After years of gut-wrenching “Golden Heart” films, chalk-outline experiments about “America,” a co-founded movement for pure cinema and other infamous works including his most recent, the explicit horror film Antichrist, it’s easy to forget that Lars von Trier started his feature film career in the science fiction genre. Of course, he being who he is, Von Trier’s dystopian detective story The Elements of Crime isn’t easily identifiable as sci-fi.

And neither, I’m sure, will be his next venture, a “psychological disaster” film titled Planet Melancholia. I’ll ignore the Hollywood Reporter’s reference to “Roland Emmerich territory,” especially since it follows the equally asinine description of Antichrist as being in some way related to a slasher film, and stick to comments from Von Trier and his partner at Zentropa Entertainment, Peter Aalbaek Jensen.

First: The filmmaker’s statement of “no more happy endings!” could easily be the next Von Trier t-shirt, joining the recently released “chaos reigns” design and the Van Halen-style tee.

Jensen added that hopefully no genitals will be cut off, that there will be some special effects employed, that this won’t be about an alien invasion (though there apparently will be a threat from the titular planet) and that this will be “romantic, in a Lord Byron sort of way.” I’ll admit the only familiarity I have with Byron is as a character in Bride of Frankenstein. But regardless, as a longtime fan of Von Trier’s, I’m excited for this film no matter what the inspiration or comparison.

After he dedicated Antichrist to Andrei Tarkovsky, though, I’m really hoping Von Trier sets his new film on a spaceship, a la Solaris. You know Von Trier in outer space would be the greatest thing of all time.

Check out what other film bloggers are saying in response to this news after the jump:
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James Cameron’s Avatar is supposed to be like nothing we’ve ever seen before. So why does it look so familiar? One of the most disappointing things about the film’s promotion so far is how derivative the film looks in the trailer that (eventually) debuted online today. And much of what we’re reminded of wasn’t even that great to begin with. To help illustrate our feeling of déjà vu, we’ve captured a few screenshots from the trailer and, where available, put them next to their older visual counterparts.
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Before even seeing District 9, we had a feeling there’d be at least a hint of human-alien sex, because science fiction, smart or dumb, has always had a fascination with the idea of inter-species love. And while bestiality may still be a taboo subject for Hollywood, the movies are always okay with the interplanetary variety, probably because it’s (usually) more consensual.

The aliens in District 9 are not sexy, though (not to us, anyway). They look like, and are derogatorily called, Prawns. So there are no apparent romances between these creatures and humans. But there is a reference to Nigerian prostitutes selling sex to the prawns, and there’s also sort of a depiction of a man and a prawn going at it “doggy style.”

While human-alien sex is commonly found in outer-space tales, such as Star Trek, we decided to look primarily at examples of visitors to Earth getting it on with the locals, similar to international sexcations that occur in the real world. Of course, because we’re not too familiar with sci-fi porn, there are likely a few good sex scenes we’ve left out. Feel free to tell us about them (if you’re not embarrassed) in the comments section.
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Can the San Diego Comic-Con really make or break a movie? That’s a yearly question asked in the days leading up to the annual geekfest, and few experts ever provide a definite answer. Most people point to weak Con receptions of footage from ultimately failed films like The Spirit and Catwoman as proof of the event’s influence. Meanwhile, there’s the corresponding recognition that positive buzz at the Con for certain niche titles like Twilight and 300 led those films to boffo box office.

But despite the few times Con attendees have been on the same wavelength with the rest of the moviegoing public, it’s important to remember the many movies that had geeks excited in San Diego but which couldn’t garner much interest from mainstream audiences in theatrical release. After the jump, we take a look at ten such movies that buzzed well at Comic-Con only to fizzle at the box office.
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Just as we’d prefer for Hollywood to remake bad films rather than beloved classics, we’d also like to see more TV adaptations of obscure and failed series — as long as there’s going to be such a giant void of creativity anyway, why not go for the forgotten titles and at least make it seem like you’ve got fresh ideas?

Unfortunately, Hollywood continues to ignore our logic and is instead adapting the popular 80s cop show T.J. Hooker for the big screen. It may not be the most familiar or beloved series of all time, but it has enough name recognition to make it a success, a la the S.W.A.T. and Starsky & Hutch movies before it.

We have no interest in yet another veteran/rookie team-up, though, especially a blatantly recycled one. So we decided to mine deeper into our TV Guide issues from the 80s and pick out some lesser-known high-concept shows that would make awesome movies if only they had more of a built-in, nostalgic audience to justify a green light.

Check out our pitches after the jump, and thank us when Hollywood gets wise to the ideas.
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Did you want to be an astronaut when you grew up? We never did, and we’re actually surprised any kid could have such a dream given the way spacemen are portrayed in the movies. Sure, there are some heroes here and there, but generally filmmakers tend to show us astronauts who are lonely, depressed, confused, self-doubting, jealous, guilt-ridden or otherwise miserable (not to mention they often wind up dead).

Sam Rockwell plays the latest of these unhappy astronauts in Moon, fittingly directed by Duncan Jones, whose father, David Bowie, gave us a somewhat sad song about a man potentially lost in space (“Space Oddity”). As the sole (human) resident of a station on the dark side of the moon, able to communicate with his family only through taped video correspondence, it’s not surprising that Rockwell’s character isn’t a happy camper.

But his mood actually has less to do with his situation than it has to do with film tradition. As much as Moon is garnering rave reviews it is also being lightly criticized for being derivative. And the unhappy astronaut convention is one of the overly familiar elements Jones and screenwriter Nathan Parker employs. To illustrate some of the convention’s history, we’ve selected ten of the unhappiest astronauts ever put on the big screen.
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This review was originally published in slightly different form during the Sundance Film Festival. Moon opens in New York and LA on Friday.

A small, personal story wrapped in the trappings of classic sci-fi epic, Moon manages to be both derivative (most notably, of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001) and deliberately rebellious in its treatment of sci-fi tropes. Moving through familiar territory and yet sparked with a spirit all its own, like any great work of genre cinema Moon’s future-world scenario and super-slick techno-artistry are put to the service of a story that ultimately downplays the traumas wrought by technological possibility in order to dig deep into the trauma of being a person.
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Thank God scientists finally found the missing link (aka Darwinius masillae, aka “Ida”). Now we can at last prove Charles Darwin right and be done with films like Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, as well as all the seemingly pro-science movies that inadvertently ruined the theory of evolution. We now look forward to the “Ida” biopic, or at least a movie detailing the 26 years (give or take 47 million) it took for the discovery of her fossil to become a mainstream media sensation. Never mind that this is hardly the missing link between apes and humans. With almost 50 years passed since the release of Inherit the Wind, film-loving Darwinists need some kind of missing link story to grab onto.

It is true that cinema has not been so kind to Darwinism, giving us such mockeries as Evolution, Howard the Duck and Creature from the Black Lagoon. But filmmakers have consistently shown a special love for the concept of the missing link, at least. Although many movies depict the idea with little seriousness, and some feature negative portrayals of primitive monsters, there are a number of truly lovable creatures that represent the concept of the missing link on film. Check them out after the jump.
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I am all for holidays, especially those having to do with movies. But they should have some sort of meaning, whether they honor an anniversary or birthday (real or fictional person’s), inception date (remember when people celebrated HAL’s birthday on January 12, 1997?) or similarly significant event. They shouldn’t just exist to exist. Star Wars Day, which is apparently today (interestingly, mere days before Star Trek hits theaters), is nothing more than a joke turned into a pseudo-holiday, for which the only purpose is to be able to say that it’s Star Wars Day. You don’t get a free comic book out of it, you don’t get off from work to hold a Jedi-based mass and you certainly don’t get to wear your Star Wars costumes around town without getting beat up. Especially not if your only reasoning for being in droid-garb is the silly pun “May the 4th be with you.”

Don’t get me wrong, I love puns, I love Star Wars (some of the movies, at least) and I do appreciate the joke from which the thing originates. But actually trying to turn the date into an officially recognized holiday — for members of the Jedi church, of course — is just plain silly. Geeks, feel free to watch a marathon of Star Wars movies today if you wish, but please stop with the “Happy Star Wars Day” greetings already. Bah humbug!

Check out some of the bloggers who annoyed me with this nonsense today, after the jump:

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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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In the subversive new comedy Observe and Report, Seth Rogen plays one very angry mall cop. But despite what you’ve figured out from the trailer, the character is not set off by a pervert flasher, nor is his violent behavior necessarily triggered by his decision to stop taking his medication. No, he’s simply incensed by Hollywood’s depiction of mall cops. If the movies aren’t stereotyping them as idiot police rejects, like in this year’s other mall security guard movie, Paul Blart: Mall Cop, they’re replacing them with also-flawed, laser-shooting, head-exploding robots, as in Chopping Mall. When Rogen is seen bashing skateboarders’ skulls, he’s not merely fed up with teenage hooligans wrecking his own place of employment; he’s also obviously reacting to the scene in Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol where David Spade gets away from a real cop and a mob of irate shoppers after skating recklessly through a mall (there are also skateboarding villains in Paul Blart).

On top of all this, Rogen’s character is likely tired of all the destruction caused to malls in the movies. And after seeing damage caused by police cars, aliens, robots, zombies, time travelers, terrorists, and Arnold Schwarzenegger (multiple times), he’s just so hard on the offensive, because he feels he has to be ready for anything. Unfortunately, teens and perverts are all he’s got. So, to illustrate the kinds of threats he seems more pumped up to handle, we’ve selected the ten best action scenes set in a mall:
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Alejandro Adams‘ second feature, Canary, is a wildly ambitious and not particularly audience-friendly (in fact, you could almost call it audience-hostile) work of indie sci-fi with new-fangled digital aesthetics and old-fashioned Altman-esque dialogue patterns put to the service of an overwhelming and surprisingly fresh-feeling sense of dystopian dread.  The film premieres at CineQuest on Sunday. I watched it on my MacBook while flying from New York to Los Angeles last week. Adams thinks it’s important that I mention that. He says, “I’m glad you watched it on an airplane…that is not merely a valid way to watch my film; that IS my film.  I reject all other modes of consumption because they unmake what I made.  What I made was for Karina Longworth on that flight from New York to Los Angeles.”

In an ongoing email conversation, I started out by asking Alejandro a variation of one of The 5 Questions We Ask Everybody; he took over from there, eventually pushing me to the point where I felt the need to invoke Heidegger, which I usually try really hard not to do. Canary’s screening schedule can be found here; there have also been some interesting conversations on the film’s blog.

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Duncan Jones‘ Moon divided critics at Sundance, which is maybe not much of a surprise. A slow, introspective homage to classic sci-fi with one actor (Sam Rockwell in a perfectly modulated dual role), two locations (inside a moon space station, and just outside it), and minimalist special effects, Moon challeneges the viewer to confront what they think they know about space movies and lonely-man-in-existential-crisis movies equally. Audiences that get it seem to really get it, and hopefully Sony Classics, who are scheduled to release the film in June, won’t push the genre elements over the intellectual elements –– or vice versa –– when the victory of the film is the merging of the two. As I put it in my review, Moon “feels more casual and accessible than any cinematic exploration of the Lacanian mirror stage has a right to be.”

Whilst at Sundance, I got a few minutes alone with Rockwell and Jones, and we chatted about their mutual love of early-80s sci-fi, the technology and technique behind the dual performance, and the real life potential of Moon’s alternative energy fantasy. Beware: there’s a possible spoiler immediately after the jump.

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• Fox may frustrate fanboys once again. Though not as sharp a jab as the studio’s Watchmen lawsuit, an option Fox holds on Emily Blunt could potentially keep her from playing Black Widow in Marvel/Paramount’s Iron Man 2 (a role she’s perfect for). Instead, she’ll have to settle on starring opposite Jack Black in Fox’s reimagined adaptation of Gulliver’s Travels.
• And speaking of disappointing fanboys: as if Scott Derrickson hasn’t already done enough damage to science fiction with his recent remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still, he has just been tapped to direct a single movie combining two of Dan Simmons’ Hyperion novels.
• 2009 Oscar nominee John Stevenson (Kung Fu Panda) will direct the new He-Man movie, Masters of the Universe. Worse than that, however, is Variety’s reminder that another 2009 nominee, Frank Langella, costarred as Skeletor in the godawful 1987 Masters of the Universe.
• 2009 Oscar nominee Mickey Rourke (who is also slated for Iron Man 2) will star in a kind of anti-Slumdog Millionaire, an American gangster flick titled Broken Horses, that will be scripted, directed and co-produced by Indian filmmakers. It will be the first Hollywood film from Reliance Entertainment since the company funded the DreamWorks exit from Paramount last year.
• “Breaking a longstanding taboo, Fox is releasing male-driven pic Taken on Super Bowl weekend,” begins the weekend box office preview from Variety. While I may believe that Taken could indeed be a guy movie, it certainly hasn’t been marketed as such. Anyway, I never understood the concept of a Sunday event keeping men from going to the movies on the Friday and Saturday before. So, if the film does take the top spot this weekend, I for one won’t be too shocked.