ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

If you're not a member of All Sci-Fi, registration is easy. Just use the registration password, which is —

gort

Attention members! If you've forgotten your password, just email me at brucecook1@yahoo.com.
________________________________________________

Today's posts include a movie I liked by don't remember much about, a movie I didn't like until recently, and a movie I've loved for many years. I even showed it each year to my 5th grade classes, and they loved it too!





I think it's one of the most intelligent and emotionally moving science fiction movies of the 1950s and 1960s.
________________________________________________

Jupiter Ascending (2015)

First of all, I want to thank Rick for proving that he's perfectly comfortable expressing his negative feelings about this movie . . . in spite of the fact that the rest of us liked it (in varying degrees).

And I also appreciate the way he made no attempt to tip-toe around the subject in fear of stepping on the toes of somebody who can't tolerate a dissenting opinion.

Doing that was actually a compliment to us al!

Please note that the folks who DID disagree with Rick showed their own maturity by replying with humorous sarcasm and imaginative hyperbole, expressing their disagreements with no trace of animosity. (Kudos to Wayne, aka orzel-W. ).

The whole exchange made me proud of the members of All Sci-Fi.

In defense of Jupiter Ascending, I watched it again today and greatly enjoyed my second viewing . . . without feeling quite as enamored by it as Wayne.

But I did envy him. "Loving" a movie is a lot more fun than just "enjoying" it. And this one seems worthy of "loving", despite my less-than-complete enthusiasm.

In defense of Rick, the critics and the movie-going public sided with him on this one, so we can hardly accuse him of overlooking the merits of a cinematic gem which was universally praised!

In the end, his opinions (along with each of ours) were based on personal tastes . . . and those are never "right" or "wrong".

_______________________________________________

First Men in the Moon (1964)

H.G. Wells complete novel is available at Wikisource, and I read a little of chapter 8, A Lunar Morning to be certain I remembered it correctly from reading the novel in high school.

Wells' description of the Moom could not be more scientifically inaccurate if he'd just gotten Edgar Rice Burroughs to write it for him!

Well's version of the Moon has a very fast day-night cycle (rather than 28 Earth days for one revolution). And when Bedford and Cavor gaze out the portholes at the first dawn after they land, they witness the direct sunlight cause the Moon's layer of snow quickly evaporate into gas and form an atmosphere!

The Moon suddenly had a blue sky!

Furthermore, a carpet of brown "needles" pointing upward is revealed below the evaporating snow, and attached to these needles were round seed pods which burst open and caused roots to pierce the ground, while stems reached upward and spiked leaves shot outward.

Here's how Bedford describes the rapid covering of the Lunar landscape with these fast-growing plants.

" . . . and all the slope that had seemed so recently a lifeless stretch of litter was now dark with the stunted olive-green herbage of bristling spikes that swayed with the vigor of their growing."

These Moon-plants varied in color and shape, and in a matter or minutes the cavorite sphere was surrounded by an alien juggle! Later in the story (as I remember) all the plants died at sunset and crumbled away, while the atmosphere re-froze and covered the surface with snow again.

Frankly I think Harryhausen should have made his movie based on the wildly UNrealistic elements of the Moon that Wells described. In the book, the mooncalves grazed in pastures of the bizarre Moon-vegetation.

That sounds pretty cool to me.
_______________________________________________

Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964)

Ah-ha! Thanks for the link to that wonderful article!

Bogmeister included several photographs he got from one of his magazines in his review. Obviously the article he used included the photos of Paul Mantee and the Mars lander mockup precisely because it demonstrated that filmmakers chose that area to film the movie for the same reason NASA chose it to test the lander.

BoG almost (but not quite) made that point in his review when he said —

"The locations here are another plus. They picked some nice ones somewhere in the U.S. desert regions to double for Mars. "

I'm a little surprised that Bogmeister didn't specifically mention the NASA / movie connection, because the research he did for his reviews was always very thorough, and I admire the way he dug into the subjects and came up with original observations and conclusions.

That's the very reason they're so enjoyable to read. :DAh-ha! Thanks for the link to that wonderful article!

Bogmeister included several photographs he got from one of his magazines in his review. Obviously the article he used included the photos of Paul Mantee and the Mars lander mockup precisely because it demonstrated that filmmakers chose that area to film the movie for the same reason NASA chose it to test the lander.

BoG almost (but not quite) made that point in his review when he said —

"The locations here are another plus. They picked some nice ones somewhere in the U.S. desert regions to double for Mars. "

I'm a little surprised that Bogmeister didn't specifically mention the NASA / movie connection, because the research he did for his reviews was always very thorough, and I admire the way he dug into the subjects and came up with original observations and conclusions.

That's the very reason they're so enjoyable to read.
_________________
____________
Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)