Science Fiction

“ZENITH” AND SHOCKS TO THE SYSTEM

Directed by Anonymous (or, maybe, “experiment supervisor” Vladan Nikolic), Zenith is described as a “paranoid sci-fi found object from the future,” and it’s inspired by the notorious Milgram experiment, a real psychology experiment exploring man’s potential for both acquiescence to authority and cruelty. Wrote Michael Atkinson in the Village Voice: “The film they don’t want you to see,” by “Anonymous,” shouts the teaser, prefaced by warnings of legal threats and “illegal” images. Zenith comes off at first blush as merely a spurt of faux-transgression looking for rubberneckers. But it’s actually a densely written, sparsely filmed dystopia, using the wasteyards and […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 8, 2010
“ONE HUNDRED MORNINGS” AND GENRE

Here’s the last of our guest blog posts by the makers of One Hundred Mornings, currently running at Los Angeles’s Downtown Independent Theater. This one is by writer/director Conor Horgan on the genre possibilities of his movie. When I finished writing the script for One Hundred Mornings, I wasn’t overly concerned about which genre the film would be — I just wanted to get it made. But most filmmakers have to specify their project’s genre at an early stage — it makes everything nice and neat, and life is a little easier for all involved, except maybe for the writer/director […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 21, 2010
CONOR HORGAN ON POST-APOCALYPSE AND ONE HUNDRED MORNINGS

Here’s the first of two blog posts from writer/director Conor Horgan, whose One Hundred Mornings received the Workbook Project Discovery and Distribution Award and runs beginning this week at Los Angeles’s Downtown Theater. — S.M. There’s an old saying, that you should write what you know. I think you should also write about what scares you, and the world we’ve created in One Hundred Mornings scares the hell out of me. As we prepare for our week of screenings at the Downtown Theater, I’m reflecting on some of the real-life inspirations for the film, and what motivated me to make […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 16, 2010
SOLVE A HUMAN MYSTERY, PRODUCE A FILM

Since I was a teenager, one of my favorite science-fiction writers has been Norman Spinrad. Of course, to call him a science-fiction writer is tremendously reductive, because his writing has encompassed historical fiction, political commentary and cultural critique. But when I encountered him, he was part of a renegade group of science-fiction writers who were pushing the genre’s boundaries of form and content. He was collected by Harlan Ellison in his Dangerous Visions series, which is where I first read him. Later I stumbled across a signed copy of Norman’s excellent and now astonishingly prescient tale of the media and […]
by Scott Macaulay on Aug 26, 2010
CHRISTINA HENDRICKS FELL TO EARTH

Via Pitchfork comes this video for Broken Bells’ “The Ghost Inside,” directed by Jacob Gentry and starring Mad Men’s Christina Hendricks. As part of their “Director’s Cut” series, they interview today the director of this haunting sci-fi critique of our glamour-obsessed culture. From the interview: Pitchfork: This looks like a pretty big production for a relatively small band like Broken Bells. Jacob Gentry: A lot of people say it looks big and expensive, but it wasn’t by any stretch. The special effects in the video were limited to things that could’ve been done in the late 70s or early 80s. […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jul 21, 2010
WEEKEND LINKS, 5/2/2010

Most of the time when I come across interesting articles or video on the web I clip them to my Evernote reader and check them out later on my Blackberry or iPad. Here, then, are a few things I’ve clipped that might interest you too. From CNN Money: “One in eight to cut cable and satellite TV in 2010.” What are the implications for online content creators? In Spring 2008 I wrote about Alix Lambert’s Crime book for Filmmaker. (The piece is not online, but you can check it out on her site.) Here, at The Graveyard Shift, she discusses […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 2, 2010

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