One of the early geniuses of the space age, Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky was born on this day in 1857. He was pretty much the first person to put forth the idea that you could use a rocket to go into space, he worked out a lot of the principles of space flight, and he designed the first space stations.
Real Steel hits the big screen in October, and they have turned loose another few trailers to get us ready for it. If you have ever built your own combat bot (all of mine have been in the Nano class, I can’t afford the heavy weight hardware it takes to make it to Robot Wars), you will appreciate this movie. It is also yet another Sci-Fi movie starring Hugh Jackman that has no mutants in it (remember The Fountain, or Van Helsing , or Kate & Leopold?).
A classic sci-fi movie turned into a classic porn movie? However much fun a Flesh Gordon-esq Tron might be, it didn’t happen. But this comedy bit from Break Dot Com is a hoot.
According to Digital Spy, there will be a live action version of the Anime classic Kite coming to the big screen. The director will be David R Ellis, probably best known for Snakes on a Plane, with no word yet on the expected release date or rating. The original anime was Hentai and would have been rated X in the US, but it was so popular it went through two different edits, one to bring it down to R, and another that brought it to PG13 or so, and released in theaters worldwide.
On September 22nd through the 29th Fantastic Fest take place in Austin, Texas. Billed as the largest genre film festival in the U.S., specializing in horror, fantasy, sci-fi, action and just plain fantastic movies from all around the world, this one is worth the effort to get to. Some of the more interesting films already in the venue (they are still adding more) include Beyond The Black Rainbow, a dystopian retro-future with a unique visual style, and Invasion Of Alien Bikini, a Korean ultra low budget kung-fu/action/comedy/sci-fi/bikini romp that made 5 times its production cost when it won the Grand Prize at the Yubari Film Festival. Also A Lonely Place TO Die, a UK presentation of a survival film that has fully believable characters in every roll and real heart in its storytelling, and Underwater Love, a Japanese romantic comedy about the relationship between a woman and her Kappa (watersprite deity). The list goes on, including a rare big screen presentation of Versus, the classic Yakuza vs. gun toting Zombies fim, a from Japan.
The most interesting selection this week is in very limited release: Restless is a story about a man who crashes funerals with his best friend (the ghost of a WWII Kamikazi pilot) who meets and falls in love with a dying girl while doing so. Like all the best stories, this is about how people change and grow while proceeding through life, even when their life is a bit stranger than average. The question at the core of this one is Who do you live for, I look forward to seeing if they can pull it off well enough to make the film live up to the promise of the trailer. If it does, it may just become another cult classic on a par with Harold and Maude.