What's the last SF you've seen lately?

I just watched the first episode of Total Recall 2070 over at hulu.com. I don't remember it showing on TV, but it was okay, not great. It reminded me more of Bladerunner than TR. In fact I never cared much for the movie Total Recall, bits & pieces of it, but there were parts of it I didn't care for (actually I need to rewatch this movie again). With the series the acting at times was a bit wooden too, but was ok. I might watch another one in the future. I prefer SF movies over TV series, I think, but I've enjoyed some series as well: X-Files, Babylon 5, some Trek, Twilight Zones, Lexx, Outer Limits, Red Dwarf, Sarah Conner's Terminator, and a few others.

At any rate last weekend I watched the bio of Philip K. Dick as well on instant watch at Netflix. It was pretty good too. So what the last SF you've seen? Did you enjoy it or not?

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Permalink Reply by David on May 14, 2009 at 11:28pm: Old Twilight Zone tonight, one I don't remember, & that's always a plus. Basically about an alien landing/appearing in a Mexican town, and gets shot, of course the townspeople believe he's a devil or such, and the authorities, come for him. His best ally is a small boy. One of the best SF series ever.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by David on May 17, 2009 at 9:17am: The Day of the Triffids--the UK version. The 1981 BBC mini series is based on John Wyndham's book, and was a blast, plus supposedly follows the book closely (I've never read it) over the 50's American Monster-type film. If you like survival SF, this movie is made for you. As you know, BBC stuff ie. Dr Who is tightly budgeted and this film is not an exception, but no matter it drew me in, and held my attention throughout. Recommended!; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by David on June 6, 2009 at 11:53am: AMC is making a Prisoner mini series, so cool! In the mean time I've been watching a few episodes for free from AMC, here's a link to watch them if interested: http://www.amctv.com/videos/the-prisoner-1960s-video/?bcpid=2517767...

You can also head over there if you want to know about the up-coming mini series.

Hello, hello--huh, there's an echo in here :); ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Baff on June 6, 2009 at 6:33pm: Cool, might have to check it out. I wish Verizon would get their act together and add AMC HD.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by David on June 10, 2009 at 10:55pm: Yeah, I imagine so. For me HD is still in the future--I'm cheap & old school, so don't have any of the fancy stuff yet. Some day I'll catch up. If you haven't seen them, they're certainly worth watching.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by br77 on June 16, 2009 at 11:16pm: The last SF I saw was Star Trek. I thought the new Spock was great. I think it will be a pretty good series of movies with this new cast. And the new Uhuru was hot!; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by David on June 18, 2009 at 11:38am: You know, I'm pretty much a Trek fan, and couldn't get off my lazy arse to see this at the theater, and I wanted to for the big screen thrills--man, I must be getting old. So I queued it for my Netflix, along with the Drag Me To Hell--no use deceiving myself, I'll never make that either :) I'm hoping the new Trek shows that it can still be done right (grant, you can't please everybody). Thanks for stopping by.

The last thing I watched was Total Recall on the Sci-Fi channel. It's an okay movie, I'd read the short story recently to see how it might have differed, the endings were way different, and you had to pretty much embellish the short story to get a full movie out of it. The whole plot of him going to Mars to save or find his wife was made up for the movie as well among other small plots, still, ok film.

I also watched another Prisoner episode from the AMC online site. They're letting you instant watch them from their site. I missed these when they were on the Sci-fi Channel, but they're really good, but might take a bit of deprogramming the brain from mainstream stuff to start to enjoy them. Pretty out there stuff in some ways still.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by David on June 18, 2009 at 11:50am: I may as well include I Am Legend. I finally got around to watching it as well. I didn't have high expectations, and thought it was better than I was expecting. I haven't read the novel, so I'm curious about that. The CGI didn't bother me like some people, and it wasn't a perfect film or anything, just nice escapism for a while.

I guess the same could be said for Resident Evil, the first film. I caught it showing on TV, and had nothing better going on at the time, and actually enjoyed aspects of it. Not a classic, but stylistically was nice to look at and had its share of action and suspense, so I was entertained.

I caught a sequel to Resident Evil, and tried to watch it, but thought it was too over the top for me at the time, if it airs again, I might try to watch it, but when motorcycles start to fly in the air, and people take backward flips off them shooting machine guns etc. I roll my eyes and move on to somethig a bit more down to earth. That DOES get too close to the video game for my taste.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by br77 on June 18, 2009 at 2:57pm: Couldn't agree more about the Resident Evil sequel. Any kind of magic-carpet kung-fu action and I'm looking for the exits.

I saw the original Charleton Heston "I Am Legend" (I forget the title) and god was it bad. Yoock. Will Smith's version was better, but I still didn't like it - not a big zombie-movie fan. (Zombie games, on the other hand, are great. I was addicted to DOOM for a couple of months I think, my hands cramping up at times.)

I saw Drag Me To Hell - it was almost cartoonish. At one point the witch gets bopped on the head with an anvil and her eyeballs squirt out of her head and right onto the heroine, but then they pop back in. Made me laugh out loud, which the people around me didn't seem to appreciate.

I'm looking forward to "Moon" opening tomorrow. I think Sam Rockwell is great, and it's been getting some pretty decent reviews. The plot is like "Solaris" it seems.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Baff on June 18, 2009 at 4:14pm: The Charlton Heston movie would be The Omega Man.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by David on June 19, 2009 at 11:14am: Yes, I agree on the Omega Man. I'd seen that as a kid at the theater, and at the time, I thought it was cool. But saw it years later and thought it was sort of corny. I sort of felt the same way about Rollerball (I think was the title, with James Caan). When I originally saw it I thought it was cool, but years later when it came on TV, I thought, what was I thinking?
Rollerball is about a violent sort of gladiator game done in a society that has outlawed violence so there's gotta be an outlet somewhere. I never had the desire to see the remake due to my reaction to that rewatch. I consider myself a pretty huge SF fan, but at the same time, there's an awful lot of schlock that runs amuck within the genre--course this applies to everything ;) Granted, sometime my mood or if I've had a hard day or week at work plays into a lot of my reactions to films.

Yes, Moon was the title I was trying to recall, looked like a pretty good movie, and of the review I heard, was made well. As far as Solaris, I enjoyed it and the original film. I saw the remake with Clooney first, and sometimes get a bit dodgey at foreign films at times, I don't know why, as I do like them and don't mind subtitles. The original came on late one night on TCM and I enjoyed it as well.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by David on July 6, 2009 at 1:40pm: I watched the documentary on Harlan Ellison, I believe titled, Dreams With Teeth. I generally like Ellison and enjoy his stories etc. Granted I don't think everyone does, he has many detractors, but he generally says what he wants, so you know he's telling you what he really believes. I enjoyed the DVD about a three stars for me, but I didn't enjoy it as much as I was expecting. I used to watch him when he had a little segement on the Sci-Fi Channel's weekly program, Sci-Fi Buzz. He had a short segement called Ellison's Watching (I think). And he just spoke about whatever he wanted: new books or whatever was on his mind. If you enjoy Ellison you might want to check it out. The DVD also had Neil Gaimen from Sandman fame & other books on it.

Over the holiday, the SyFy Channel, was running a Twilight Zone marathon. I think that was a high watermark in television history, and still do. I remember my Dad would sometimes watch these many years ago, and probably was what got me interested in SF, horror, and other weird tales. I remember some of the stories really freaked me out as a kid and gave me nightmares: Beast at 10,000 feet w/ William Shatner, the one episode where the monks capture the devil, and one where the gals goes in for facial surgery and it doesn't take, but the rest of the world have freakish faces. Brrrr, those were freaky.

Other than that, I'm a pretty big comic fan and I've been reading some of the series, The Walking Dead. Really good series if you like zombies, survival, end of the world fiction.; ▶ Reply to This