Science Fiction
Westworld Season 4 Review: A Welcome Fresh Start With Some Big Ideas to Explore
The Pitch: The third season of Westworld did not have a lot of luck on its side — specifically, the timing of its premiere could have been better, as March 15th, 2020 was not an ideal day to launch a new season of a TV show which, over the course of eight episodes, became a tale of society nearly descending entirely into apocalypse. But even since the first season, Westworld has experienced a lot of critical scrutiny, especially as the narrative has drifted further and further away from its original Michael Crichton inspiration of disaster at a high-tech amusement park for the ultra-rich. (Funny how Westworld literally is a response to one of Jeff Goldblum’s iconic quotes from another Crichton adaptation: “If Pirates of the Caribbean breaks down, the pirates don’t eat the tourists.”) So wh...
Tom DeLonge’s Sekret Machines Book Series Being Adapted for Television
Sekret Machines, rocker Tom DeLonge’s fictional UFO book series based on actual events, is being adapted for television by Legendary Entertainment and producer Dan Farah (Ready Player One). The co-founder of Blink-182 has recently been making a name for himself as a UFOlogist, and in 2020 his findings prompted the Pentagon to confirm that videos of UFOs exist. Sekret Machines: Chasing Shadows comes from earlier in his research in 2016, and was co-written with A.J. Hartley. Chasing Shadows follows the intersecting stories of Timika, a skeptical UFO journalist; Jerzy, a WWII prisoner of war; Jennifer, a British heiress; and Alan, a pilot involved with Area 51. Together they unravel a vast global attempt to suppress knowledge about UFOs. A second book, Sekret Machines: A F...
Tom DeLonge Shares Trailer for Bonkers Alien Movie with Richard Kind: Watch
Tom DeLonge loves aliens almost as much as he loves dick jokes, and it seems he’s managed to combine these passions in his directorial debut Monsters of California. An absolutely bonkers teaser trailer is out now, and it comes stocked with UFOs, bikini models, and beloved comedian Richard Kind. As far as alien flicks go, Monsters of California seems pitched closer to a horror comedy than a sci-fi romp. It follows teenager Dallas Edwards (Jack Samson) as he investigates paranormal activity in the SoCal area. “Maybe UFOs aren’t what we think they are,” his friend Riley (Jared Scott) says in the trailer. There’s also evidence of DeLonge’s unique sense of humor. One character quips, “That’s classified information. I’d tell you, but then I’d have to fuck your dad.” Spea...
Ryan Reynolds Is Really, Really Reynolds-y In Netflix’s The Adam Project: Review
The Pitch: The Adam Project is centered on the kind of question asked during job interviews and looming existential crises: “What would you say to your younger self, should you have the chance?” But in the case of Adam Reed (Ryan Reynolds), that’s not why he’s traveled back from the year 2050 to the present. Adult Adam’s on a quest to find his wife Laura (Zoe Saldana), a fellow time traveler in the program controlled by the duplicitous Maya Sorian (Catherine Keener). Unfortunately, he doesn’t quite hit the time period he was looking for, instead blundering across his pre-teen present-day self (Walker Scobell), a plucky but troubled kid coping with the recent death of his scientist father Louis (Mark Ruffalo), school bullies, and other indignities of growing up. While initially reluctant to...
The Best Way to Enjoy The Book of Boba Fett Is to Embrace the Mess
[Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers through the season finale of The Book of Boba Fett, “Chapter 7: In The Name of Honor.”] The funny thing about The Book of Boba Fett is that a whole lot of people would have been a lot happier if they’d just done something different with the title. While the series started off as a stand-alone tale of the famed bounty hunter’s (Temuera Morrison) transformation into a new kind of crime boss, as seen with Episode 5 the show took an abrupt turn by bringing back famed Space Daddy Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal), with the second half of the season serving as a clear sequel to the end of The Mandalorian Season 2. Now that we’ve reached the end of the season, all that’s left to do is try to sort out what, exactly, happened here. Because nothing feels in ba...
The Sluggish Stowaway Still Delivers Thrills and Chills in Space: Review
<span class="localtime" data-ltformat="F j, Y | g:ia" data-lttime="2021-04-22T21:55:56+00:00“>April 22, 2021 | 5:55pm ET The Pitch: A trio of astronauts: Commander Marina (Toni Collette), Doctor Zoe (Anna Kendrick), and Biologist David (Daniel Dae Kim) find their plans for a two-year research mission to Mars derailed when they discover an unwitting stowaway named Michael (Shamier Anderson). Things go from bad to worse when the trio realize there isn’t enough oxygen on the ship to sustain four people: either one person has to die, or all of them do. In Space, No One Can Hear You Scream: The second Netflix space film in five months, Stowaway is also the second film of its kind (and overall) from director Joe Penna, who also penned the chilly survival film...
George R.R. Martin Developing Sci-Fi Dragon Novel Roadmarks for HBO
George R.R. Martin, photo via Henry Söderlund/WikiCommons George R.R. Martin is conjuring up more dragons for HBO, only this time, they’re not his own creations. The man behind Game of Thrones is executive producing an adaptation of novelist Roger Zelazny’s sci-fi book Roadmarks alongside writer, EP, and showrunner Kalinda Vazquez. Published in 1979, Roadmarks centers on an intertemporal highway constructed by the mysterious Dragons of Bel’kwinith. Off ramps along the route lead to different points in time in different places, with a special few individuals who have access to the Road able to travel between timelines. They can also change events in the past to alter the future, causing old exits to become inaccessible and new ones to open up. Zelazny was a personal friend of Martin before ...
Queen’s Brian May Recalls Recording Sci-Fi EP with Eddie Van Halen
Brian May, photo by David Brendan Hall / Eddie Van Halen, photo by Philip Cosores Legendary Queen guitarist Brian May has paid tribute to the late Eddie Van Halen by recalling the time the two recorded the sci-fi themed Star Fleet Project EP in 1983. “A couple of days after I heard the news about Eddie, I went back to Star Fleet,” May told Total Guitar. “I started revisiting all the feelings I had when we were in the studio doing that, and it sort of healed my soul a bit. I thought, ‘Yeah, this is what I should be doing at this time.’” The three-song, 28-minute release was officially released under the “Brian May + Friends” moniker on October 31st, 1983. The EP favored a heavy blues rock sound and also featured REO Speedwagon drummer Alan Gratzer and session musicians Phil Chen and Fr...
‘Away’ canceled at Netflix after one season
Netflix seems to be on a cancelation streak as of late, and the science fiction space drama Away is the streaming service’s latest victim. In the wake of cancelations handed down to Netflix shows like Glow, I Am Not Okay with This, Teenage Bounty Hunters, The Society, Altered Carbon, and The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, Away has been canceled after one season. You can read star Hilary Swank‘s response to the news below. [embedded content] Away is going away. Variety reports that six weeks after the series made its debut on September 4, 2020, Netflix has decided to not renew it for a second season. The series, which starred Oscar-winning actress Hilary Swank as the commander of the first-ever manned expedition to Mars, has come to an end after ten total episodes. Josh Charles (The Good ...
Synchronic Seamlessly Turns Paramedics into Time-Traveling Horror Heroes: Beyond Fest Review
The Pitch: Paramedics Dennis (Jamie Dornan) and Steve (Anthony Mackie) work together in the same ambulance and are also longtime best friends. Running the Garden District route in New Orleans, the two run into a string of incidents linked to a new synthetic designer drug, Synchronic, which is having preternatural effects on users. When a one-two punch of personal tragedy afflicts the friends, their lives are thrown into turmoil as they become inextricably linked to the dangerous narcotic. The Best Time Travel Stories Are Not About Time Travel: Time travel in film is usually best used when it’s a plot device but not the coda of the movie. Genre vets Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson are magicians here, using the script and pacing to nimbly carry us through a science-fiction adventure that tr...
R.I.P. Ron Cobb, Designer of Back to the Future DeLorean and Alien Ship Dead at 83
Ron Cobb, the legendary production designer who created the DeLorean in Back to the Future and the ship Nostromo in Alien, has died at 83. According to his wife, and via The Hollywood Reporter, he passed away on his birthday from complications caused by Lewy body dementia. Born in 1937, Cobb began his career at the age of 17 as an inbetweener on Disney’s Sleeping Beauty. In the 1960s he became a prolific and beloved counter culture cartoonist, addressing racial privilege, income inequality, the moon landing, and the Vietnam war. His work was syndicated in more than 80 newspapers across the United States, Australia, and Europe. In 1972, he gave an interview to a student newspaper, saying, “I’m fascinated with man in stress situations, I’m fascinated with man at a cr...
Back to the Future Is Fueled by Huey Lewis and “The Power of Love”
Songs That Made Movies Classics is a feature in which we analyze how the use of a single song helped make a film a modern classic. Today, we go back in time all the way to 1985 … time circuits on. The story behind how Back to the Future got green-lit might actually be a longer and stranger journey than Marty McFly’s own adventures through time. No, the idea for the movie didn’t come to writer-producer Bob Gale while standing on his toilet trying to hang a clock. The creative jolt came when Gale found his father’s senior high school yearbook while rummaging through his parents’ basement during a visit. Intrigued by Gale’s premise, filmmaker Robert Zemeckis, yet to have a film project not flop at the box office, teamed with him in late 1980 on an initial script deal with Columbia Pictures. L...
