Thanks to David Hudson of IFC.com’s The Daily and just about everybody else for so clearly letting me know what “everyone’s talking about” today: the new trailer for the sci-fi Sundance sensation Moon. I find the excitement interesting for two reasons. First, I think it’s odd when people who’ve already seen a movie go ga-ga for its trailer. Such subjective write-ups also tend to hint that spoilers abound, which can be quite obnoxious. Second, I think it’s strange that we still go completely insane for films like this, even as we immediately address their influences in Kubrick and Tarkovsky. I’m not complaining, of course; I love all derivatives of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Solyaris, Alien, Metropolis, Blade Runner, The Matrix, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, etc. There’s just something about sci-fi that overcomes the usual complaints against lack of originality.
Anyway, because I haven’t yet seen Moon (Karina has, though, read her review from Sundance here), I’m going to attempt to ignore the commentary from people who already love the film (sorry Billington, Goss, etc.). Objective reactions only, after the jump:
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It’s only a couple of short weeks before the 2008 Oscar nominees are announced, and the internet is abuzz with prognostications. One hotly debated topic is whether or not Wall-E can pull off a Best Picture nomination, or even a win. It would be the second animated film to be nominated in the category, after Beauty and the Beast, which got the honor before the Animated Feature prize existed. Will the stodgy old Academy seat Wall-E at the kid’s table, giving it an easy win in the animation category, or will it be allowed to play with the big boys?
A best pic nomination for Wall-E would be a rare honor for animation in general, but it would also be a long over due rarity for another reason: Wall-E would only be the second best pic nominated film in the history of the Oscars to be set in the future. The only one to date is A Clockwork Orange. When you consider how many nominees are period pieces (I didn’t care to count), this represents a massive bias on the part of the Academy. It’s clear that they love the past, but they hate the future.
What would the history of the Academy Awards look like if the Hollywood elite wasn’t terrified of speculative fiction? Below, seven movies about the future that should have been nominated for Best Picture:
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Fanzine pioneer (and credited coiner of the term “sci-fi”) Forrest J. Ackerman died last week at the age of 92, so I thought it appropriate to showcase a bittersweet clip from the documentary The Sci-Fi Boys. Though I panned the film when it premiered at Tribeca a few years back (and got a lot of crap from readers as a result), I do recognize it as primarily a showcase for Ackerman’s celebration of and influence on genre filmmaking. If you’re looking for something to watch to pay tribute to the guy, this may be it.
Or, you could use this as a springboard with which to begin a marathon of Forry’s favorite sci-fi films. He lists them in this clip as being Metropolis, Things to Come, The War of the Worlds, The Invisible Man and The Time Machine. Also in this clip, filmed in 2003, Ackerman visits the grave of legendary sci-fi filmmaker George Pal and mentions that he’d recently almost joined the producer/director in the afterlife. Fortunately, fans got to enjoy Ackerman and his memorabilia museum home (the “Acker-mini-mansion”) for another five years. Now, though, “Forry” has gone and met up with Pal, and they’re likely having great conversations about H.G. Wells and the current state of sci-fi/fantasy.
Check out the clip of Ackerman and Sci-Fi Boys director Paul Davids after the jump.
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Long-missing footage from Fritz Lang’s Metropolis has, apparently, been found. Berlin-based David Hudson at GreenCine breathlessly passes along the online preview to a story that will run in Germany’s ZEITmagazin tomorrow. Hudson’s English-language parsing of the preview is a must-read, but the short version is that a copy of “the long version” of the film––which may or may not be Lang’s original cut, but which seems almost certainly close to it––has been discovered at Buenos Aires’ Museo Del Cine.
David says he’ll have more details after buying the magazine tomorrow; in the meantime, there’s a gallery of stills from the new/old footage. I’ve screencapped two of the eight images; the more vivid one is up top, and a scratchy and almost spectral-looking still is below the jump.
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Oh, the perils of being an organization built on starfucking: if the Hollywood Foreign Press Association can’t get the WGA to issue 
