Sunday, May 30, 2010

Greetings!

Welcome to the Sci-Fi Review! Over the summer (and onwards) I plan on reviewing "classic" science fiction films to see if they have stood the test of time or fell to the waste-side. My mission is to either strengthen former views on the film or tear down preconceptions of the film.

You may ask, why science fiction? For one, science fiction is my personal favorite genre in cinema, and two, I think it has the most to share as an art form. Science fiction can take us to other worlds, meet new creatures, new societies, and at the same time find a way to hold a mirror up to our own world. I find this tool utterly fascinating.

A sci-fi writer/director can take us to an alien world, a future city, and make us look at our own time on this world to see what we like or do not like. An example being in the 1973 film Soylent Green starring Charlton Heston. In the film there is a moment where his Mr. Heston's old friend, his name escapes me, is talking about how he used to be able to eat real food and taste delicious fruits, and now they eat tasteless tabs of color for their nutrients. Later on Charlton Heston brings the old man some fresh food he stole, and the old man begins to cry with joy. He hasn't seen real food since he was a boy and this overjoys him with excitement. After the film I went to the fridge and looked at the one apple we had, and I had never been so happy to see a fruit in my fridge. Although it had been sitting in there for weeks, untouched, unwanted, it was as if I had a brick of gold sitting in front of me.

This is the power of science fiction and sci-fi film, to make you look around your environment, your world, and appreciate the good things in life, and perhaps the bad.

1 comment:

  1. Glad you had the urge to greet your readers to your new blog. You can't imagine how few bloggers think to offer that courtesy.

    As you move forward, I hope you'll develop both a substantive and visual template. That'll help your readers anticipate, and it will reward their anticipation.

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