Interstellar (2014)

Interstellar is much as one would expect: the director, Chris Nolan (The Dark Knight, Inception, previously PPCCed The Prestige), directs movies like a late Romantic/Gothic period conductor, full of sound and fury, (often, alas!) signifying nothing. Like, look at these pictures of Glenn Branca, the experimental/art rock guy, conducting his electric guitar orchestra: this and this and this. That's how we at the PPCC imagine Christopher Nolan directing his movies. DARKER. DARKER! FURY AND THUNDER. SOUND THE KLAXONS! And so forth.

Which is to say: it's a lot of fun.

But, as with Inception, it was a bit hollow. Like Inception, Interstellar looks and smells and feels like a Big Concept Movie, and a very handsome one at that, but it doesn't really have a convincing big concept at its core. The movie's built to blow your mind, and - aesthetically - it certainly does, attaining rapturous levels of sublimity (the ocean planet OCEAN PLANETTT). But it doesn't really, really blow your mind. Not the way a good sci fi movie should: you know, the way 2001 blows one's mind with the whole alien/evolution stuff, or the way moments of Battlestar Galactica blow your mind by gesturing towards a gigantic (Mormon?) Divinity that hates robots and loves violent conflict. Or the way Dune blows your mind because it's, well, Dune and WTF is happening to these people!?

Interstellar doesn't really blow any minds. But that's OK. Moments come close. Sometimes very close, such as when freaky real-world physics things (like wormholes warping space-time, and time dilation, and relentless, awe-inspiring Nature - yo, this shit is real) are explored a bit. It's nothing you couldn't find in a Michio Kaku book or a thoughtful episode of Star Trek, but here, on Nolan's BIG CANVAS, these concepts are given the grandeur they rightfully deserve. Seriously, because - wormholes? Respect. Shit that is not to be trifled with. Worship it!

We should probably get to the plot: essentially, the movie boils down to a very classic (almost retro) Golden Age-style sci fi story. Earth is crappy eco-disaster (thanks, Monsanto). Heroic (white male) Hero (here, Matthew McConnaughey) is tasked with sitting on rocket in order to Save Everyone. Rocket blasts off! Choral music!!! Space is amazing. Also dangerous. Einstein stuff. Tragedy of time dilation.

It's actually been a while since sci fi has had such stories (it feels like we've been mostly preoccupied with monsters and cyberspace lately), and so it's oddly refreshing, even nostalgic. J.J. Abrams gestured to a similar nostalgia of Glorious Golden Age Space via the 2009 Star Trek. You know: shots of the chiseled blue-eyed hero shading his eyes in the flare of rockets. It makes you want to give money to NASA, and re-watch Apollo 13, and re-read Red Mars.

Which brings us to two things: (1) the strange, exciting way that Interstellar gets all mystical, even philosophical, and (2) the way it's a big sci fi palimpsest.

On the first point: one of the big spoilers of the film (which we will unfortunately spoil right now) is Hans Zimmer's music. Using repetitive, grandiose motifs, bashed out on a gigantic pipe organ, it feels Biblical and powerful and kind of like a Terrence Mallick film. People apparently complained about the movie's sound, since the blasting pipe organ often drowns out the dialogue. To this we say: philistines! This is like those people that got into a fight during a Steve Reich concert in 1973 (okay, that story is pretty awesome). Don't you get it?! Apparently not. We, instead, loved this. Especially the way the music was so over-the-top, and we couldn't hear the dialogue. Admittedly, we also love Philip Glass and repetitive classical music (especially in films). But we thought Zimmer's music was one of the best parts of the film, a stroke of genius.

On the second point: so, a palimpsest is a story written on top of another story. A document where the faint traces of the previous writing are evident. Interstellar has inevitably been compared to 2001, which is an obvious connection, but we actually found the vibes - especially the moments when characters realized their cosmic insignificance - to be very similar to a different 1970s sci fi film, Solyaris. Like Interstellar, Solyaris is very Romantic, in reverence of nature and our place in it, and infused with the sense of cosmic mysteriousness. The two movies feel so similar in places that we even wondered if Nolan intended this as a semi/sort of update. Nolan is too pop to go really slow, though he does try to keep the pace austere and stately. Solyaris is an unapologetic three-hour grind that is, for those who make it through, deeply rewarding: it features many of the same themes (but zero action, sorry) about unforgiving space and humanity's need to wonder/understand. The story centers around a cosmonaut visiting a lonely science station by a lonely water world, and being - in turn - visited by a ghost/apparition/unknowable copy of his dead wife. Oh my Lord, it's so good. It also features organ music (yay).

Hmm, another very close relative would be Ray Bradbury's Martian Chronicles.

Should you see Interstellar? Duh, yes, do you even like movies?! But is the science in Interstellar sound? Mostly - Kip Thorne (of Caltech) consulted and even wrote a companion pop science book. It's about as sound as Contact, which - oh, yikes - we recommend, especially if you're excited by science and space travel. And what a surprisingly good trailer (yo, the 1990s had teeerrible trailers). Anyway, yes, watch Interstellar. Worship wormholes.

Gattaca (1997)

Just like Kramer vs. Kramer - a sexist movie about sexism - Gattaca is a prejudiced movie about prejudice.

Yes, it's also very slick and stylish and clever (check out everyone's names - e.g. Eugene, "you gene", GET IT?). Yes, the music by minimalist composer Michael Nyman is cosmically evocative (indeed, his this inspired us to make our this). And yes, the set/costume design, with its sleek, clean lines and 1950s jagged angulariness, is very beautiful too.

But!

Well, maybe the plot first.

The plot!

We begin our tale following Any Dystopia's Requisite Bureaucratic Drone, Jerome Morrow (Ethan Hawke), and his clinical, fussy morning preparations. This man's breakfast includes placing tiny tiny vials of blood into tiny little fingerprint pads and then methodically gluing them to his fingers. Among other things. We soon learn that Jerome is actually named Vincent Freeman, and he is an In-Valid. That is, he's not a genetically modified super-person. He's just a guy with bad eyesight and big ambition.

Vincent's world is a semi-Fascist gene-obsessed dystopia, where inequalities are perpetuated via parents investing in their kids' DNA. Being "Valid" - i.e. having been designed for success since fetus days - ensures you the best jobs, the best credit rating, the best life. Vincent, who dreams of joining the Gattaca Corporation and becoming an astronaut on one of their space missions, eventually finds - via a swarthy underground gene dealer (Tony Shalhoub!) - a way in: he steals the identity of a good-gene has-been, Jerome Eugene Morrow (Jude Law). Jerome - the real Jerome - was recently paralyzed in an accident, cutting his athletic career short and, it seems, his will to do anything. He's now all too happy to lend his now "useless" advantage to the under-privileged Vincent.

The rest of the film is basically about Vincent trying to hide his identity, especially as an unfortunately-timed murder and attendant investigation come down on Gattaca Corp.

Of course, this is all intended to be a clever commentary on our real biases and prejudices, and the actual moral issues around, for example, designer babies. Taller, beautifuller people have been shown to get higher salary offers, after all. (Too lazy to find the citation - but you can confirm-bias your way through the Google and find it.)

What then undermines this whole thing is how deeply, subconsciously prejudiced the film is. Some examples: well, the most glaring one is the fact that the hero(es) of the film, Vincent and Eugene, are polished, Anglo, white dudes. And that the only woman in the film, Irene (Uma Thurman), has no personality and is only present to be a love interest. So that's one prejudice in Gattaca: sexism. Let's see if we can keep count.

Next example: The sordid underworld gene dealer is coded as a swarthy foreigner, played by the Lebanese-American actor, Tony Shalhoub. This, coupled with only one black dude in the entire film, gives Gattaca its second strike: Racism.

And perhaps the most insidious example: Jude Law's performance was lauded and celebrated, and, indeed, it includes a number of "For Your Consideration - Academy Voters" scenes meant to elicit strong feelings. His character, Eugene, spends most of his days drinking away his obvious sorrows (cuz, you know, WHEELCHAIR). He is a self-destructive martyr whose only joy - he explicitly notes - is by living vicariously through the able-bodied Vincent.

And that's the third strike, and it's a big one: Ableism. Oh my Lord, we hated this aspect of the film. It played into the most insidious, seedy stereotypes about being able-bodied or not, and basically gave the message that, "If you're in a wheelchair, the best you can hope for is to transfer your earthly ambitions to someone who can walk. And then just die." His entire characterization was meant to evoke some sort of sickly pity, we were meant to see him as a tragic figure. Lest it not be clear, we don't think wheelchair = pitiable tragedy! And it's completely ridiculous to say so! And, ahem, completely undermining of the film's whole point, which is about overcoming perceived physical challenge to, nonetheless, come out on top. And the film's other big point, which is that prejudice based on those perceived challenges is stupid and semi-Fascist.

For these reasons - especially the last - we really kinda hated this film. Not recommended.

Doctor Who: Midnight (2008)

Some mood music, while you read.

We at the PPCC are huge sci-fi nerds, and yet it has taken us a long (loooong) time to get into that one mighty pillar of sci-fi-ness, Britain's Doctor Who of Britain, starring Britain, co-starring Britishness. Okay, we tease, but, damn, that shit is nationalistic! Which is fine. Most spec fic is notoriously US-centric, after all. Anyway, we're glad we finally initiated ourself. In addition to being nationalistic like crazy sauce, it is also addictive and silly and fun and full of everything.

It's difficult to review a PILLAR, so instead we'll focus on a few things:

• The episode, Midnight, and how it's awesome and a good intro. (Review)
  
• Some Doctor Who themes, and how they run the gamut from awesome to stupid to huh-ness. (Thoughts)

Allons-y, then!  

Episode review: Midnight

Doctor Who episodes seem to come in three varieties:

• Really trashy, ridiculous, and occasionally awful one-off episodes, featuring a Monster of the Week. As some of our friends assured us, "You do know it's a kid's show, right?" (No, we didn't! But now we do. Oh, how we do.)
  
• Really spectacular, mind-bending one-offs.
  
• Mediocre-to-good episodes that are usually redeemed by giving us one more crumb along the Great Path of Understanding the Doctor, usually accompanied by a Great Emotional Moment for the Doctor as well. These are exciting.

Midnight falls into the secondary category. It's the perfect gateway episode; you can watch it while knowing nothing of the Doctor and his Interminable Journey. But, of course, the experience is much richer if you do know a bit, since Midnight takes several Doctory themes, and then subverts them in refreshing ways.

Midnight begins on a fancy, diamondy planet called, uh, Midnight. Which is ironic, since it is brilliant and sparkling and very, very sunny. It is also totally hostile to any form of life; the sun being "x-tonic", which is technobabble for "zapping killer laser beam-like". The Doctor (David Tennant) and his Companion, the wonderful Donna Noble (the wonderful Catherine Tate), are taking a (much-deserved) break on Midnight, which markets itself as a party planet. The Doctor decides to go on a nature tour, while Donna lounges by the pool.

On the nature tour, we're introduced to a variety of Typical Human People: there's the suburban couple (Daniel Ryan, Lyndsay Coulsen) and their sullen teen son (Colin Morgan), the bumbling professor (David Troughton) and his geeky assistant (Ayesha Antoine), the flight attendant (Rakie Ayola; called a "hostess" in the episode, since apparently it's also 1950), and a middle-aged divorcee (Lesley Sharp). After lampooning modern commercial flight (endless, chattering entertainment options, tiny peanut packets, and so on), the journey is underway. The Doctor makes a few friends, people joke, and obviously something horrible is looming on the horizon.

We won't give away the horribleness, because much of the episode's genius is the smart and inventive (and cheaply-produced!) monster that we meet. If it's a monster at all. But it's something straight out of The Twilight Zone or Hitchcock: the fear and tension is slow, subtle, and gripping. One subversion of the Doctor Who routine is that the Doctor is as ignorant as everyone else on the ship (and in the audience) as to what the It thing is. Nothing is supposed to live on Midnight, and yet it seems something has? (Note that we can't even conclusively say that something has. One lovely interpretation of the episode is that there was nothing there at all, and everyone just freaked themselves out.)

A second subversion of Doctor Who's usual stuff is that, for once, humanity isn't celebrated, but instead retreats immediately into the banality of evil. When confronted with something difficult to understand and potentially violent, the passengers become scary and bestial themselves. It's reminiscent of J.G. Ballard's comments on seeing the "ragged scaffolding" of suburban civilization strip away, and how rattling that can be. For Doctor Who fans and the Doctor himself, it's especially rattling: usually, humanity has a big ol' crush on the Doctor, and is always happy to be helped. Here, they're skeptical, paranoid, hostile.

Anyway, the craft in this episode is just brilliant. The dialogue: building up tension, revealing aspects of the It thing's otherness slowly, taking sudden turns. Argh, as a writer, the PPCC burned with jealousy at someone having had such a good idea! The music. The acting: Tennant is always pretty damn good, but his role-reversal during the climax was so well-done. As with Lesley Sharp, especially in the earlier moments of being possessed, when she's/it's "learning". Ah! So good. Bravi, bravi.  

Big thoughts  

First big thought: Doctor Who is Buddhism

In fact, it might be as Buddhist as Groundhog Day, and that's pretty damn Buddhist. Except, whereas Groundhog Day is uplifting because it shows us nirvana (the ultimate happy ending), Doctor Who just grounds the PPCC down with its nihilistic woe. Seriously, how can this be a kid's show? HOW?! It is misery by design.

The most obvious Buddhist links are, first, the regeneration, and, second, the eternal woe. Oh, the woe.

One of the central tenets of Buddhism is that life is suffering, and it tends to repeat again and again, until we can break out of it by building mindfulness and compassion and non-attachment. Once you break out of that cycle of life and rebirth, you turn into Bill Murray - i.e. a Buddha, an enlightened being. In Mahayana Buddhism, there's an intermediate stage, called a bodhisattva - that's someone who delays nirvana, staying amongst the merely-stuck to teach about loving-kindness and being all nice and stuff.

You could argue that the Doctor's a bodhisattva. But we wouldn't. Because while he is pretty helpful and sorta nice and all that, he's also fighting the same battles over and over again: those Daleks never seem to die, do they? Nor does the (wonderful) Master (nor should he!).

Similarly, you'd think the Doctor would have learned, by now, that attachment leads to suffering (second Noble Truth in the ol' Buddhism). But he doesn't - constantly seeking out Companions, and constantly, ahem, effing them over. They never seem to emerge unscathed from their adventures. Seriously, after you've lost various Companions to death, dismemberment and being locked in a parallel universe, JUST STOP, DUDE.

So, it's Buddhism, but it's Buddhism at its saddest: the moment after the First and Second Noble Truths (life sucks, and the sucking will go on forever), and before the Third and Fourth (wait, maybe I should stop all this). To use a Christian analogy, it's like modeling a story on the moment after Jesus dies, but before he's resurrected. It's just miserable, dude.

 IS THIS WHAT YOU TEACH YOUR CHILDREN, BRITAIN?!

Which brings us to the second big thought.  

Second big thought: Doctor Who is Nationalism

 "Oh no," someone gasps. "They're headed towards Earth!"

Cut to outline of the UK.

The ostensible backstory is that the Doctor loves Earth like peanut butter loves jam. And that's fine. But Earth is basically Britain. And not only that - it's England. Scottish David Tennant wasn't allowed to keep his Scottish accent because, of all the regenerations a rogue Time Lord could make, of all the species, the genders, the heights and the everythings, the dude's gotta be a white English male every. single. time. Rumor has it the newest Doc, Peter Capaldi, will be retaining his Scottish accent, but this was - apparently - a major BBC decision.

Sometimes, the nationalism stuff is grating. But we know that we have no leg to stand on; most sci-fi is heavily skewed towards the US, and few people even seem to notice. At other times, the nationalism stuff is hilarious and wonderful, such as when an ailing Doctor - remember, this guy's a magical, super-smart, self-healing, time-traveling alien - is on the brink of death and then healed by the power of a CUP OF TEA. (Seriously, that was brilliant.)

Another wonderful byproduct of the Who's nationalism, is its portrayal of workaday Normal British Folk in all the supporting characters: Rose Tyler (Billie Piper), the London shopkeeper. Donna Noble, who's "just a temp from Chiswick!" And their funny families! Everyone is pretty modest, even mediocre. What's nice about the show is that it celebrates this normality for the inherent brilliance it can conceal.

Third big thought: Doctor Who is fandom

Fandom is nice. Fandom is fun. And Doctor Who has a huge, gigantic, long-lived fandom that seems to go on and on in every direction, and rival the Trekkies in terms of historicity and population density. Many of our good friends are Whovians. Some of the latest Doctors themselves - Tennant and Capaldi - are Whovians. And then you've got things like Adventure Time fans and fun, smart YouTube channel fans, and references all over the place. And the fanfiction! Oh, the fanfiction. We don't even want to go there.

For whatever reason (we still haven't pinpointed it), this miserable, lonely Time Lord has captured everyone and their mom's attention - including ours. The PPCC has basically put everything on hold while we finished off the Tennant years. And now we've still got all of Matt Smith to go - oh God.

There's still so much to say - how Doctor Who compares to Star Trek, especially The Next Generation, since we do think they are two sides of the same (weird) coin. Or the weird moments of transcendental, pulpy space opera in Who - especially when they talk about the Time War (and it sounds like the line-up for a heavy metal festival, "the Could-Have-Been King and his army of Meanwhiles and Never-Weres!"). But we'll leave that to another day, as it's 1AM here and a Time Lord has just regenerated in our laptop!

Strange Days (1995)

The pulpy, B-grade cyberpunk film, Strange Days, is sleazy. Very, very sleazy. It's also completely hypocritical, or completely meta, we're not sure.

It's Los Angeles, and we're gonna party like it's 1999. Except, in this 1999, LA is a cesspit of near-constant rioting, corruption, sweaty grime and limp confetti. Clearly, it's only twenty years away from this LA.

Into this cyberpunk fest steps our usual anti-hero, the excellently named Lenny Nero (an excellently maned Ralph Fiennes), who indeed fiddles his way while the city burns. Which, in this story, means he peddles cortex-bending mindtrips (mindfraks, really) that latch onto your brain stem and make you really feel it, man. Our introduction to Lenny also outlines his strict ethical regulation: no snuff trips.

Which is all fine and well, as Lenny is just barely hanging on in his dingy apartment, pining away after his ex, Faith (Juliette Lewis, she of the 90s grunge), mostly by cradling bottles of vodka and re-living (literally) past happy times. This sad excuse of a life is casually destroyed by the arrival, into Lenny's hands, of a snuff trip produced by a deranged killer - perhaps the most horrible snuff trip ever produced. Lenny, a disgraced cop, is immediately sucked in - he must track the killer down, especially when the killer sends creepy mindtrip videos of himself creeping around Lenny's apartment and holding exacto knives at Lenny's throat.

Employing the help of his badass lady friend Mace (a wonderful Angela Bassett), Lenny soon realizes that there are nine rings in Dante's Inferno, and the evil killer is only a couple down. As the tension builds, the explosions become louder, and we descend further into the decay, a ticker periodically appears on our screen to remind us that the stroke of a new millennium is a mere X hours away. This creates a sense of BLUNT FOREBODING.

There are some things in Strange Days which are done very well: at its best, the film is a kinetic, lively, silly cross between Philip K. Dick's drugged-out vision of urban sprawl and alienation, and Frank Miller's pulpy pessimism. (Indeed, Angela Bassett would make a wonderful Martha Washington!) The feeling of fluorescent filth and universal corruption and decay was just lovely (and a little pleasantly nauseating). And Ralph Fiennes performance - a very against-type role - unexpectedly hit all the right notes. Lenny's nasally American accent; his vanity (he can afford awful paisley futuristic Armani, but not soap, it seems); and his clammy vulnerability - everything was as it should be. Another unexpected (well, not totally unexpected) hit was Angela Bassett's woman of steel - it's always relieving for the PPCC to (finally!) see strong women; and here, Mace was very, well, physically strong, often saving Lenny from the clutches of burly henchmen by beating the hell out of them. Huzzah! Mace's obvious tenderness towards Lenny was also strangely touching. They made quite a pair.

The movie tried to insert some obvious parallels to LA's realities of the 1990s, with a subplot of race rioting. This was not totally effective - each step and each character was too much a stereotype. But we appreciated the attempt.

And then the film had some awful bits: most particularly the gratuitous violence against women and the salacious way this violence was depicted. Others have already noted how lurid tales of rape and humiliation are often breathlessly portrayed in film, where our hero can be properly horrified and thus we can feel OK about watching it all. Ugh, spare us. This was one of those films: it rubbed our face in the awful, terrible, sick, twisted, etc., completely unnecessary scenes and - even more disturbingly - everything was eroticized. This was the male gaze on steroids: we only see men take the mindtrips (women are only ever performers), and these men unanimously experience orgasmic states of heavy breathing, moaning, twisted faces, etc. as they watch terrible things happen to women in their brains. "Oh, how horrible!" Lenny cries after one such ride. Right. Sure.

This aspect was all kinds of horrible, and confusing, to boot, since the director is a woman: Kathryn Bigelow! What the hell, Kathryn Bigelow? Not only is this completely ridiculous and harmful to women, but isn't this whole movie also supposed to be about how our pornographic pursuits lead to general societal decay?!

This is why we think this film's either totally hypocritical, or some sort of meta commentary that's beyond our comprehension. Either way, we could have done without all those shots of razors cutting into women's underwear; the movie would have been much improved.

In the meantime, the trailer is excellent - particularly 1:54 on. It's excellence exceeds the film's by a long shot (as sometimes unfortunately happens). The music of the film (particularly all that Skunk Anansie and Juliette Lewis and PJ Harvey and other angry young woman stuff) was also very 1990s and fun. Not really recommended, unless you have an obligation to watch all cyberpunk/New Wave science fiction ever committed to film (as we do).

Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970)

Beneath the Planet of the Apes is slow going at first, but it picks up by the end, eventually letting its story careen away into madness and chaos and Charlton Heston once again on his knees, shouting "Oh, the humanity!" Which is to say: it gets a lot better.

We return to the titular planet only moments after the original left off: "Damn you all to hell!" Taylor (Charlton Heston) cries, on his knees, beating at the sandy beach. Not long later, Taylor and his mute ladyfriend, Nova (Linda Harrison), encounter all manner of strange things in the so-called "Forbidden Zone", a desert wasteland where none dare go. Taylor and Nova dare, and are met with random walls of fire, sudden spurts of pesky lightning, and Land Before Time-esque splits in the earth. When they come upon a rocky outcropping, Taylor walks into it and vanishes.

Meanwhile, astronaut Brent (a tanned, macho James Franciscus) has crash-landed on the Planet in search of the missing Taylor. After coming upon a distressed Nova - okay, admittedly she's always distressed - he hops on Taylor's horse and goes through much of the same terrain (pun intended) we covered in the original: the stumbling upon ape civilization (yay Cornelius! yay Zera! yay sympathetic chimpanzees!), the numerous (and now dull) scenes of flight and capture, the paper-thin allegory to a segregationist, racist society of the 1960s on the verge of social revolution, with gorillas standing in for military hawks/goons, orangutans as the Christian Right and chimpanzees as the intelligentsia.

Things really pick up when Brent eventually finds his way to the title: beneath the Planet. Here, we find remnants of a post-nuclear Manhattan, complete with a crumbling (but intact) subway system and a sometimes-hilarious, sometimes-creepy cult of humans who worship the last, remaining (?) atomic bomb. The plot now starts coming fast and thick, with a conclusion that is as jarring as it is pulpy and paranoid.

This sequel to the 1968 hit is a much paler copy of the original, though it does have its moments. Cocooned in the flash and spectacle of a Saturday sci-fi matinee (George Lucas must be proud!), there were also some very dark scenes of terror and doomsday paranoia. These punctuating bass notes were unexpected, powerful and not altogether welcome to us (especially since we were eating at the time): the ape army coming upon a mirage of their deity on fire, weeping blood, surrounded by apes crucified upside down. The sweaty, desperate, humiliating Spartacus-style fight between mind-controlled Taylor and Brent, for the amusement of the freaky human cult. The freaky human cult, and their freaky Anglican-style service from hell. And the masks! Oh God, the masks!

Star Trek: The Next Generation, episode "Genesis" (1994)

Image source. Yeah, FYTNG!

Oh man. Sometimes we expect the Enterprise crewmembers to look up at the camera, break the fourth wall and just scream, "OMG AM I IN THE BEST EPISODE EVER?!"

Star Trek: The Next Generation's season seven episode, Genesis, is one of those Best Episodes Ever that made us squeal and squawk with pure delight. And it just goes to show you that, for every awesome and hilarious sci-fi idea that you can possibly think of, there's probably already a Star Trek episode for it.

One day, one of the Enterprise's torpedoes went shooting off into an asteroid field, irritating Lieutenant Worf (Michael Dorn) and Commander Riker (Jonathan Frakes) immensely. While Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart) and Data (Brent Spiner) took a shuttle to go retrieve it, everyone back on the Enterprise starting acting very, very bizarrely. Worf suddenly feels hot all the time, while Counsellor Troi (Marina Sirtis) starts to feel cold and parched. Riker can't focus on anything, and hypochondriac Lieutenant Barclay (Dwight Schulz) becomes manic. What could possibly be going on?! Is it the flu or something?

Well, sort of! They're all DE-EVOLVING! Because it's the best episode of a TV show ever!


Amphibian Troi. Most hilarious ever?! POSSIBLY. Pic courtesy Wikipedia.

When Picard and Data return to the ship, they find it a steamy, Amazonian mess of jungle shrieks and predatory roars (that would be Worf, who de-evolves into the Shrike - shout out to Dan Simmons!). Picard immediately contracts the virus, and it's only another twelve hours before - according to Data - he will de-evolve "into either a lemur or a pygmy marmoset."

Let's take a moment to let that sink in. This man, Picard,

= A

LEMUR.

OR A


PYGMY MARMOSET.

.....

!!

Of course, leave it to Picard to become the most squirrelly and adorable of primates - while beefy, seven-foot Riker turns into a Neanderthal (okay, australopithecine). While he goes all anxious and twitchy (and kudos to Patrick Stewart's Royal Shakespearean training - who else could so fully encapsulate Terrified Lemur Man? With such pathos?), Data saves the ship. Again.

Ahh, this was the best of a very strange show. We've been overdosing on Next Generation for the past few days, ever since discovering WatchTrek.com, and we've often found episodes so overstuffed with insane ideas that the audience (or characters, for that matter) has no time to fully digest what the hell just happened. Soul-sucking aliens from another dimension… your accidentally-created double wooing your ex using tai chi-inspired interpretative dance… finding out someone amputated your arm and reattached it while you were sleeping?!! It's all in a couple episodes' work for Commander Riker, for example. And that's just one character! The show is packed with this sort of stuff. We love it.


A gratuitous shot of a typical TNG episode, wherein everyone is jumping around and falling over. Pic courtesy FYTNG.

We loved this episode because it captured that atmosphere of bizarreness, hilarity and horror - an intoxicating cocktail, and not something that's easy to do. When Picard and Data run into their former crewmates who are, one by one, presented as a gaping amphibian, a roaring australopithecine, and, well, the Shrike - it's hilarious, weird, and scary. It's like Slither, or The Fly, or the Evil Dead series. That is, sort of disgusting - but in a really awesome way. And the cat-lizard! THE CAT-LIZARD!?

Buy this now. Buy it.

Starman (1984)

This year, we are particularly thankful for Netflix. Gobble, gobble!

Starman is a 1970s feel-good sci fi road trip movie. It's not mind-blowing, and its ultimate message of peace, love and good vibes is a pretty dull platitude. But director John Carpenter's color palette - with its vibrant hues and amazing (AMAZING, I TELL YOU) use of lighting (REALLY BRILLIANT) - makes up for what the story lacks in excitement.

Before Voyager became V-ger, it crash landed on a sparkly planet in the system Whatevs. In response, said planet sent a tiny spaceship to crash into the brisk Wisconsin countryside. There emerges Alien Blue Orb who, after drifting into the log cabin of one grieving widow, Jenny (Karen Allen), assumes the form of Jenny's dead husband, Scott (Jeff Bridges).

AlienScott, after stretching out his new legs and testing out his new vocal chords, promptly telegraphs a message back to his planet (using his eyes and some bizarre camerawork) before kidnapping Jenny, appropriating her Mustang and gunning it for a crater in Arizona (his pick-up point, apparently). All this happens while the Feds - led by the belligerent Fox (Richard Jaeckel) and the sensitive ex-hippie Shermin (Charles Martin Smith, from American Graffiti!) - are hot on their trail.

Much of Starman is, as it sounds, pretty ridiculous. It's also not a terribly inventive take on the worn tale of a stranger in our strange land. Pointing out humanity's idiosyncrasies and contradictions through the lens of an alien traveller can sometimes be illuminating and fun ("double dumb-ass on you!"), but Starman takes it a little too easy. The caricatures Scott and Jenny meet on the road - from the diner waitress to the deerhunter (!) to the cook - are cute, if not terribly memorable. Scott and Jenny themselves are likewise meh - Jeff Bridges's foxy foxiness hidden beneath his layers of Weird as AlienScott (he walks like a pigeon) and Karen Allen's usual pluck and ass-kickery dulled and mellowed by the constant grief.

In the end, neither the alien nor his final message of loving your brother really struck us as much as that stark change in lighting when the spaceship passes over Karen Allen's face. How did they do that? No, seriously, how? It was incredible, and very beautiful.

Star Trek: Generations (1994)

Star Trek: Generations exhibits all the fun of the zaniest of the Star Trek episodes - temporal nexuses (nexi?), Freudian projections, ships crashing into planets - with the best of Battlestar Galactica's Ronald D. Moore - layered emotional complexity. We loved it!

The story starts with an aging Kirk (William Shatner) - alongside crusty old favorites Scotty (James Doohan) and Chekov (William Koenig) - visiting the second USS Enterprise for its christening and first flight. At the helm is Cameron from Ferris Bueller's Day Off (Alan Ruck) - weird! - and, when Cameron was in Cameronland, let my Camerons go. That is, they encounter trouble (surprise).

Trouble comes in the form of a rippling wave of temporal nexusness (nexilism?) - a big, sparkly blanket in space that destroys stuff. Kirk, helping to save the Enterprise, is blown out into the void. Mourning ensues.

Eighty years later, Picard (Patrick Stewart) and his crew - on the Enterprise's descendant spaceship - run into some trouble with a broken science station and some marauding Klingons. It turns out Dr. Saren (Malcolm McDowell) is in cahoots with the crooked (and possibly lesbian? or were they twin sisters?) Klingon pirates to catch the next wave of nexus again. The nexus will make your wildest dreams come true! So the all-knowing Whoopi Goldberg explains. And Saron plans to hit that gnarly curl at the expense of an entire solar system, and this is something up with which Picard will not put!

Other interesting emotional highs and lows are weaved in - a-motional android Data (Brent Spiner) gets a new emo-chip implanted into his circuitry, causing him to guffaw and weep and generally act ridiculous and hilarious; Picard suffers from a personal tragedy that makes him distracted and grieving. If it sounds slightly farcical, it's not - it works really well, since these themes (mortality making us human; the bittersweetness of that mortality; the courage in controlling emotions) are explored via diverse, believable experiences (well, sort of; cf. Data). Everything is also played relatively straight, which helps.

They say that odd-numbered Star Trek films (such as this one) are categorically inferior to the even-numbered ones. While four and six are indeed the best Star Trek films we've yet to see, we actually preferred this one (which is seventh) to the more popular First Contact (which is eighth, and features the "The line must be drawn HEAH!" line). What can we say, we're suckers for the emo.

Star Trek: First Contact (1996)

Star Trek: First Contact is a glossy, mediocre-ishly OK film featuring Picard et al. as they battle the mindless, roaming Borg. It's not as fun as Kirk et al.'s Adventures (particularly this one and this one), but it is decent.

The story begins with Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart), chillin' out on the starship Enterprise, havin' nightmares of becoming yet another brain-dead Borg drone - a fate he narrowly eluded six years ago. For those who are unfamiliar, the Borg - or, as we prefer them to be called, the Borg Collective - are basically a beehive in space. There is the Borg Queen (Alice Krige) and there are her cybernetic slave drones who share a single consciousness and build stuff or kill things in order to advance their common Borgly cause. The cause is a simple one: the Borg Collective (which is now starting to sound like an art movement) roams the galaxy in search of civilizations; when they find one, they absorb it into the Collective, adapting that civilization's best offerings into theirs and assimilating its members, until everyone becomes one big soupy convoluted mish-mash of the culturally Darwinnist-defined best. (See?) Picard is totally not down with them. The PPCC sort of is (what! we think they make a lot of sense!).

When the Borg attack the United Federation of Planets, Picard has a flip-out and drives the Enterprise straight into battle, where he blows up a Borg space cube (did we mention the Borg have cool design ideas too?), and then pursues a fleeing Borg space sphere into a time-traveling wormhole, which takes everyone all the way back to the 21st century. This is the same century in which Earth was a dump and Zefram Cochrane (James Cromwell, kinda looking like Brianosaurus+20 years), famed physicist who discovered warp technology, launched his first warp drive and made first contact with a passing alien race. To ensure that (1) Earth doesn't go Borg ("Sounds Swedish," one character notes), and (2) Earth warps and meets aliens, Picard kicks Borg ass up in space while foxy second-in-command Riker (the foxy Jonathan Frakes, who also directed) befriends and inspires Zefram to continue along the thing history says he was supposed to do anyway. Oh yeah, and Data gets kidnapped into an extensive Pinocchio S&M sex fantasy with the Borg Queen - it was very green porno (hey, it's just WHAT BEES DO), even including the whole parts-falling-off bit!

So. Convincing scientists to use a warp drive is definitely less funny than trying to steal a whale from the San Francisco aquarium, and, for that reason alone, this film suffers. Second, while Picard's unhealthy obsession with being totally Not Borg is likened to an Ahab-style quest, and he even goes on to (mis-)quote OUR FAVORITE PASSAGE from the book itself - bursting hot heart mortar shells and all - the perverted drivenness isn't really captured in Patrick Stewart's admittedly fine acting. As fine as his acting was, it still lacked that off-center passion that drives men like Ahab (and, to an extent, Kirk or McCoy) - Picard may roar and rage and smash up his starship trophies (what was up with that trophy case, by the way?), but he's terribly predictable.

So the film lacks heart, to sum it up. Oh well! Anyway, it was crazy to see John Sayles alumna Alfre Woodward shoving Picard back into line, much in the same way she whipped the wheelchair-bound alcoholic ex-soap star played by Mary McDonnell back into shape in Passion Fish. And it was always a delight to see foxy Riker's sparkling blue eyes, or Geordi's (LeVar Burton) sparkling cyborg blue eyes - though, again, they don't hold candles to McCoy's sparkling blue eyes, which burn with the fire of indignance and the flames of righteous humanistic hard-edged passion. These new kids just have no personality, in comparison!

And now - Internet memage! The (in)famous original "The line must be drawn HEAH!" scene, one spin-off and the delightful Brandon Hardesty version! And the ten million DVD versions.

Planet of the Apes (1968)

What a classic! And what an underrated work of genius.

Like all good sci-fi, Planet of the Apes is an imaginative and entertaining commentary on major parts of our current society. Or, in this case, 1960s American society. Segregation, anti-intellectualism and creationism are all dissected via the lens of one unlucky space explorer, Taylor (Charlton Heston), and his misadventures in a civilization where apes enslave humans.

Taylor, along with his two cosmonaut friends, Landon (Robert Gunner) and Dodge (Jeff Burton), are heading to Earth after a brief mission to space which has dilated time over seven centuries for the Earthlings. But after they bump something in the ship, they end up way off course: thousands of years wrong, and crash landing into a planet where the few humans are primitive mutes who are rounded up by troops of gorilla soldiers wielding muskets and flash photography.

Things quickly spiral into the surreal as Taylor and the others end up imprisoned by the apes. Already we see clear segregation: the orangutans are the scientists, the gorillas are the soldiers, and the chimpanzees are just trying to get by (especially after the "quota system" has ended - Affirmative Action?). After a wounded Taylor regains his voice, all hell breaks loose. He befriends two chimpanzee progressives - Dr. Zira (Kim Hunter) and Cornelius (Roddy McDowall) - who liberate him and send him off to discover the truth about this crazy planet's great mysteries.

The setting is rich and vivid. There's a great moment, for example, when Taylor is fleeing the guards and he ends up in a natural history museum - taxidermied humans are exhibited in various scenes "from the wild". The characterizations are also fascinating; Taylor and his astronauts chat at length about their old habits as misanthropes and lotharios. And we just loved the cheeky nudges to 1960s (counter)culture - at one point, Taylor shaves and tells a young sympathetic chimp that where he comes from, "only kids your age wear beards". The kid cocks his head, "Beards? I don't go in for fads." Cornelius chimes in: "Somehow, [clean-shavenness] makes you look less intelligent." Later on, Taylor jokes with the young chimp, "Remember: never trust anyone over thirty!"

A lot of a fun (and a lot better than the 2001 remake); it was clearly made with passion and intelligence. And some of the dialogue - especially Taylor's liberal use of "Damn you, damn you to hell!"s - is delightful. Now get your stinking paws off me, your damned dirty ape, and watch this damned film!

Daybreakers (2009)

What is it with vampires these days?

Daybreakers is the logical conclusion of our current pop obsession (popsession?) with vampires. Told from their viewpoint, they are the mainstream, the norm, the mundane. They are the bureaucratic drones and the police force. In other words, they are The Man.

The year is 2019, and it's been ten years since this film's release the outbreak of vampiritis. Since then, most people have turned into yellow-eyed undead with prominent canines. The blood of humans is quickly running out, and the few humans left are farmed in big Harkonnen-style warehouses owned by the Sam Neill Corporation of Exploitation. In other words, The Man.

Into this dystopian setting we thrust the usual bureaucratic minion, Edward Cullen Dalton (Ethan Hawke and his cheekbones). Edward is a sensitive, thoughtful pacifist/feminist/insert your sensitive, thoughtful cause here, and he's gone vegetarian. Unfortunately, not drinking human blood makes you turn into a ye olde vampire, the silent film kind, complete with no hair and horrible wings. Edward's brother, police force Frankie (Michael Dorman), severely disapproves of this counterculture tendencies. Edward himself feels pretty lost, until he bumps into the Requisite Female Emancipator, this time a human named (apparently) Audrey (Claudia Karvan), who introduces him to the man (did you read that, right? MAN. it's a MAN, people! the ladies get no love anywhere, it seems) who purports to have found the "cure" for vampiritis. By the way, this man is played by Willem Dafoe.

So there you have it! Is it worth the price of admission or the price of a DVD? Not really. It's a popcorn-churning, bloodgushing B-movie that delights in itself with some self-aware levity (did we mention vampires explode when a stake goes through their hearts? THEY EXPLODE.), though it never manages to break into truly eye-opening weirdness or truly coherent satire. What oppressed class are the humans supposed to be? We thought they were tuna or salmon for much of the film.

Ethan Hawke is a boring hero; imagine Keanu Reeves on a lot of Valium. Our beloved Sam Neill is his usual glorious self, though he does get involved in a very questionable sequence involving his human renegade daughter (Isabel Lucas), Policeman Frankie and a sort of Medieval "I sell you my daughter's virginity" prison rape. Was this eroticized vampirism and dodgy morals supposed to stick it to the Twilight people? Maybe.

Actually, the whole movie feels like an un-Twilight: a reaction to and play against the tired old vampire tropes that seem so pervasive in our fantasy genre these days. While it doesn't take itself as seriously as Twilight, and therefore is slightly less ridiculous, it still takes itself way too seriously: it is, after all, about a brooding vampire anti-hero stuck in the grind of a desaturated life. A little more sparkly color and slapstick might have been a better choice (or a little more feminism/postcolonialism; just sayin'). Overall, it's a C+: not as crafty and clever as other, better B-horrors (Shaun of the Dead, the almighty Slither), but not horrible either.

Inception (2010)

"He woke up, and it was all a dream."

The most hackneyed of conclusions, unless of course you build an entire story around it.

If Philip K. Dick, Freud, Escher and Solyaris had a baby, it would be Christopher Nolan's Inception. And a visually arresting baby it is! There were moments during Inception when our breath caught in our throat. We felt the rest of the (packed) moviehouse gaping with us, and we felt the collective gasps and exhalations when director Nolan allowed us a moment's breathing space within his universe of operatic awesomeness.

Filmed with the same dark, urban grandeur of Dark Knight, Inception follows a team of dream predators. Led by the haunted Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio), they do corporate espionage via shared dreamscapes. (Almost) anything is possible in this surreal space where the subconscious manifests itself as a seething, threatening crowd (how Andrew Lloyd Webber!), or warping, shifting city blocks. When one corporate giant, Saito (Ken Watanabe), makes Cobb an offer he can't refuse - a chance to return to America, his record unsullied by mysterious charges which we learn more about later - Cobb leaps. He gathers his finest team - and a fine bunch they are (Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page, Dileep Rao, Tom Hardy) - and devises an elaborated, layered scheme to get one industrial scion (Cillian Murphy) to willingly break up his dying father's (Pete Posthelwaite) empire.

That, basically, is inception: to plant an idea in someone's head and let it grow. What the film goes to great (and gorgeous) pains to show is how some ideas, fertilized by the unwieldy ids at our core, can ferment into wild destruction. We can't control what we create in the mindspace. Cobb's wife (Marion Cotillard) knew that all too well, and Cobb is still trying to make amends for it. And the hypnotic, unexpected twists of Inception's dreams provide further evidence: trains charge unexpectedly through downtown streets, characters change their appearances, the center of gravity swings wildly. Subjective reality is insane. Quotes by Frank Herbert become appropriate: "The sleeper must awaken." (How Buddhist!)

In the end, it's all about solipsism and - because of that, as well as Hans Zimmer's brassy, thundering score and the general notion of mind>matter reality-bending - we imagine Inception could be this decade's Matrix. It's basic philosophical premise, that we can't be sure about anything beyond our subjective experience, that this could all be a deep, multilayered dream, is Descartes and Morpheus all over again. Also, much like the Matrix, Inception features some eye-popping fight scenes which make visionary use of dimension and gravitational pulls. No doubt, like Neo's backbending bullet-dodging, Joseph Gordon-Levitt's tumble through the spinning hotel corridor will become legendary. (And it deserves to!) It is filmmaking at its best.

While Nolan isn't presenting any terribly new ideas - Cobb's wife is a straight lift from Solyaris' Lady Kelvin, for example - he is presenting them in his lovably Nolany way. The mood is somber, brooding and enormous. He is still enamored with depopulated urban boulevards - the same streets in which the Joker sprayed with manic machine gun fire - and he still loves the sound of creaking, groaning infrastructure that's being upended by anarchic forces. He still knows how to slow everything down, drawing out the elegant arc of the sleeper's limp arms as they float away from him. Most of the dialogue is straight exposition, but those moments of payoff - that creaking street, that droplet splashing on a sleeping face - are epic indeed. We recommend you see this one on the big screen.

Kin-Dza-Dza (1986)

Guest blogger Brianosaurus strikes again!

There’s nothing worse than being out of the loop on something you love. In my case, I love sci-fi. L O V E it. So recently I was a little distressed when I checked out IMDb's list of top 50 sci-fi movies and noticed that not only were there a few I had not seen, but more than a few I had not even heard of! (Note: see the bottom of the list to learn how IMDb calculates its ratings.) I had no choice: I had to start watching some movies.

Nestled at #34 on the list (between Night of the Living Dead and Solaris) sits Kin-Dza-Dza!, a fabulously funny bit of dystopian Russian social parody. The reader must take note that I’ve always had a soft spot for Russia. But Russian cinema (and literature) is often as bleak as a Siberian work camp. Kin-dza-dza!, directed by Georgi Daneliya, is refreshing in both its originality and clever humor.

Lots of sci-fi gets caught up in trying to explain itself. Kin-dza-dza! gets started so brilliantly that no explanation as to the who-what-when-where is required. Trust me, you’ll be hooked in the first 5 minutes like I was! All the viewer needs to know is that Vladimir (Stanislav Lyubshin, a Russian Roger Moore) and Gedevan (Levan Gabriadze) have wound up unwillingly on the planet Pluke (in the Kin-dza-dza galaxy).


Gedevan and Vladimir meeting the locals.

The story follows Vladimir and Gedevan as they try and make their way back to Earth. In order to do so they must navigate a bizarre and barren world which they know nothing about. On Pluke there is a seemingly nonsensical system of social hierarchy that, like many things in the film, isn’t explained because it simply cannot be. This is one of the reasons the movie works and I liked it so much. Just think about how much senseless racism and other social norms exist in our culture that can’t be explained. Unfortunately our travelers are on the low end of the totem pole and must, amongst other things, give homage to superiors in an amazing ritualistic display! (Unless said superior is wearing yellow pants, then they must do it twice!) Below is Wef and Bi (Evgeni Leonov and Yuriy Yakovlev, Russian Danny DeVito and John Cleese respectively) performing said display!


"Koo! Koo! Koo!"

Our protagonists wander the deserts of Pluke with the innocent misdirection of unprepared tourists. This allows the viewer to follow along and learn as they do. Not only is there a language barrier (for a concise Plukanian dictionary go here), but the entire planet is on a different system for EVERYTHING! For example, matches appear to be the most valuable item, and if you don’t wear your tsak (nose bell) you’ll get in trouble with an ecilop (police officer). Basically imagine you got dropped in the middle of Mos Eisley without Obi-Wan to cut off dudes' hands when things didn’t go right.


"...is a society without purpose."


Kin-dza-dza is a great movie. It’s simple and fun and pokes fun at (and makes us consider) our own society. I highly recommend it.

Note: This film is not currently available outside of Russia (where it was a hit). In order to watch it, you might be able to click here and here for a fan-subbed version of the film.

Ghost in the Shell (1995)

Ghost in the Shell blasts onto the screen with haunting, Melanesian-esque choral music, post-human spinal tubing and lots and lots of arching breasts. We were kind of terrified in the first few minutes, but eventually settled down to really enjoy this innovative, brilliant, bizarre cyberpunk anime.

They say there are no new stories to tell, but surely all that 1980s early Internet sci-fi and Singularity stuff was new! Designing our own evolution for a transhuman future, etc. Because while Ghost in the Shell is talking about ancient Descartesian problems of defining consciousness in a world of epistemological doubt, it's also approaching those 17th-century questions with very 21st-century post-human answers. In particular, in a world of networked computers and biological augmentations, the division between meatspace and cyberspace is blurred. And this redefines everything - as Battlestar Galactica's philosophizing Cylon, Caprica Six, put it: "Are you alive? Prove it." Because, for all you know, you're a machine brain living in a virtual reality. Everyone thinks they're human.

Major Motoko Kusanagi (voiced by Atsuko Tanaka), she of the arching breasts which we will be seeing a lot of throughout the film, is a fully cyborg, detective-type badass killing machine (literally). She works for the Japanese government's Section 9, a sort of cyberpunk police squad. Their current target is the criminal hacker, the Puppet Master, who hacks into people's "ghosts" - that is, their consciousnesses, which these days are often embedded in brains permanently connected to the Internet. The Puppet Master's motives are nebulous, and some havoc is wreaked on the garrish, dilapidated, rainy downtown streets. That is, until a rogue cyborg claiming to be housing its own ghost appears. And then everything - especially the definition of life - is thrown into question.

But not before we squeeze in some evocative, meditative sequences. Even in moments of crisis, such as during a high-tech/high-speed car chase across nighttime Tokyo, director Mamoru Oshii slows the emotional pace down with somber, spacey music and lingering shots on the details of this very strange, brave new world. Though there are some grisly moments of violence (is this rated R? it should be!), the tone of the film is more cerebral than action-oriented. Characters often spend their time expositing the themes and ideas. This is excusable as they are running an investigation, and so explaining things to each other makes sense. It's also excusable because those ideas - do you grant human rights to a thinking machine? how did that ghost appear? - are so clever.

We really enjoyed it. We liked that, while there is the token human male character (sporting some very 1980s hair and shoulder pads indeed!), the film is brave enough to keep our focus on the non-human female protagonist, Motoko. Motoko's existential angst is resonant. It feels real (point of the movie, maybe?). When she talks about how being some biomachine superlady with access to infinite bits of data only makes her realize her limitations, we were moved. Oh, Pinocchio! Or as Rudyard Kipling once said, in a quote which has already been pilfered by sci-fi people for post-human themes, "Let them fall, Mowgli. They are only tears."

Is this THE cyberpunk movie of all time? Can it be topped?! We don't think so. It's more cyberpunky and smart than the oft-cited Father of the genre, Blade Runner! Highly recommended.

Pioneer One: season 1, episode 1 (2010)

Pre-Internet business models are quickly becoming outdated in today's networked world, where data can be copied and transferred at near-zero marginal cost. Anti-piracy campaigns try to liken downloading movies to walking out of a store with a DVD: you'd never have the guts to do it in "real" life, so why are you so brave online? But this is a false comparison. You might feel a little more gutsy if you could walk out of the store and leave an identical copy behind.


No Macs in space?

So. Pioneer One is a torrent-only sci-fi show which premiered for download a few days ago. You can download the first episode here and, if you like it, donate to the cause. Wethinks a substantial portion of the Pioneer One's target audience will just be happy to stick it to the man, and put their money where their fingers type. That's all fine. As Cory Doctorow and Rudy Rucker and Radiohead have shown, good content pays for itself. In the uber-democratic Internet, you don't need the advertising campaign. Let content speak for itself, become viral, and voila! Fame and fortune. Sort of.

Unfortunately, Pioneer One's content doesn't measure up.

Beginning with grainy, handheld shots and a mumbling, thoughtful overture reminiscent of the voiceover in Primer (an indie sci-fi flick that worked), Pioneer One takes place in Helena, Montana, where a piece of space junk has just fallen from the sky and given everyone radiation poisoning. The Feds - scruffy Tom Taylor (James Rich) and angular Sophie Larson (Alexandra Blatt) - show up and, after retrieving a severely malnourished man from the space pod, realize that they've stumbled onto something very weird indeed. As Soviet cosmonaut helmets, cancer and secret Cold War space programs are unveiled, the episode ends with a big revelation and cliffhanger.


Her.


Him.


Them.

The filmmaking is amateur indie, with shaky cameras and shaky acting. That's forgivable. What's less forgivable is the tired writing and trite story. We're trying to break down outdated business models and reinvent media and culture... with a pair of rehashed Mulder and Scully drones stumbling into the plot of Stranger in a Strange Land? It's cliché after cliché - from the designer stubble of the weary, cynical Fed agent, to the perfect make-up and witty 1950s rom-com banter of his assistant (and yes, what is she but his assistant?). "The best and the brightest. Which one were you?" she asks. Come on, people! Secret government programs regurgitated from the Cold War? Bland, unimaginative jokes? Let me guess: does Tom Taylor have a drinking problem? And really: is a female protagonist so mind-bogglingly weird?

We hate to say this, because we agree with the idea of it: new stories for a new medium, made in a new way. But this just doesn't cut it. We've already seen this story done by Hollywood; yes, we had to pay the man. Why would we want to see it again now? It's regressive content in a progressive package.

If you want to see innovative, non-Hollywood sci-fi, take a look at Primer. Primer's budget was $7000, and it managed to shake things up and become a new cult classic. Pioneer One's first episode budget was $6000, and it was about as exciting as a mediocre X-Files fanfiction (without the sex!). If you want to give your money to the alt culture, support the underground and stick it to the man, we'd recommend you join the crowds on the Cory Doctorow bandwagon or check out Therefore, Repent!. Skip this one instead.

Code 46 (2003)

Code 46, the troubling, moody dystopian romance, initially charmed us, then baffled us, then kinda freaked us out, and then surprised us (Coldplay? Really?). But we are so terribly partial to dystopias filmed in atmospheric indie fuzz that we could overlook even the uncomfortable Oedipal kinks and the too-mainstream pop bookend: we liked it.

Kind of like the (incestuous!) love child between Blade Runner and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Code 46 is about love in the time of being almost-post-human. The film pushes special PPCC buttons by also being post-colonial: it acknowledges the Rest of the World, and what its position would be in a freaky future. But best of all: it's just a sweet, heady, doomed romance full of brooding darkness and two very weird people.


Some scene setting.


Living in an Escher world (where are Godel and Bach?!).

William (Tim Robbins, who is apparently a giant) is - like all good dystopian anti-heroes - a bureaucratic drone. This drone's particular job is investigating "papelles" fraud. The world has been divided into the Inside - buzzing metropolises full of light, drugs and technology - and the Outside - underdeveloped, poverty-stricken deserts. Movement across this so-familiar-it's-alien world is heavily controlled, and you need "papelles" to get anywhere. Interestingly, the axis of geopolitical influence has shifted from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean - most characters circle around India, the Middle East and China.


Let the Om Puri Lovefest begin! We love you, Om Puri!


You're so cute and great, Om Puri!


Oh, Omnomnom Puri!

William has now been sent to Shanghai (looking remarkably like Hong Kong) to investigate a possible fraud at the large Sphinx company. While the anxious manager (Om Puri!!!) is eager to keep things quiet, William - tripping, William Gibson-style, on an "empathy virus" that spikes his intuition - easily identifies the culprit using only one, quick meeting with all the employees. That culprit, unfortunately, is the sexy, alluring Maria Gonzalez (Samantha Morton, still in Minority Report buzzcut mode). Maria is so totally awesome that William has some other, less attractive person arrested (whose only line announces that he was born in Hyderabad!), then follows her into a karaoke club where Mick Jones sings Clash songs. And so begins their very inappropriate, kinda gross but also fascinating romance.


Her.


Him.


Them.

It's been a long time since we've seen a believable future presented, but Code 46 was the most evocative, grimy and convincing future since Gateway. Everyone speaks a babel of world languages - their chatter is peppered with Spanish, Italian, Urdu, Arabic and Mandarin. Familiar cities - Hong Kong, Shanghai, Seattle, Delhi (?) - are filmed in ways which render them otherworldly. The whole territory is strange, yet its links to our present are easily traceable. The whole film's look is very mysterious and beautiful.


Big Brother is watching you. As usual.

This sort of story also encourages us to THINK in capital letters, and it does raise some interesting questions about gene pools, designer babies and the "Third World". But we were much more refreshed by the interpretation of this as an updated Greek tragedy, full of yearning and elliptical consciousness and DOOM in capital letters (also). It is forbidden love at its most primal, and the modern spin to the tragedy is that it was technological drive which set William and Maria up for their Sophocles-and-Aeschylus-style fall. Are all dystopias cautionary fables with a Luddite bent? Maybe. But only some of them are as classy (and classical) as this one, and even fewer let the softest of human emotions take center stage.

Children of Men (2006)

Back when Children of Men came out, a lot of people took it as an incoherent parable for the modern day problems of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib; Western paranoia of encroaching terrorist agendas leading to a Big Brother lockdown, etc. We were surprised that what we considered to be the driving symbolism of the movie - that is, orthodox Christianity - was instead downplayed or ignored completely. Did no one get it!?

The year is 2027 and Britain is a dark, crummy dystopia that no one likes. It's still better than the Rest of the World, which lies in literal ruins - fire, rubble, AK-47s. "Fugees" - i.e. non-British - are detained in filthy prison colonies on the southern coast of England, and meanwhile a terrorist organization calling itself the "Fishes" is planting bombs in downtown London coffee shops. What a mess.


Various scenes of wreck and ruin and... Bansky?

But the main problem is humanity's sterility. For 18 years, not a single baby has been born. The film opens then on Theo (Clive Owen), a rumpled bureaucratic drone, never too far from some liquor, who lives a wretched half-life in this childless purgatory. One day, Theo is contacted by his former flame, Julian (Julianne Moore), who asks him for some rare "transit papers" to help a friend get off the isle (and the Casablanca bell goes CLANG! hooray!). Theo reluctantly agrees to help, even though Julian is mixed up with the Fishes and their charismatic (well, we think so) leader, Luke (Chiwetel Ejiofor, always great). Of all the gin joints! Theo is then shocked to learn that Julian and the Fishes are secretly protecting none other than the World's Only Pregnant Woman, Kee (Clare Hope-Ashitey), who is in her eighth month (she thinks - everyone's sort of forgotten how this pregnancy thing works). Theo, Julian and the Fishes are now all competing to help Key get to the "Human Project" - a rumored Eden where humans aren't stuffing each other's heads into black bags and pushing them into detention centers. Insert also one extremely off-the-grid, pot-growing, old hippie Jasper (Michael Caine, always lovable) and shake well.


Clive Owen and Danny Huston, in a brilliant "brick in the wall" scene. We're starting to think no one on Earth appreciates Danny Huston the way we do. The man is AMAZING. Just watch The Proposition and you'll see.

Much of the film is, as you would expect, an exercise in dystopian misery. The tone is perpetually bleak, and the slightest levity is only the cynical, sarcastic kind. This film is also very self-aware; i.e. it knows its roots. For example, a brilliant scene featuring the brilliant and underrated Danny Huston as a "Noah of the arts", living alone with his deranged 20something son in a revamped Tate Modern, manages to throw in a Pink Floyd cover. And there are the obvious allusions to 1984 or Brave New World, what with the government-approved suicide rations and overbearing bureaucracy.

But the film is mostly about the Bible. We think. This is a very classical, orthodox Christian story, stuffed full of allusions: Theo, underground fish and miracle babies. Director Alfonso Cuarón is only using these Abu Ghraib-type aesthetics in the same way he uses the 1970s acid rock (King Crimson!): as a familiar, modern idiom to get across a very ancient story of miracle and saviors. When Kee reveals her pregnancy to Theo, she's in a manger. Theo's last words in the film are, "Oh, Jesus." Danny Huston's character could be Pilate. And one of Jesus' titles was the Son of Man - just pluralfy that and you get the title. Indeed, it's a very fun story to pick apart, as the Christian symbols are layered everywhere. Personally, we felt like Indy at the end of The Last Crusade (remember: there is no "J" in Greek).


Ahem, "Theo", meets the, ahem, "Fishes".

Another notable feature about this film is Cuarón's use of really, REALLY long takes. There are three in particular, each lasting as much as ten minutes (!). That's ten minutes of a single shot. The most impressive of these, by far, is the one in the car. This is an early climax in the film, and it begins when Theo wakes up from a nap, the camera slowly zooming out from him. Watch out for it. The entire thing is filmed on a single camera, spinning deliriously within a cramped, cluttered car. And from that single shot, we manage to witness the build-up, climax and after-effects of a chaotic action piece. It's a testament to everyone involved - Cuarón and the actors, especially - for making such an impressive, uninterrupted piece of movie magic.

Oh yeah, and it's based on a (waay more obviously Christiany) book by P.D. James.