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10th Annual Sci-Fi/Fantasy Challenge Discussion Thread

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10th Annual Sci-Fi/Fantasy Challenge Discussion Thread

Old 07-13-17, 05:35 PM
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Re: 10th Annual Sci-Fi/Fantasy Challenge Discussion Thread

One thing I enjoy about this Challenge is that even though the Animation Challenge isn't till next month, there is plenty of animation to be able to watch this month.
Old 07-13-17, 06:49 PM
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Re: 10th Annual Sci-Fi/Fantasy Challenge Discussion Thread

Originally Posted by shadokitty
One thing I enjoy about this Challenge is that even though the Animation Challenge isn't till next month, there is plenty of animation to be able to watch this month.
I think both genres are tied pretty closely together. If you're watching animation, quite likely it's going to be sci-fi/fantasy themed. If you want to watch something fantasy, there's tons to pick from that are animated and the same for fantasy as well. Someone probably could do both challenges just watching animation both months...
Old 07-13-17, 07:47 PM
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Re: 10th Annual Sci-Fi/Fantasy Challenge Discussion Thread

Originally Posted by LJG765
I think both genres are tied pretty closely together. If you're watching animation, quite likely it's going to be sci-fi/fantasy themed. If you want to watch something fantasy, there's tons to pick from that are animated and the same for fantasy as well. Someone probably could do both challenges just watching animation both months...
Animation isn't a genre!

There is enough stuff out there to easily do every monthly Challenge all animation. Not sure if this month would be the most represented, or maybe comedy, oh, TV!
Old 07-13-17, 08:02 PM
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Re: 10th Annual Sci-Fi/Fantasy Challenge Discussion Thread

Originally Posted by Trevor
Animation isn't a genre!

There is enough stuff out there to easily do every monthly Challenge all animation. Not sure if this month would be the most represented, or maybe comedy, oh, TV!
Please don't pull out all your hair! You might need it! *grins* Ok, I mis-typed. You're right, animation is not a genre, it is a style of the medium. But if you look at what the other challenges are, they are all represented by genres (except for the TV on DVD one, of course!) so I kind of group them all as if they were. So, my bad. I'll try not to refer to animation as a genre again.

I do agree that comedy and TV would probably be up there as well as the most represented in animation. Hmm, makes me wonder what genre is most represented in animation?
Old 07-13-17, 11:16 PM
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Re: 10th Annual Sci-Fi/Fantasy Challenge Discussion Thread

Okay, I am so confused. Just finished watching The Garbage Pail Kids Movie. I have no idea what I just watched. I have so many questions...like who even thought that this was a good idea?
Old 07-14-17, 03:08 AM
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Re: 10th Annual Sci-Fi/Fantasy Challenge Discussion Thread

If anyone is interested, a friend on Facebook pointed out some things of interest for this Challenge last night. VUDU has all of the Showa Gamera movies, the Japanese versions available to watch for free with ads. Also Crunchyroll not only has Destroy All Monsters and Godzilla vs Megalon, but also many different Ultraman series, including the most recent one that is currently airing in Japan.
Old 07-14-17, 11:40 AM
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Re: 10th Annual Sci-Fi/Fantasy Challenge Discussion Thread

Originally Posted by LJG765
Okay, I am so confused. Just finished watching The Garbage Pail Kids Movie. I have no idea what I just watched. I have so many questions...like who even thought that this was a good idea?
This should have been on the blu:

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/GHkkt_O615Y" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Old 07-14-17, 12:27 PM
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Re: 10th Annual Sci-Fi/Fantasy Challenge Discussion Thread

I always thought The Cosby Show episode with the Gross Out Gang movie was just them renaming the Garbage Pail Kids Movie, then I found out there was a Gross Out Gang. I guess that was their way of trying to unsuccessfully get their product known.
Old 07-14-17, 08:49 PM
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Re: 10th Annual Sci-Fi/Fantasy Challenge Discussion Thread

I can't believe I almost forgot about the annual event that's happening in my town this weekend. (To be fair, I only moved here last fall, so this is my first chance to attend.)

But I did remember literally just in time to (quickly!) walk downtown to my local arthouse theater and catch the re-enactment of this "run out" scene. (Actual running occurs at about the 2-minute mark. The theater absolutely still looks like that, inside and out.)


And I bought a ticket for tomorrow's double feature of The Blob and It Came from Outer Space.
Old 07-14-17, 09:15 PM
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Re: 10th Annual Sci-Fi/Fantasy Challenge Discussion Thread

Yeah, Blobfest is a fun time. I know people who go every year. I live up in the northern suburbs (Bucks County). If you are new to the area entirely or just haven't heard of them, I would recommend some Exhumed Films screenings in the future. They are often very good oddities. They do some major events throughout the year like a 24 hour horror fest around Halloween and a 6 or 7 movie Exploitation fest usually which coincides with the Exploitation challenge here. Sunday for instance they have a 5 movie 3-D marathon. They do screenings at the theater in the International House near UPenn in the city and up at the Mahoning Drive-in up in Lehigh County. I am still undecided if I am going since I am unsure my brain can take 10 hours of 3-D without exploding since one 3-D movie usually leaves me with a headache. I will say it was pretty amazing watching an old HK martial arts movie in 3-D at one of their events a few months ago though! It is probably way too late notice for a 10 hour event, but if you are so inclined, here are the details on Sunday's screenings.

https://www.facebook.com/events/1557240570954108
Old 07-14-17, 10:04 PM
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Re: 10th Annual Sci-Fi/Fantasy Challenge Discussion Thread

Thanks for the info! Won't be able to make it on Sunday (and don't think my brain could handle that much 3-D either) but I will definitely be checking out future events.

(Grew up in the area but moved away a couple decades ago. Bucks County, eh? That area has had some... excitement the last week or so.)
Old 07-15-17, 08:24 AM
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Re: 10th Annual Sci-Fi/Fantasy Challenge Discussion Thread

I've been meaning to dig out my VHS copy of the 1967 British sci-fi film, FIVE MILLION YEARS TO EARTH (aka QUATERMASS AND THE PIT) to watch for this challenge so I can included it in a 50th Anniversary blog piece on the Best Films of 1967, but now I don't have to because it's showing on TCM tonight at 6PM (EST). I first saw it in 1970 on the lower half of a double bill and had no idea what it was about going into it and it turned out great, a film of ideas not just action. It's possibly the first sci-fi film I saw that was about alien visitation to Earth in ancient times.

Here's the rather hyperbolic American poster for the film:

Old 07-15-17, 09:43 AM
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Re: 10th Annual Sci-Fi/Fantasy Challenge Discussion Thread

Originally Posted by Ash Ketchum
I've been meaning to dig out my VHS copy of the 1967 British sci-fi film, FIVE MILLION YEARS TO EARTH (aka QUATERMASS AND THE PIT) to watch for this challenge so I can included it in a 50th Anniversary blog piece on the Best Films of 1967...
I like all the Hammer Quatermass films but that one's my favorite. I discovered it was on DVD after the Anchor Bay releases had gone OOP and were commanding very high prices. I recently purchased a region free BR player and picked up a copy of the UK release.
Old 07-15-17, 10:26 AM
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Re: 10th Annual Sci-Fi/Fantasy Challenge Discussion Thread

I just finished a viewing of Bakshi's The Lord of the Rings. It's been decades since I last saw this one and only own a copy because I stumbled across it at BL for $3. I've had it for a few years and kept putting off watching it because of my recollections from that viewing loooong ago. It was a well founded delay and I'm not likely to repeat the viewing any time soon.

The story is competent enough, it is mostly Tolkien's dialog after all, but the animation is... lacking. While I didn't care for the way the Hobbits are drawn, it suffers mostly due to overuse of Bakshi's love of rotoscoping rather than doing actual animation. It just doesn't blend, or fit, well with the traditional animation portions and is often poorly acted and staged. In all fairness, I have that same complaint with all of Bakshi's work which involves that process. It could also do with some tighter editing on many of those rotoscoped scenes. Whenever a rotoscoped scene would appear I'd be completely taken out of the film. In spite of all that, I saw several scenes which seemed to be the inspiration for almost identically staged and plotted scenes in Peter Jackson's film.
Old 07-15-17, 12:10 PM
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Re: 10th Annual Sci-Fi/Fantasy Challenge Discussion Thread

Originally Posted by BobO'Link

The story is competent enough, it is mostly Tolkien's dialog after all, but the animation is... lacking. While I didn't care for the way the Hobbits are drawn, it suffers mostly due to overuse of Bakshi's love of rotoscoping rather than doing actual animation. It just doesn't blend, or fit, well with the traditional animation portions and is often poorly acted and staged.
I was a high school Tolkien nerd when I saw Bakshi's LOTR back in the day, and oh, was that a disappointment! It's not just the poor animation, or that so much from the books is omitted, or even that the character designs were all wrong, but that the movie ends at the Battle of Helm's Deep! Where's the rest of The Two Towers and all of Return of the King? Teenage Gobear was steamed!

I like Bakshi's other films like Fritz the Cat, Heavy Traffic, and Coonskin, and I love Wizards, but LOTR was a massive failure on every level for me.

Last night I watched my new Blu of It Came From Outer Space, and then the 1951 GOOD version of The Day the Earth Stood Still and Who Framed Roger Rabbit. When you make a good movie, it still holds up even if the effects have dated.

I lucked out and bought the DVD of Quatermass and the Pit for $10 when Suncoast was having their going out of business sale back in 2006 or so. I know the US rights to Hammer films are hard to nail down, but it would be great if Shout Factory or Kino would release them on Blu, especially The Devil Rides Out.

I would love to see Guillermo Del Toro tackle a remake of a Quatermass film.

Last edited by Gobear; 07-15-17 at 12:17 PM.
Old 07-15-17, 12:35 PM
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Re: 10th Annual Sci-Fi/Fantasy Challenge Discussion Thread

If you like the Quatermass and the Pit you guys should look into the BBC original TV show version. The Quatermass Collection is still available for about 15 pounds. I just finished watching all three stories.
Old 07-15-17, 12:36 PM
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Re: 10th Annual Sci-Fi/Fantasy Challenge Discussion Thread

I watched Star Trek the Motion Picture. Back when i was a 20 something and saw this I was bored silly. I hoped it would be different but it still bored the hell out of me.
Old 07-15-17, 02:14 PM
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Re: 10th Annual Sci-Fi/Fantasy Challenge Discussion Thread

Originally Posted by numbercrunch
I watched Star Trek the Motion Picture. Back when i was a 20 something and saw this I was bored silly. I hoped it would be different but it still bored the hell out of me.
While I've grown to like this one over the intervening years, I still like the S2 episode, from which it obtained much of its inspiration, "The Changeling" better. It also pulls from a couple of other, better, TV episodes. I felt somewhat ripped off when I left the theater following the viewing. IMHO that overly long journey into the cloud to be one of the more boring sequences in movie history. In spite of that I like it better than any of the Next Generation movies or the recent reimagined universe reboot films.
Old 07-15-17, 03:15 PM
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Re: 10th Annual Sci-Fi/Fantasy Challenge Discussion Thread

I just finished a viewing of my BR upgrade for Ladyhawke. It's an excellent transfer and not as dark as I remember the DVD being. I still don't care for Alan Parson's 80s synth/pop score which dominates, and detracts from, the first half or so of the film. Once it settles down and is pretty much replaced with a more traditional, and natural sounding, score the film improves. Every time I watch this one I feel the same about the score and wish those scenes with it could be viewed without music.

I followed that with a surprise first time viewing of a 1964 film, The Brass Bottle, starring Burl Ives, Tony Randall, and Barbara Eden. I thought I'd seen it as a kid but, if so, don't remember a thing about the film. It was a fun little romp and somewhat a precursor to I Dream of Jeannie, although Eden doesn't play the Djinn part in this film. I'd wanted a copy of this ever since it appeared as a MOD release but avoided it for that reason. Patience paid off as it just received a pressed release and I picked up a copy for ~$6, a steal!
Old 07-15-17, 08:07 PM
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Re: 10th Annual Sci-Fi/Fantasy Challenge Discussion Thread

I have to say that FIVE MILLION YEARS TO EARTH held up beautifully. I love the way it builds slowly and carefully to a spectacular finale that had way more action and mayhem than I remembered.

I have a question about the James Bond films. Starz Encore offers a dozen or so Bond films on their On Demand channel (free to some subscription tiers, including mine). Not all of them are listed as sci-fi on IMDB. There's a few I haven't seen in years and I'd like to use them for this challenge. MOONRAKER is definitely sci-fi but not LIVE AND LET DIE. Do all the Bond films get a blanket pass? Or do we keep it only to those listed as sci-fi?

Thanks.
Old 07-15-17, 09:46 PM
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Re: 10th Annual Sci-Fi/Fantasy Challenge Discussion Thread

Originally Posted by Ash Ketchum
I have a question about the James Bond films. Starz Encore offers a dozen or so Bond films on their On Demand channel (free to some subscription tiers, including mine). Not all of them are listed as sci-fi on IMDB. There's a few I haven't seen in years and I'd like to use them for this challenge. MOONRAKER is definitely sci-fi but not LIVE AND LET DIE. Do all the Bond films get a blanket pass? Or do we keep it only to those listed as sci-fi?
Except for Moonraker, I don't think of the Bond films as sci-fi at all. Sure, they generally features "gadgets". But those are within the realm of modern technology.
Old 07-16-17, 12:18 AM
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Re: 10th Annual Sci-Fi/Fantasy Challenge Discussion Thread

Has anyone else seen the movie Evolution (2015 French art-house sci-fi/fantasy/horror, not the 2001 David Duchovny sci-fi/comedy). Just watched it on Netflix and trying to digest what I just saw. Looking at general comments online, it doesn't seem like anyone has any good answers. Which may very well be what the filmmaker intended.

Like the filmmaker's previous film, Innocence, there's the sense of a metaphorical look at puberty within the trappings of a mystery/fantasy/horror/sci-fi story (this time focusing on young boys instead of young girls). Like Eraserhead, there's a nightmare-like non-logic dealing with body horror. And at only 80 minutes, I can forgive the experimentalism and lack of plot cohesion. What I could make out of the story was [don't read if you haven't seen it, unless you want to be massively spoiled]:
Spoiler:

So we have these women tending to pubescent boys on an isolated island. But the women seem to be non-human (with starfish suckers on their backs and the ability to breath underwater). What are they doing to the boys? They're feeding them this nasty food of what looks like worms and seaweed and doing a surgical procedure that impregnates the boys (which also makes them sickly). The boys give birth via C-section to these fish-like infants (the infant version of the woman-creatures?) before dying. One "mother" helps the main boy character escape to civilization at the end.

What about the title (Evolution)? Is it this hybrid species of human and sea creature that these boys are giving birth to? Are the boys even genetically contributing, or are they just carriers? What about the starfish? Is there something to that imagery besides being a sea creature with suckers like the women have? Starfish have some interesting mechanisms of reproduction. Most know about their ability to regenerate. But starfish are rather ambiguous when it comes to sexual reproduction. Some species can be male and female at the same time. Others can start as one sex and completely change to the other sex.

Last edited by brainee; 07-16-17 at 02:15 AM.
Old 07-16-17, 01:36 PM
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Re: 10th Annual Sci-Fi/Fantasy Challenge Discussion Thread

Originally Posted by SterlingBen
This should have been on the blu:

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/GHkkt_O615Y" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
I'll have to take a look when I have some free time later. I did watch his interview that was on the disc and I think he honestly told his version of the making of. He was pretty blunt without totally tearing the movie down, which I thought was pretty impressive since it was horrible!

Originally Posted by alyxstarr
I can't believe I almost forgot about the annual event that's happening in my town this weekend. (To be fair, I only moved here last fall, so this is my first chance to attend.)

But I did remember literally just in time to (quickly!) walk downtown to my local arthouse theater and catch the re-enactment of this "run out" scene. (Actual running occurs at about the 2-minute mark. The theater absolutely still looks like that, inside and out.)

https://youtu.be/GODDLgM1gKo?t=114

And I bought a ticket for tomorrow's double feature of The Blob and It Came from Outer Space.
Sounds like a lot of fun! I saw The Blob for the first time not too long go (want to say it was last year's challenge?) and really enjoyed it. Seeing it in the theater would be a fun experience.

[QUOTE=Ash Ketchum;13114141I have a question about the James Bond films. Starz Encore offers a dozen or so Bond films on their On Demand channel (free to some subscription tiers, including mine). Not all of them are listed as sci-fi on IMDB. There's a few I haven't seen in years and I'd like to use them for this challenge. MOONRAKER is definitely sci-fi but not LIVE AND LET DIE. Do all the Bond films get a blanket pass? Or do we keep it only to those listed as sci-fi?

Thanks.[/QUOTE]

Think I'm going to go with what IMDb.com says on these. Like brainee mentioned, these are mainly gadget based and while not probable, most of them are possible. The action/adventure challenge would be a better place to watch them for credit.
Old 07-16-17, 01:42 PM
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Re: 10th Annual Sci-Fi/Fantasy Challenge Discussion Thread

You could argue for the Bond films as fantasy... adolescent male fantasy.

Originally Posted by Gobear
I was a high school Tolkien nerd when I saw Bakshi's LOTR back in the day, and oh, was that a disappointment! It's not just the poor animation, or that so much from the books is omitted, or even that the character designs were all wrong, but that the movie ends at the Battle of Helm's Deep! Where's the rest of The Two Towers and all of Return of the King? Teenage Gobear was steamed!
Yeah, I never saw Bakshi in theaters, but I remember when they did the Rankin-Bass Return of the King to close the story loop and return to the style of The Hobbit. I do like the creepiness of some of the rotoscope effects, and revisit the film every five years or so.
Old 07-16-17, 02:17 PM
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Re: 10th Annual Sci-Fi/Fantasy Challenge Discussion Thread

Originally Posted by LJG765
Think I'm going to go with what IMDb.com says on these. Like brainee mentioned, these are mainly gadget based and while not probable, most of them are possible. The action/adventure challenge would be a better place to watch them for credit.
If you really have a hankering for secret agent thrillers, James Coburn's "Flint" movies (Our Man Flint and In Like Flint) count for the challenge

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