Dang, you're right. Which sucks because Sisko is my favorite captain (and Emissary of the Prophets). Oh, well, October.

I just watched Les Aventures extraordinaires d'Adèle Blanc-Sec, a terrific French comedy-adventure movie--mummies, a pterodactyl, and the Titanic, with an Indiana Jones-like heroine. I had to obtain it though "channels" because US distributors don't have any faith in the ability of an American audience to enjoy movies from other countries. Americans have no idea how insulated we are from international culture.

That's why I never cared much for the show. I'd only tune in if it were a movie I'd watched growing up and/or liked. When I first saw it I was expecting an Elvira/Friday Frights program type show and got robots/host doing lame jokes *over* the film with the overly large silhouettes blocking the entire lower third of the film. I expected this in the filler but got annoyed during the film itself.

However, no matter how I feel about the show and whether or not the riffed film *must* be sci-fi/fantasy before an episode qualifies, IMDB lists the genres for MST3K as "Comedy and Sci-Fi" which, according to the rules, qualifies it.

Rule #1 from post #1: "Movies/TV shows should be labeled sci-fi or fantasy from either imdb.com or allmovie.com. Other labels don't matter as long as there is at least a sci-fi or fantasy label from one of those sites."

Using that rule, it qualifies. Period.

Question, would Gog fall under Cybernetic revolt for purposes of the checklist?

Man! I saw the trailer and would like to see the movie but keep waiting for any news on a release, theatrical or otherwise. Picked up the GN as well.

Glad to hear the movie's good at least.

I don't see all MST3K as Sci-fi. If the robots where elves, and it was set in a castle... would we still be discussing it?

It took you guys long enough to find that loophole.

But for the checklist item to count, it has to follow what it says, where the film they are riffing has to be sci-fi or fantasy.

Apparently so.

Would The Bad Seed count? It's been a while since I've seen it, but I seem to recall a fantasy/sci-fi twist towards the end.

I didn't think it would qualify, but The Fisher King is listed as fantasy on allmovie.com. Yea for me.

As to the MST3K question, I am on KaBluie's side with this. It's not a movie being hosted by Joel/Mike and the bots like Elvira hosting something. You watch MST3K for Joel/Mike and the bots, not for the movie (at least I don't). Plus there is not a single moment that they aren't on the screen (except for when Dr. Forrester is) like a tradition movie of the week with a host. It's a show with a running (thin) premise of a guy trapped in space with intelligent robots who is trying to get back home. If he were trapped in a castle with elves, no we would not be having this debate (or at least I wouldn't be).

Both sides have valid arguments, but I am with those that think all MST3K should count.

Neither imdb or allmovie/allrovi, list it as fantasy. I know the twist you're talking about, but deus ex machina notwithstanding, I don't think it qualifies either. You've got three wildcards though; count it toward one of them.

Ok, FINALLY watched Planet of the Apes (1968) for the first time last night. I can't believe it's taken me this long to finally watch it. Oh it was classic Charlton Heston. Loved it. The only parts that took me out of the movie were the terrible fake beards on Landon and the other crew member.

I basically have had little to no time to watch movies the past 8 months, but my goal for this challenge is to get through all of the PoTA titles and maybe sneak in a few classics in there too.

Question - Should I watch the Tim Burton version after seeing the original, or watch the rest of them and come back to it? This is strictly a question about viewing order, not the quality of any of the titles

I've only seen the original and Burton but I'd go for production order

Decided to skip the random-movie approach and jump straight into B5. Watched The Gathering and episode 1 this morning. We'll see how far I get...

I always forget how addictive this show is: I planned to watch 1 disc per day and on day 2, I'm already on disc 5. I'm forcing myself to take a break and watch Aliens before finishing up season 2.

Awesome progress! Have you seen it before? I've already watched part of season 1 but figured I'd need to start over from the beginning.

Watch the classic series first.

As the Burton film contains zero spoilers for the rest of the original series it really doesn't matter. It's also possible it could make some of the sequels seem better than they are. Other than that, stick with production order.

I started with "A Scanner Darkly". It felt true to the book (it *has* been a while since I read it) and was pretty good overall. I'm not sure how I feel about the rotoscoped images - it just felt odd and I think I'd rather have seen "normal" film with sfx/cgi where necessary. But considering the story line it somewhat fit and made everything seem even *more* drug induced.

I'm off to a pretty good start. Everybody left me alone last night and I have the house to myself today. Off to get some snacks and then start "Avatar". I've never seen the film and am going in with mixed feelings due to it being a James Cameron film. I'm starting with the extended version as everything I've read about the film indicates it's the best cut.

Yes I've seen B5 multiple times. Actually I think the last time I watched it was for the very first sci-fi challenge and I watched Crusade for last year's challenge. If I had known I was going to watch B5 this summer I would have saved Crusade. I watched S1 last week and I think it took me 3 days. Now I have to decide whether to finish S2 tonight or watch Alien 3. Decisions, decisions.

Does it get any better than watching schlocky Sci-Fi B-movies from the '50s and '60s on a scorching hot, lazy July Saturday afternoon? The answer is no. Yeah, I'm saving "Solaris" and all the thought-provoking fare for the workweek being it's a holiday weekend and my brain is currently running at half capacity.

Anyway, I caught Liquid Sky last night and can't help but wonder as to why it never really achieved true cult status? I'm guessing it was overshadowed by Repo Man, which was obviously heavily influenced by it ...right down to the waning punk scene and nuclear doom theme. And talk about a quotable film! A proper DVD/Blu release is desperately in order.

I hated the movie as a kid. I loved monsters in horror and sci-fi movies but a bunch of monkeys walking around and just talking bored the hell out of me. They'd always show it on the local Fox station on Saturday afternoons, way back in the day before VCRs were common.

It wasn't until about a decade ago when I finally sat down and watched them all, along with the tv series. I had fun with all the stuff and then the ape head set came out with even more stuff than I'd seen, so I had to get that.

I'm off to a slow start. I almost finished The Atomic Submarine last night but the painkillers started putting me out near the end. I saw Cars 2 today, which doesn't count but seeing how uncrowded the theater was is inspiring to try and catch The Green Lantern and Transformers 3 in the next couple of days.

Cars 2 is the first 3D movie I've seen in a long time. I saw Nightmare Before Christmas years ago and before that it was stuff from the 80s. People complaining that 3D nowadays is just a gimmick clearly don't remember or haven't seen the stuff from the 80s. Now that was some gimmicky crap. When you can watch a movie back then in 2D, you can easily tell it was 3D since someone is either throwing a ball or pointing a stick at the screen.

Early this morning I watched The War of the Worlds. I remember watching at least part of it in middle school, but hadn't seen any of it since. I tip my hat to the Oscar-winning special effects, but what really stood out to me was the audio of the film. The audible effects were terrific, and the mixing of effects, music and dialog was very well done (note: I watched with the 2.0 option rather than mono). In truth, I was kinda "meh" about it. It's noted in one of the bonus features that the film was a reaction to McCarthy's Senate hearings and I can accept that, but honestly I didn't get a strong feeling about it just from watching it; not like I did last month when I finally saw High Noon.

Also, since someone else has brought it up, I read Planet of the Apes last year, and I finally saw Burton's film a couple years ago. I still haven't seen the '68 film, but I don't get the uproar over the '01 film. I thought it was reasonably faithful to Boulle's novel, and the ending (which I've heard cited as a chief complaint) was straight out of Boulle. It strikes me that more of the backlash was that Burton's film was sacrilege to fans of the original franchise rather than because it was a poor film or bad adaptation of the source material. But, then, I'm an outsider on this issue and I'm sure Apes aficionados will be happy to school me in the matter.

So it's the opposite reaction of the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory where even though Willy Wonka was the better movie, everyone said Charlie was superior because it was closer to the book. They must have been reading the book while watching Charlie because the end product of Charlie wasn't better than the first film, for anyone paying attention.

Overall, I liked the Planet of the Apes remake. My chief problem with it was Mark Wahlberg. Normally I like the guy, but he was just a bore in this and dragged the film down.

Time to sticky the list thread?