Posts tagged Science Fiction Repair Shop in 2021


Moving Parts Grind The Gears

On the balance between a story with too many rules and not enough.

The Future Is A Hodgepodge

If there is a "throughline" for our moment in time, it's not something that condenses itself down to the kind of overarching planning found in fiction.

Dune (1984) [2021 review]

The mere fact that David Lynch's Dune was made at all, and in the Hollywood of the early 1980s to boot, is something of a miracle. Would that it was a better adaptation of the source material, or just a better movie, period.

Fringe Benefits

In a field that's trend-driven, all the most interesting and truly groundbreaking work can only come from the fringes.

Pi

Darren Aronofsky's ingenious micro-budget debut, twenty-plus years later, holds up better than some of his bigger-budgeted efforts

Untold Influences (2021 Edition)

The books that made me -- specifically, the SF and fantasy books.

The Longest Possible Now

Near-future SF has always struck me as the most precarious kind of SF, because of its sell-by date.

I Love Maria

A kooky example of science fiction from Hong Kong, a cinematic world that has relatively little SF to begin with.

The Matrix

Twenty years later, the Wachowskis' digital fable still stands tall, outliving the slickness of the moment and attempts to misappropriate it

Larger Than Life And Twice As Unreal

How not all fiction has to be "realistic" to be affective, and how new aesthetic standards can follow from that.

Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Else

Why not propose something truly new, instead of just taking the old and rejugging it?

Why The Force Isn't With Me Anymore

I didn't leave Star Wars. Star Wars left me. And not in the way you might think.

Getting It From Somewhere Else

On how new influences keep every kind of art healthy, including and especially popular arts.

Tenet

At the end of the day, it's just a fancy excuse to shoot a bunch of scenes in reverse.

An Amiable Chaos

How science fiction and fantasy stories live and die by their technical details, for both better and worse.


See previous posts from 2020

See future posts from 2022