Re: 6th Annual Sci Fi/Fantasy Challenge
 

Count yourselves fortunate for not having wasted the money to see it in the theater like I did!

Re: 6th Annual Sci Fi/Fantasy Challenge
 

Anyone going to do the Matheson trifecta of Last Man on Earth, Omega Man and I am Legend?

I'm considering it except that there's nothing there I haven't seen. Oh! Maybe they have commentaries!

Re: 6th Annual Sci Fi/Fantasy Challenge
 

I watched Night at the Museum yesterday. It's rather standard family fare which is a real shame because the parts that make it up are so much more interesting than the product. I would watch a film with Ricky Gervais as the curator of a museum, dealing with dwindling relevance and annoying children. Or a time-travelling buddy comedy starring Steve Coogan and Owen Wilson. Heck, the whole concept of a museum coming to life is a great movie idea. Unfortunately, this gets largely sidelined for a litany of poorly developed subplots and Ben Stiller being all Ben Stiller-y. That said, it's still a fun little film.

Today, I rewatched Deep Impact which is one of my favorite disaster films. I'm a big fan of the genre (and most of its tropes) and really appreciated that Mimi Leder's film was attempting a different approach. The focus is on the characters and their reactions to the situation and not on action scenes. While the drama is sometimes forced, it is nice to see an attempt to humanize the characters and portray them more realistically. Once, my dad explained that the difference between me and my brother was that I preferred Deep Impact and my brother preferred Armageddon. We all laughed, but there is a truth to what he said.

Re: 6th Annual Sci Fi/Fantasy Challenge
 

Everyone should take a look at tarfrimmer's list so that we all know how much we suck at layouts. I've done a few tables but nothing even remotely as elaborate or as impressive as her work. *throws away computer*

Re: 6th Annual Sci Fi/Fantasy Challenge
 

I am shamed.

I decided I'm on a Japanese sci fi kick for a few days, so will probably be watching either Gamera, Godzilla, Ultraman, or Super Robot Red Baron. Not really in the mood for a movie tonight, so will probably watch either Ultraman or Red Baron. Decisions, decisions.

Re: 6th Annual Sci Fi/Fantasy Challenge
 

Just watched Things To Come for the first time. I've owned it on DVD for about 10 years but never watched it. Recently picked up the "Harryhausen presents" Blu-ray and so that was more incentive to watch it. It was pretty good for a 1936 movie! Painted a bleak view of the future (most of which has passed).

Of course I watched the Black & White presentation. Although the special features talking about the new colorization process made it sound interesting to watch colorized. (The clips they showed looked good).

Does watching it colorized now count as a new entry? :)

Re: 6th Annual Sci Fi/Fantasy Challenge
 

I agree with you Travis. Her posts are always so awesome. I keep hoping she'll do my posts for me but she just keeps giving me the HTML website! Good thing she's one of my best friends!

Re: 6th Annual Sci Fi/Fantasy Challenge
 

Definitely agree! I'm glad when I remember to bold things!

I watched the first four episodes of Wolf's Rain which had a wonderful start. I'm really excited to continue!

Re: 6th Annual Sci Fi/Fantasy Challenge
 

It's not just the formatting either--the numbers are very impressive!

Re: 6th Annual Sci Fi/Fantasy Challenge
 

Just watched Komodo vs. Cobra :thmbsdwn:. How about a "vs." catagory for next year's checklist? imdb has a list of about 200, of which at least half look like the would work, including lots of Godzilla/Gamera, Asylum and, for those who don't want giant monsters, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.

Re: 6th Annual Sci Fi/Fantasy Challenge
 

and of course the classic...

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/...aL._SY300_.jpg

Re: 6th Annual Sci Fi/Fantasy Challenge
 

Okay, so there is a scene in Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonium (not Robot Chicken) where General Custer and Sacajawea have a conversation. Someone is going to hell for that.

Re: 6th Annual Sci Fi/Fantasy Challenge
 

Had some time to watch something in the background at work today so burned through a few early episodes of Firefly. LOVE.

Maybe you should have watched it for last month's challenge! :)

Re: 6th Annual Sci Fi/Fantasy Challenge
 

Is there an offer there...?! ;)

In my house, the only Trek things that I can find easily are the TNG movies because they aren't mine, so they're actually next to the TV rather than "somewhere".

On the plus side, ignoring what I'd hoped to watch, with Amazon and the (limited, but not as awful as I sometimes pretend) library, I have more than I can watch this month.

Re: 6th Annual Sci Fi/Fantasy Challenge
 

Without much creative thinking,* I think one could watch MPHG for (almost) every challenge bar Horror and Christmas....! :D

Tempting.



*Adventure, Comedy, Criterion, History, Fantasy, Animated bits, closely-linked to TV, Low budget...

Re: 6th Annual Sci Fi/Fantasy Challenge
 

Russell Crowe and Ridley Scott's Robin Hood was really quite enjoyable - and Cate Blanchett was an excellent Xena-y Marian. I found it mildly odd that it was, ultimately, a pre-Robin Hood Robin Hood film, but overall it was very good. Disappointingly, there were no extras on the disc I borrowed.

The misguided, maligned and generally badly-received The Avengers (1998) is... extremely odd. 'They' say that a director's cut would be welcomed, as the initial vision, trailer and previews showed a very different film. I wonder if there'd ever be enough interest on a corporate level for that to happen though - and, frankly, doubt it.

The faux-Britishness, pseudo-but-sub-Avengers themes and ideas really miss on every level. Probably it's the lack of Macnee and Rigg; certainly it's the very idea that anyone can re-capture the spirit of something so quintessentially Sixties; and invariably it's indicative of a particularly American attempt to revive something it knows is popular, but clearly isn't quite sure why. Ultimately though, it's a reasonably valiant attempt, optimistic, but fatally flawed at every point. (And shares a great deal with Sir Sean's other folly - "LXG" - in its hits and misses and not-British/not-close-to-the-source. His comments about missing The Matrix and Lord of the Rings and not quite 'getting' Sci-Fi/Fantasy pretty much sum up his hopelessy miscast and ludicrous turn.)

Mr Fiennes is miscast (and the false upper class stilted dialogue is completely at odds with Mr Macnee's languor). Ms Thurman isn't English (not necessarily a problem, but a hinderance). Mr Broadbent is... well: Mother isn't - to me, at least - a valid character anyway. But despite it all, I don't think they, or it, quite deserve the slagging off it's gotten over the years. Not quite, anyway. It's an attempt at a mish-mash greatest hits that neither picks the greatest hits nor does anything much with them; it tries to copy the style but misses the heart, substance and enjoyment. And there's no playfulness, just a sheen of archness.

One thing I noticed, which may be blind coincidence, was how Marvel (Comics)-y the opening seemed: psychedelic opening credits (very Steranko's Nick Fury; not very Avengersy), proto-Danger Room for the (out of place) street gauntlet. Given the influence of The Avengers on various X-Men storylines, and the minor complications the different Avengers copyrights have had over the years, it was an interesting extra level to muse upon.

Re: 6th Annual Sci Fi/Fantasy Challenge
 

I almost forgot! I have to watch Firefly this month! They're showing Serenity at a local theater in August! I've never seen either.

Thanks for mentioning it!

Re: 6th Annual Sci Fi/Fantasy Challenge
 

Are you kidding me?! That rabbit scares the heck out of me! "I soiled my armor I was so scared!" Not to mention the Bridge-keeper! :)

For Christmas you'd have to watch Life of Brian instead! :)

Re: 6th Annual Sci Fi/Fantasy Challenge
 

Sorry no, happy with keeping them ;)

Re: 6th Annual Sci Fi/Fantasy Challenge
 

Watched episodes 3 and 4 of Game of Thrones season 2 and am now hooked again. The season started a bit slow for me, which is partly why I let it linger after getting the BD set, but things are heating up and I'm reacquainting myself with the characters, which is a big factor.

Right now I'm watching the pilot of Continuum, one of my many sci-fi blind buys I have stacked up. While I tend to roll my eyes at , I like it enough to watch some more. Animated military miniatures--I'm there! :)

I have nearly all my Trek clustered together, other than the movies 2, 3, 4, and 6 that I just lent a friend who wanted to see them after STID. That's all of TOS, most of TNG, and all of DS9 and Voyager. I have TAS and most of the Collectives downstairs, but I don't own any of Enterprise or (oddly) the 2009 movie, which never got to the right price for me. Now it's sitting in my Amazon cart at 9.99 and I just haven't pulled the trigger....

I could easily do an unwatched Trek marathon of Enterprise via Prime streaming and the final two seasons of DS9.

Awesome--hope you are able to fit it in with that screening opportunity coming up. Firefly was one of those backlogged shows on my list when Serenity came out in theaters and I went on a whim. I loved it and went back and watched Firefly. This is my third watching of the series, and I've watched Serenity more times than I can count. Something about the more-or-less-self-contained movie makes it endlessly rewatchable for me.

I forced my teenager to watch the Firefly pilot a couple years ago, and she couldn't get into it. But I think the pilot is a bit slow, and the following episodes really pick up with the characterizations and plots. Will have to try again sometime...

Re: 6th Annual Sci Fi/Fantasy Challenge
 

Interesting, I have also never seen Firefly and just started watching it today.

I was waiting for a deal on the DVD and then on the BR an finally just bought it last upgrade and save $15 for the series and $5 for the movie.

Re: 6th Annual Sci Fi/Fantasy Challenge
 

Just watched my first kaiju of the challenge, Attack of the Monsters, aka Gamera vs Guiron, from the MC Sci Fi Classics 50 Movie Set. While most of the movies I watch from the set will be first time views, I wanted to rewatch the Japanese sci fi movies.

Re: 6th Annual Sci Fi/Fantasy Challenge
 

Since it's July 4th I had to watch Independence Day. Judging by the comments from earlier in this thread, I'm one of the few folks who actually like this film...it's just fun. In keeping with the Will Smith saves the world theme, I ran with I, Robot as well. The latter film looks amazing on blu.

Question: would the Terminator films count as post-apocalyptic and/or alternate history?

Re: 6th Annual Sci Fi/Fantasy Challenge
 

I'm shameless in my fondness for ID4. I'm tinkering with throwing it in myself since I'm too miserable to go to my friends' Fourth of July party.

Re: 6th Annual Sci Fi/Fantasy Challenge
 

As stupid as ID was, I kind of like it too. It's just so darn funny when Will pulls that alien out of his ship! It makes the movie for me! :)

I also heard that I,R looks really good in Blu-ray, so much so that I actually double-dipped it. I haven't watched it yet though. adding that to my list...

And good question about the Terminator films. There's definitely an argument to be made both ways.