Skip to main content

2020 Vision


Happy New Year!

Welcome to 2020, the year in which, according to Hollywood we should be racing to Mars on a desperate mission to rescue some floating M&Ms, fighting Kaiju and finding true love in our Jaegers, or hiding from dragons while teaching children about Star Wars.


I know. So disappointing when reality doesn’t match up to the movies.

I've almost finished Netflix so I’m looking forward to leaving the house and discovering some new experiences in 2020. My plans include getting to London Comic-Con and also trying some immersive science-fiction theatre – will report back if I survive. I’m also looking at all the movies coming out this year and I have no idea what to think. Ghostbusters, Top Gun and Bill and Ted are all coming back – any of which could be epic or catastrophic. On the other hand there are some originals in the line-up too, including the mysterious Chris Nolan movie Tenet, and while I don't always approve of re-makes I will probably still see the new adaptation of Dune, and I'm genuinely interested to see what Jordan Peele does with his re-imagining of Candyman.

2020 is also the 100th anniversary of the theremin, that most science-fictiony of electronic instruments. The theremin was invented by Leon Theremin in either 1919 or 1920 – the theremin community are hedging their bets on this. I’ve continued practicing my Open Theremin, working through Carolina Eyck's book, and I’ll post some more thoughts and videos for your amusement shortly.


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Bright Eyes [Review: Humans episode 3]

I'm enjoying Humans more with each episode. I like the easy Asimov references. I like the way different characters get to show new depths or aspects of their personality each week - and the way, each week, we get a more disturbing version of what synths can do, whether limited to their original programme like NHS droid Vera (Rebecca Front) or whether illegally modded or freed like Niska (Emily Berrington). Last week Niska discovered she could kill - this week she makes her bid for freedom and starts to explore the world. It turns out she has some scruples, or at least limits on what she's prepared to do. Emily Berrington as Niska Anita (Gemma Chan) is still the central character. It's becoming clear how good she is at lying and manipulating her owners - but she's different from the other synths, and when Mattie (Lucy Carless) tries to hack into her system, just for a few seconds we get a hint of what she really is. It's compelling viewing, gradually building into a ...
Post a Comment
Read more

I've Got A Brand New Alien Harvester [Review: Evil Aliens]

Sometimes you need to turn your brain off and just watch something stupid and bloody... Evil Aliens is a comic horror film from 2005 starring Emily Booth as a cynical TV journalist and featuring Red Dwarf's Norman Lovett sadly only in a minor role. Booth and her crew are sent to investigate an alien abduction story on an isolated Welsh farm, accompanied by an eccentric UFO expert played by Jamie Honeybourne. It soon becomes clear that the aliens are somewhat hostile, and the film progresses into a series of close encounters of the messy kind. This film is an unashamed gorefest, and it's very clear the budget has been spent mainly on realistic blood-and-guts effect shots which are detailed, delightfully inventive and utterly gratuitous. Everything else is cheaper - the script is perhaps not as fine tuned as it could be, the aliens appear to have bought cheap Predator costumes on eBay and rendered their spaceship CGI on Microsoft Paint. The acting is all hammed-up melodrama but i...
Post a Comment
Read more

Do Androids Cry Over Electric Sheep [Review: Blade Runner 2049]

What stands out about the world of Blade Runner 2049? Firstly that it's really, really FUBAR. The pollution smog is just the start of it - Los Angeles an expanded city surrounded by favelas and then giant dykes keeping out the rising sea level, another famous American city a radioactive wasteland, Wall-E style refuse dumps, children extracting metals from old circuitry in giant orphanages, the human population fed by millions of acres of protein-maggot farms. The Off World Colonies are a distant dream for a lucky few. And it doesn't appear to be a great time for women generally - more on that story later. Secondly, give Gosling's character a helmet and this would be Judge Dredd. The LA setting is completely Mega City One (the cheap-n-cheerful plastic version from the 2000AD comics, not the boring Stallone movie version). Gosling might not have Dredd's stature but he's the same no-nonsense dispenser of justice, at least when it comes to running down old Nexus 8 repli...
Post a Comment
Read more