Every year in the UK there is a great little film festival that comes along, the Sci-Fi London Film Festival, happening next from April 23nd to May 2nd. It actually turns up twice every year, because besides the April event they also run an Oktoberfest. Part of the festival focus is to support new film makers, with panels, workshops, and a 48 hour film challenge which usually funds the winner to make a feature length version of the winning entry. Well, it seems they put a number of the shorts, features, documentaries, and interviews online to check out at Sci-Fi London Web TV. You will find all the 2010 48 Hour entries there (with the tag line These films were made for zero budget in 2 days!), lots of the shorts from the previous Oktoberfest, a behind-the-scenes look at Paul, feature films including The Brain That Wouldn’t Die and Planet Outlaws, and a whole lot more. To see their entire collection you can also hit the Daily Motion SFLondon site. And if you don’t watch anything else, be sure to take the time for The Hunt For Gollum. If you happen to be in the UK, The Sci-Fi London team will be part of the SFX Weekender event on the 4th and 5th of February, where, surprise, a lot of science fiction will be screened.
On Friday, the 28th, IP Man 2 hits the screens, more of a historical martial arts film than anything else, but with amazing action sequences. Scream of the Banshee is also released that day, a horror flic with a hot archeologist digging up supernatural beings best left undisturbed. And
Kaboom claims it is Sci-Fi when you check it out at IMDB, but this American movie’s web site lives in France, and the trailers it shows have no science fiction in them, not even a flying saucer. Bottom line is I do not see any actual Science Fiction or Fantasy movies being released this week but there is one coming next week; The Adjustment Bureau, written by Philip K. Dick…
The 800 pound gorilla in the theater for this weekend is Gulliver’s Travels, towering over the competition by orders of magnitude. The Jonathan Swift classic political satire gets remade as a TV show or a movie every three to ten years, with greater or lesser degrees of adherence to the core attitude of the original story. But this time around they have an amazing cast, which includes Jack Black, Emily Blunt, Amanda Peet, Billy Connolly, and Catherine Tate, to name just a few. And since they are bringing the same Special FX technology to the table they used for Night At The Museum, you know it is going to be visually amazing as well. So it just remains to be seen if they will faithfully deliver the scathing commentary on the nature of man when ensconced in the halls of power, or play it strictly for laughs and box office returns. Previous versions have been divided fairly evenly between the two approaches, but I have my hopes up for the former considering the attitudes of many of the actors.
According to IMDB, it is not the only film of interest being released this week; the documentary Trek Nation should also be coming out, with should being the operative word. They are apparently still seeking a distributor, per their home page. I hope they find one soon, or consider releasing Direct To Disk so we can have access to it.
The winner this week is pretty hard to determine, and may depend for you on the ages of the friends or family you are going to see it with. On the one hand we have The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, the third story in the C. S. Lewis series of books. I think the films have been a fairly faithful rendering of the original works, even if targeted at a younger audience than I would have expected. I will definitely be in the 3D theater for this one, although after looking at the trailer I believe it will work just as well on a 2D screen. The other film is a much more adult re-imagining of an absolute classic of fantasy literature: The Tempest. Original story by Shakespeare, assembled for the screen and directed by by Julie Taymor of Across The Universe fame, and winner of five major film festival awards, the trailer on this one knocked my socks off. Looks like it will be a two movie weekend for me.
Chronicles Of Narnia 3 Trailer 2
Common sense and the body of evidence; deductive logic and the scientific method; the Symphony of Science says it well.
I have half a dozen awards I consider worth the effort to be involved with, and one of them is the Nebula Awards. The members of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, Inc. nominate and vote on the various entries into that competition and select the winners. Along with the Hugo Awards it is one of the best places to learn about new authors and the best new stories. The video equivalent for these two would be the Academy Awards and the Golden Globes; one chosen by the pros, one chosen by the fans. Each award system has something of value to contribute, so you want to pay attention to both.
The nominations just opened for this years Nebula’s, so if you are a member of the SFWA now is the time to push your candidates to the front of the stage. When I say just, I mean it opened yesterday, the 15th of November 2010, and will run until February 15th of 2011. It really doesn’t matter if anything nominated wins or not from a Fan perspective. If it was good enough or important enough to be nominated, it is worth your time to read it at least once, even if your conclusion is you do not feel it is worth recommending to anyone. From these beginnings cult classics are born.