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SF, Film, and TV

Friday 20 October 2000

§ The Blair Witch Webfest drew 100,000 people in its first 6 hours on Wednesday.

§ Not to be outdone, GalaxyOnline presents a ''Blair Witch'' spoof, The Blair Witch Mountain Project, a 13-minute streaming video production available free of charge.

• Kim Stanley Robinson corrects reports elsewhere that James Cameron still plans to produce a film or TV version of his Mars trilogy. "No, that isn't right -- Cameron is working on Mars projects of his own devise, and the option his company had taken on my Mars books has been returned", Robinson told Locus.

§ Harry vs. Frodo: Considering the close timing of the planned releases of films Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone and The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring in Fall 2001 [see Future Films 2001], an official from HarperCollins, Tolkien's publisher, dismissed the Harry phenomenon: "I think Harry Potter is a one-off. It has been picked up as a cult but I think it is a bit optimistic to say it is going to revive reading."

§ John Travolta is looking forward (!) to Battlefield 2.

§ Salon has been running DVD reviews lately, including one of the DVD of Final Destination, which quotes the film's producer about giving audiences what they want. "We went for something a little deeper, and [audiences] just wanted to see more death.". The producers succeeded; the film was a success at the box office.

§ Other recent Salon DVD reviews:

Wednesday 18 October 2000

§ Blair Witch Webfest is a heavily-promoted three-day online convention, from Wednesday October 18 through Friday October 20, a tie-in to the October 27 release of Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2. In conjunction with this, Ellen Datlow is moderating an online panel on the popularity of the movie, with Lucius Shepard, Douglas E. Winter, Paul Olson, Linda Marotta, and S.P. Somtow as participants, on Friday the 20th from Noon to 2 p.m. PST.

§ "The Gorey Details", a musical based on the works of Edward Gorey, has opened in New York City.

§ Do Horror Films Filter the Horrors of History? Essay from NYT's Saturday Arts and Ideas page.

Monday 9 October 2000

§ Here's a novel idea: Project Greenlight is a contest for struggling screenwriters. The price for submission is evaluation of three other submissions; the winning entry will be determined by the cumulative evaluations of all entrants. The winning script will be produced, assure underwriters Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, and be distributed by Miramax; and a documentary about said production will be made for HBO.

• Letter-writer Kevin Wilding, in the Los Angeles Times, Oct. 1 [link has expired], wonders about the inspiration for James Cameron's new TV series Dark Angel:

In the mid-1980s, author Harlan Ellison made some legal rumblings in Cameron's direction concerning the similarity between the story line of "The Terminator" and stories Ellison had written years earlier. As a result, video versions of the film contain an added line in the credits "acknowledging" the work of Ellison.

Now comes the news that "Dark Angel" will follow the adventures of a young, "genetically enhanced" superhuman female, working as a messenger in a future America that has undergone social breakdown.

Has anyone checked Cameron's bookshelf for a copy of Robert A. Heinlein's 1982 novel "Friday," which has as its protagonist a young, genetically enhanced superhuman female, working as a top-secret courier, set in a future America that has undergone social breakdown?

§ Speaking of which, Slate's Robert Wright reviews Dark Angel, though he's not sure why.

[T]he sci-fi part of the formula is a bit malnourished. The show tries to replicate The Matrix's spirit of anarchic rebellion against futuristic repression, but it lacks the metaphysical depth that made that movie more than an adolescent fantasy. Nor does it have Bladerunner's authentic air of dystopian ruin. Then again, this is just TV. Moreover, it's Fox TV...

§ Stanley Kubrick's unfulfilled passion was Napoleon.