Sci-fi fans...

[Hal]

There is a new sci-fi television show premiering tonight...right now as a matter of fact (9 pm est)....seems to have gotten some great reviews.

Masters Of Science Fiction, ABC

Anyway, just a heads up.

 

[Sheriff Bart]

looked like crap, going to check it out now though. cordwainer smith is god!

 

[Hal]

The New York Times

August 4, 2007
Television Review | 'Masters of Science Fiction'
A Nostalgia for Yesterday’s Future
By Mike Hale

“Masters of Science Fiction” is an odd summertime diversion. Into the season of “America’s Got Talent” and “So You Think You Can Dance,” ABC is dropping a series of four talky, philosophical dramas based on stories by well-known science-fiction writers (well, three well-known science-fiction writers and Howard Fast). It’s a pure throwback, a “Twilight Zone” homage with Stephen Hawking in the Rod Serling role.

It’s hard to imagine how this project ended up on a broadcast network — its natural home is clearly cable, perhaps on Showtime, which already carries “Masters of Horror” (also produced by Starz Media), the anthology series to which it will inevitably, and unfavorably, be compared. In acknowledgment of that, ABC has buried “Masters of Science Fiction” in television’s worst prime-time slot, Saturday nights at 10.

And you can’t really blame the network. The series is promising on paper: the credits include Robert A. Heinlein and Harlan Ellison as sources (Mr. Ellison helped adapt his own story “The Discarded”); Michael Tolkin and Mark Rydell as directors; and casts that feature Judy Davis, Terry O’Quinn, Anne Heche, Brian Dennehy and John Hurt. But it’s fairly inert on screen.

The same nostalgic impulse that’s bringing us period pieces like “Mad Men” and “The Company” seems to be at work here: someone wants to revive the humanistic, drama-of-not-very-profound-ideas science fiction practiced in the previous century by writers like Mr. Heinlein and Mr. Ellison.

Unfortunately, the producers of “Masters of Science Fiction” have updated their chosen narratives — setting Mr. Fast’s “Awakening” during the Iraq war, for example, or changing the protagonist of Mr. Heinlein’s “Jerry Was a Man” from an ape to a humanoid — while lovingly recreating the stagebound talking-heads style of an earlier era of television. “Masters” may be a change of pace from the reality shows that are dominating the summer ratings, but the pace in question isn’t brisk.

The best of the four is tonight’s premiere episode, “A Clean Escape,” based on a story by John Kessel. It’s also the talkiest, a claustrophobic mystery tale involving a psychiatrist who appears to have just one patient, a man who’s willed himself to forget a big chunk of the past. It works because most of the talking is done by Ms. Davis, whose bundle-of-nerves performance as the obsessive psychiatrist easily carries you through the hour.

“A Clean Escape” turns out to be — mild spoiler alert — a weapons-of-mass-destruction parable, and that current of liberal-utopian, antiwar and antidiscrimination sentiment, which typified so much Vietnam-era and later science fiction, runs throughout “Masters of Science Fiction.” (It reaches an apotheosis in “The Awakening,” when the American president who’s about to be pushed into total war by his generals receives an alien — or is it angelic? — visitation.) It’s another manifestation of nostalgia, and you have to wonder whether it’s another reason that the series has been consigned to the Saturday graveyard.


Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

 

[Hal]

meh...

This episode wasn't too bad, kinda twilight zoney. But from reading the review in the Times, seems that it will go downhill from here.

 

[Sheriff Bart]

yea that was like an outer limits(they even had the brief message at the end, dont know about in the beggining) with a way higher production value but less sci-fi....it stunk IMO. next weeks looked more the sci-fi though,

oh but i did miss most of the 1st half hour...

 

[Fidel Castro]

you guys ever watch Mystery Science Theater 3000? that show was the shit

I think 2001 might be the greatest movie ever made... watching it right now, complete symmetry in every shot!

 

[Guest]

I've been a sci-fi fan for years, but have not found any Sci-fi shows or movies in the last 5 or so years that are worth a fuck. I can't stand Star trek(unless it's the original,and even then I only watch it for nastalgia's sake)the new Dr. Who's aren't that good.I kinda think Sci-fi had it's rise,peaked and now is kinda on the decline.People are all into so called "reality shows" now,which is a farce...is it really reality when there are cameras rollin?I even think Sci-Fi channel has gone down the tubes, the good Science fiction is the old stuff, which no network carries and nobody watches anymore.

 

[Guest]

I just finished watching the first two seasons of Battlestar Galactica, the series totally blew me away. Great entertainment, especially when watched stoned

 

[Sheriff Bart]

new battle star was too dramatic for me, but very nice effects visuals, great old story, perhaps the original is what i shoud've watched....but yea I love TOS. watch it all the time. But whats wrong with TNG? Deanna Troi is something else...

I was also a fan of Star Gate for many many many years until these lastest seasons...but i started watchign that as a young kid.

But perhaps books shall still reign supreme in telling the sci-fi tales...but then I guess it all depends on whether or not you have an imagination


2001 of course was a great movie, but watching it more than once is torture!
very slow....

 

[Fidel Castro]

the beginning is REALLY slow, I like to just watch hal kill everyone, then put on some floyd for Jupiter and beyond...

 

[Hal]

2001 is pure art. The only way to get the most out of it is to watch it on a BIG screen, the bigger the better. Unfortunately, it never makes the rounds of the art-house theatres....except, of course, about a month or two ago, and I totally missed it. Piss me off! I have only seen 2001 on a big theatre screen once in my life, about 30 years ago.

I disagree on it being boring. It certainly is edited much slower, especially compared to today's films (hell, it was even slow in comparison to the films of it's day..), but it is an entirely different experience than most movies. Fidel said it well...complete symetry, Stanley Kubrick uses every inch of the screen in his composition, and that, in combination with the incredibly eery soundtrack....pure fuckin art. Kubrick puts the viewer in a head space that is really quite profound, and then kicks your ass with the hallucinatory visuals of the pod's trip through hyper-space. Holy shit.

But ya definitely have to slow yourself down to watch it effectively, but it is totally worth it.

 

[Verite]

I watched it and it seemed to be a personal message to Bush.

 

[Sheriff Bart]

alright so what do you all think is good sci-fi? books and movies, or anything else.

i mentioned cordwainer smith above, arthur c. clarke has some good books (2001 is also a good book), orson scott card is great...

love the stargate movie, save the green planet, and im having a major brain fart and cant keep thinking...

 

[Fidel Castro]

I really liked "Childhood's End" by Arthur C Clarke.

I never read 2001, it was written after the movie. I always thought that was strange

 

[Hal]

I always expected that "Childhood's End" would be made into a movie....what a great story! Maybe some day they will make the movie, but they will need to do a lot of updating of the technology involved and such.

 

[Sheriff Bart]

yea

clarke worked w/kubrick on the 2001 screenplay, and i belvie they had their disagreements in making the film so then clarke just decided to expand a book and kubrick did his movie. so the book was written while the movie was being filmed and released shortly after the film. I cant say really which is better but they are both awesome.
but what i was saying with the movie is its not boring, but since it is slow, watching it soon after first seeing it with people who havent seen it was difficult for me becasue there was nothing to grab me. it was awesome the first time, but then it just doesnt have the action to be watched so soon again....

 

[Guest]

I have seen 2001 in 70mm on a huge screen so it was in it's original screen ratio, there is onyl one 70mm screen in the UK, in Bradford. Me and a friend ate a green windowpane acid tab each and that film is just amazing with the proper huge screen and surround sound.

Also saw Psycho and Alien in 70mm. Alien is a far, far batter film on the big scre, that scene where the alien comes up the air shaft into the camera made me jump out of my seat.