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I was impressed that they didn’t even seem to region lock it. I could watch it from Sweden without using any proxies or stuff like that. Kinda cool concept, and a pretty fascinating leap from the Robot Wars show from the mid 90’s, where they pretty much only used weaponized RC cars. But still not quite what I’d consider actual robots, which would be something more in line with the DARPA Challenge, robots that work on their own without direct human input. This was more in the style of remote controlled exoskeletons … which it feels really weird to say isn’t the coolest thing of all time. But, yeah, there are actual computer controlled Google Cars out there in active service, taking that concept into a battle arena was more in line with what I expected by the show’s premise.
If it was shot on film with "practical effects", i.e. miniatures and animatronics, I think I’d opt for the Blu-ray release, but stuff like LEXX was shot for TV, with CGI that was probably not rendered in higher resolution than necessary for SD TV broadcasting back in the late 90’s. I’m not sure, but I think they probably used digital or video cameras rather than film stock for that one. Seems like the new Star Trek: The Next Generation blu-rays are fantastic, due to the fact that it was shot on film and mostly used miniature effects, though there was some use of low res digital editing and compositing that made the TV prints unusable for bluray, but as they had the film stock they could recomposite and re-edit that with HD quality effects again.
I’m not sure about Babylon 5, looks to me like it was shot on film (I could be mistaken though), but since most of the effects were CGI, and they’ve lost the original files, they’d have to recreate and rerender all that from scratch again. Sounds doable to me, but would probably be much more expensive than the process was for TNG.
Even if it was shot on film with a lot of practical effects, like most of Dune was, there’s the risk that they botch up the transfer from film to HD too, like I feel like they did with this Dune release, so I’m not sure there is much general advice I could give.
I’ve only seen the pilot episode so far, looked interesting, despite the aged CGI, thinking I may have to buy the season boxset.
It’s not an alien from any scifi works, but from a parody religion whose deity is the "flying spaghetti monster": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Spaghetti_Monster
Not sci-fi, but Richard Stanley related (the director of Hardware), as back in 1990 he made a documentary that’s pretty interesting in the post-9/11 world – he went to Afghanistan during the Soviet invasion, and his film crew followed a group of Taliban (possibly actually Al-Qaida, can’t remember exactly) rebels and civilians during and after the conflict. It’s not narrated, just the Afghanistan landscapes and people backed by Simon Boswell’s soundtrack.
I’ve heard one of the camera men was killed in combat during the shooting of the film, though by the looks of it that isn’t true, might be possible someone confused that with a later event, as camera man Carlos Mavroleon is the only credited camera operator that is listed as dead on imdb, and he was killed under similar circumstances when shooting a documentary in Pakistan for Frontline in 1998 (about 10 years after they shot this).
It’s worth checking out imho, the entire documentary is included as an extra feature on the Dust Devil DVD, which is also an excellent film by Richard Stanley. Imdb page: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0275056/
Never been on a sci-fi convention, but I spend quite a lot of time with sci-fi TV shows, games and movies, and used to read a lot of sci-fi books, though sadly I haven’t read any books for a while now.
My favourite authors would probably be William Gibson, Philip K. Dick and Ray Bradbury. Also loved Carl Sagan’s Contact, but haven’t gotten around to reading any more of his works yet.
Don’t have many friends who share my interests either, but occasionally get to discuss Star Trek with one or cyberpunk and transhumanism with another.
The Region 1 DVD release from 2007 does have english subtitles, not sure how many other releases there are.
It’s by no means a perfect film, few of the films in the genre are, I found Burst City to be thouroughly enjoyable though, I didn’t think it dragged on like one of the reviewers on IMDB said, but of course, the people who gave 10/10 are exaggerating how good it is.
There’s another japanese cyberpunk classic I’d recommend, though it’s not dealing with cyborgs or transhumanism or anything like that, but as you liked the anarchic/madness aspects of those I think it might work – the 1982 Sogo Ishii film "Burst City" (who also directed the Einstürzende Neubauten short film Halber Mensch), which focuses on a group of punk rockers and biker gangs squatting some abandoned buildings outside Tokyo, which are to be demolished to make room for a new nuclear power plant. The main characters are played by actual prominent japanese punk musicians from that time, most notably The Stalin which I think is still one of the most well known punk groups in Japan today. There are lots of musical interludes by the groups, wonderfully crazy editing and great low life punks versus high tech cyber cops battles.
The movie was re-released on DVD in the west just a few years ago, so it’s not that hard to come by anymore
Yeah, I’ve been a fan of that film and the composer Simon Boswell ever since I saw that about a decade ago, I think it manages to pull off both the post-apocalyptic and cyberpunk atmosphere really well.
Didn’t know Max Headroom was that similar in style, always wanted to watch the original film, but never managed to find it, heard some great things about it.
Hardware is probably the best film in the style so far, but I’d also recommend the comtemporary films Prototype X29A, Death Machine and of course the japanese classic Tetsuo.
I really haven’t heard any good about it at all, then again, I can’t remember hearing anything good about any but the very first of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies.
Specifically "rehash" seems to be pretty close to what the reviews I’ve read say about it, while some pretty much call it a crapfest. I’d avoid it personally, but I’m not a fan of the previous movies in the franchise either.
Watch both, they are pretty different, I like the sets and the tone of the Tarkovsky film better, but there Clooney version has some great moments and a fantastic minimalistic soundtrack by Cliff Martinez (the soundtrack for the russian film is also great, but mainly consist of classical organ music by Bach).
The english title of the soviet animation was "There will come soft rain", available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfI69DC_jaw
I saw the first film in the series a few years ago, had some moments, but over all I wasn’t that fond of it.
Russia has made some fantastic sci-fi though like Stalker and Solaris, and some beautiful animated stuff, like an animated short based on one of Ray Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles short stories. It’s on youtube somewhere, though I can’t remember the name of it right now.
I love the setting, the visual style and most of the music, but I never liked the humour in it, and there are parts of it where they just go on and on with terrible jokes. The action sequences are awesome though.
