. This is a different kind of list, put together in honor of the final story segment for the new Battlestar Galactica series, and a mighty good list it is. It includes Dark City (which also made the Top 50 Dystopian Movies of All Time meme, in the number 30 position), Gattaca (25 on that list), Children of Men (6th place), and Blade Runner (at number 5). Primer didn’t make the Dystopian list, but was one of the best time travel movies ever made, and didn’t need a big budget to do it. 2001: A Space Odyssey also didn’t make the D list, but had to be on this one. And then there are Solaris and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and several more. For once, a list actually includes the targets its description requires.
The Science Fiction Poetry Association has announced the winners of the 2008 Dwarf Stars contest. As the name implies, this competition is for very short poems (10 lines or less), which allows them to post all 3 of the winners on the awards page. They have also opened nominations for the 2009 Rhysling Awards. The Guardian ran a nice story about Steampunk, which looks very much like the author recently got his hands on a copy of Jeff and Ann VandeerMeer’s instant classic anthology of the same name and was amazed. As well he should have been; I told everyone last May this was a book they did not want to miss, and ordered my own copy before it hit the bookstores.
While it is still part of the SciFi Channel, SciFi Wire has split off, with a much cleaner, more elegant, and faster-loading home page than the original site, living on its own domain name. This is a reversal from when the SciFi Channel absorbed Sci-Fi Weekly back in 1994, paying the collage students who created and maintained it some serious money for their troubles. Weekly may have evaporated from the independent Net, but some of us remember. Another spin-off property is DVice, which currently has a fun article on the most absurd devices from sci-fi movies. Of course, when you consider the history of ownership of the channel since it began in 1992, and how the mergers changed everything over the years, who can be surprised about how it all turned out?
Strange Horizons presents 2008 in review, where the reviewers review their reviews. And that is the most recursive sentence I have ever written, but strangely true. Be aware, this is Armageddan Week on the History Channel; vote for your favorite way for the world to end, and follow it with Life After People. I support the AFI, and hope a lot of you do as well. This is a small slice from one of their members-only events; Mike Meyers introducing Sean Connery at his lifetime achievement award ceremony. Note the reaction to the Zardoz part of the intro.
And at 26, he is the youngest actor ever to play the Doctor. Yesterday the BBC named Matt Smith as the 11th Doctor Who. Andrew Pettie of the Telegraph has some ideas about why this is a good move for the Beeb, and while the reactions at places like SciFi Heaven range the gamut, I find this promising. The actor has played in the Phillip Pullman screen renderings of The Shadow in The North and The Ruby in the Smoke, as well as showing up in an episode of Secret Diary of a Call Girl; all with Who veteran Billie Piper. He has also worked with Moffatt on a few previous projects, so the new season should be fairly interesting.