// Category Archive for: Science Fiction

The Matrix Revisited

By Lisa Anderson

Seraph: Did you always know?
Oracle: No, no I didn’t. But I believed. I believed.
—The final lines of dialog of The Matrix Trilogy

In 1999, the movie going public got its mind blown. The Matrix, directed by Andrew and Larry (Lana) Wachowski, used cutting-edge technology to draw on a range of stylistic influences, from Hong Kong action movies to Cyberpunk. What really set the film apart, though, was it’s heady blend of ideas and symbols from Christianity, Eastern spirituality, and Western Philosophy.
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Feed Your Head

The movie medium began as a series of technical advancements and research projects, an attempt to put still photographs into motion, beginning with Eadweard Muybridge’s “zoopraxiscope” and Thomas Edison’s inventions of the kinetoscope in 1889 and the vitascope in 1895, and quickly moving towards the many imitations and variations that followed.

According to film historian Benjamin B. Hampton, Edison was too involved in his laboratory experiments and “too far removed from the public to realize that his invention was anything more than a toy.” Yet soon, “[M]en with keener commercial sense than Edison. . . saw a field of money-making.”

Altered States, 1980

Although the more artistic possibilities of this new medium would soon reveal themselves through films like George Méliès’ A Trip To The Moon, these seem to have been exceptions to the norm. Hampton notes that although “[T]here was no opposition to quality; there merely was no conscious effort” since the main objectives were that the films “did not require any more film or cost any more money.”

And there was a lot of money to be made. By 1913, the gross income of Edison’s Vitagraph corporation “was between five and six million dollars a year,” a nearly inconceivable amount of money for the time. The battle between art and commerce has continued in the film industry ever since.
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Top Five Nerd References In Hip Hop

By Matt Demers
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Inception‘s Deception

By Less Lee Moore

“Yet both directions, though not without meaning, are equally useless.”
—M.C. Escher on his lithograph Ascending and Descending, 1960

Filmmaker Christopher Nolan has only been making features for a little over a decade, but he has already established a singular style, both visually and thematically. Nolan deals in dreams and memories, in morality and duality. His latest film, Inception, is no exception to this trend.
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San Diego Comic-Con Diary, Day Four

By Christian Lipski

Read:
Day One’s Diary
Day Two’s Diary
Day Three’s Diary

And then there was the last day. We eventually got up and packed our bags for checkout, and made our way to the convention floor for our last visit. Since it’s the last day and exhibitors want to ship as little as possible back home, there are rampant sales and many attendees only buy Sunday tickets.

Mile High Comics put their entire stock on sale for 50% off, for example. Independent publishers were willing to make deals, for the most part.The show closes at 5 p.m. as well, so the action in the convention center was tinged with both sadness and anxiety.
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San Diego Comic-Con Diary, Day Three

By Christian Lipski

Read:
Day One’s Diary
Day Two’s Diary

After going to bed sometime after 1 a.,m. the night before (late dinner), Saturday morning was pretty much a wash. I had a press conference for Futurama at 11:30 a.m., so I took off for the convention center. The room was about two-thirds full, and we all shifted about until the event began.

Matt Groening, David X. Cohen, Billy West, Maurice LeMarche, and Lauren Tom filed in to have their pictures taken before ascending the dais. They apologized for the absence of the voice of Bender, John Dimaggio, but it was explained that “Dimaggio” was Italian for “running late.” He did show up presently, and the conference began.
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San Diego Comic-Con 2010 Diary, Day Two

By Christian Lipski

Read:
Day One’s Diary

By the second day I feel much less pressure; I’ve already made a day’s worth of forays into the wilds, and though I haven’t seen nearly all of what there is, I have a good sense of the floor’s layout and content. I also know that it’s nearly useless to try to get into large sessions, since the amount of time you need to devote to the line-waiting is better spent wandering the floor below.
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San Diego Comic-Con 2010 Diary, Day One

By Christian Lipski

Wednesday night was a long night of travel, so we didn’t get to sleep until 1 a.m. Upon rising at seven, I cursed the medium of the sequential image as we struggled to get ready.

We go to the parking garage at 10:30, and walked the mile to the Convention Center. You know you’re getting close when you see the TRON banner start to appear on lampposts, and even a replica of Flynn’s arcade from the movie. The amount of people in costume increased, and so did the amount of people handing out flyers and laminated cards and magazines. These last items tended to create a kind of carpet on the sidewalks that led to the doors of San Diego Comic-Con.
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WhedonFest 2010: A “Can’t Stop The Serenity” Weekend Event

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact information:

Cynthia O’Malley, Chair
Cindy@whedonitesunited.com

Joe Jordan, Vice-chair
Joe@whedonitesunited.com

WHEDONFEST 2010: A “CAN’T STOP THE SERENITY” WEEKEND EVENT

Joss Whedon fans reunite in Kentucky to raise money for Can’t Stop the Serenity Charity.

Whedonites United present their second annual Whedonfest, a weekend-long convention, to be held August 6-8 at Barefoot Republic in Scottsville, KY. All proceeds will be donated to charities designated by the Can’t the Stop the Serenity Global organization or Whedonites United.

Joss Whedon fans have repeatedly done the unlikely: turning a failed movie into a long-running and much-loved TV series (Buffy the Vampire Slayer), turning a canceled series into a movie destined to become a cult classic (Serenity), and then turning repeat screenings of that movie into a series of worldwide popular fund-raising events to keep the fandom alive while promoting gender equality (Can’t Stop the Serenity).
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Top Five Funniest Evil Mad Scientists

By Lisa Anderson

The Evil Mad Scientist is a familiar figure in popular culture, and is found most often in science fiction, horror, or superhero tales. Evil Mad Scientists are not to be confused with their more benevolent counterparts, like Emmett Brown of Back to the Future. While the Evil Mad Scientist can be a figure of great terror, when this archetype is used for comic effect the results can be hilarious. Following are five of the best examples.
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