Sci-fi film faves and flops

[Buffy]

Originally Posted by CraigD

...my interest in actually seeing episodes of The Starlost was like rubbernecking at a gruesome highway accident – you’re not expecting art, or even pleasure, but at something so manifestly awful, you’ve just got to be a voyeur.

Yah!

Originally Posted by CraigD

The idea that the first and only season of The Starlost was produced on an ultra-low budget, is, I think, a bit of obscure videophile myth....the opening segment of “Phoenix Without Ashes” (Ellison’s title) / “Voyage of Discovery” (the aired title) was, as of 1973 “the single most expensive production ever attempted in Canada.”

I think you do have to pay attention to the qualifier I bolded....

Although the intent may have been along the lines you described--to show something different in each of the "domes", that green foam along with the Satellite of Love-like random-plastic-parts-glued-on-plywood-and-painted-white decor that is reused everywhere is a testament to how little was actually spent on the actual production.

I can see where there are places where they might have *attempted* to do what you describe:

Originally Posted by CraigD

...Doug Trunbull’s failed attempt to develop and use his brainchild Magicam SF camera system to seamlessly integrate model and live shots in realtime...

...but it's clear that it never made it into the final post-production (if indeed there was any editing whatsoever!). There are a few green screens but they're mostly used to do simple video--like the computer ("May I be of.....assistance?" is like fingernails on the chalkboard of course and gets burned into your brain like a bad pop tune)--and the closest to this is the episode where they get "minaturized into a computer" which is pretty hilarious in hindsight, but even that is so poorly done it's hard to see where any dollars went.

They did build a few models of the inside of the domes, but these are so out of proportion and so simplistic (my daughter's 5th grade science fair project was better quality), that trying to imagine it costing much is hard to believe. Might have been done by Doug Trumbull's janitor (I'll have to ask him...he's famous now).

There's one "dome model" that puts us into hysterics though: it's in the episode about the polluted manufacturing dome, where they have that appears to be cigarette smoke being blown randomly from behind the first row of "buildings" in the model to get that "smoggy effect": so out of proportion that Gene Roddenberry would not have blessed it even to keep an episode under budget.

I really suspect that if it was truly "expensive," the money all went out the door before a single tape was recorded...

Originally Posted by CraigD

.....The green foam (I’m guessing here) was meant to convey outside-the-biodomes strangeness, and should have appeared infrequently.

No honest, it's everywhere. And its that bumpy regular square pattern foam that people used for bed pads and all sorts of other stuff for a long time, so except for being dayglo-lime-green, it just makes you think, "Hey! I got a bunch of that stuff in the closet!" Even prompted me to finally scream "Soylent Green is people!" during one of our MSTifying of one episode....

Originally Posted by CraigD

The ultimately decisive difference, however, was that the makers of STrek made what they had work. In short, they were competent, even brilliantly ingenious in every part of the production.

Yep. Cuz' Gene Roddenberry did exactly what the eulogies this week about Don Hewitt of 60 Minutes pointed out was his driving creative goal: "Tell me a story."

Originally Posted by CraigD

The Starlost, in contrast, by most accounts, was a ship of fools and incompetents, turning time, money, and creative talent into contemptible crap.

You can say that again!

Originally Posted by CraigD

I just might Netflix The Starlost, season the only, after all.

Oh do! You won't regret it! Or if you do, at least you'll be glad you did!

Television is a new medium. It's called a medium because nothing is well-done,
Buffy

[buddyzen]

District 9 i thought was pretty amazing!

[Boerseun]

Went and saw District 9 last night.

Although the main character is a thoroughly unpleasant prat, the Director did say that it's a movie without any protagonists.

But it did blow me away. A very novel and new take on the whole "Aliens invade Earth" genre.
I totally enjoyed it. There's lots of things in the movie that only South Africans will get, like the main character's name - van der Merwe. It's a joke - if you start a sentence saying "van der Merwe walks into a bar..." and stop right there, you'll already have the audience rolling on the floor in SA. So the "van der Merwe" joke went galactic with this movie. Pretty awesome, I say.

Like the guy said, Los Angeles and New York have been overused in alien movies. This was a very fresh change, and comes highly recommended from this end!

[Southtown]

Yes! I loved it. Not for people with weak stomachs, though.