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[ 1 Comment ]Posted on December 6, 2010 by admin in Popular Media
Monday, December 6th, 2010
And for the sci-fi resistant, comedy can ease your entry into the genre.
We recently pondered why science fiction doesn’t find a broader market, and suggested a few exceptional and overlooked films from the last few years to help the sci-fi impaired give the genre another chance. But the fact is that even if you think you don’t like sci-fi, there’s a good chance you’ve watched a sci-fi film and enjoyed it, without even realizing it. Back to the Future
and Ghostbusters
would be two examples, and the secret weapon here is comedy. I imagine for many the problem with enjoying sci-fi has to do with suspension of disbelief. One might have no trouble believing that Tinkerbell can fly or that a tornado can take you over the rainbow to Oz to hang out with talking lions and tin men, but anti-gravity and teleportation? That’s IMPOSSIBLE! The difference of course being that in fantasy and fairy tales, everything is supposed to be unreal and the impossible is supposed to be possible. Science fiction generally starts out with the handicap that it has to somehow technically justify the impossible things it does, and some minds just don’t want to do that. So to help wear down your resistance to the genre a little, we’ve rounded up a few comedies that are also great sci-fi films, whether they were meant to be or not. And here’s a game idea for you. You can make it a drinking game if you like. Whenever you’re watching a sci-fi film, look for the character delivering the line that explains the phenomena that should be or already is being conveyed visually or by context, and shout “EXPOSITION MAN”. You can make up your own rules for who drinks or whatever. This is one simple test of the real quality of a sci-fi film as a film in general. And it’s almost impossible to play with a film like the Director’s Cut of Blade Runner, for instance. Read the rest of this entry »
[ Comments Off ]Posted on November 27, 2010 by admin in Popular Media
Saturday, November 27th, 2010
You probably haven’t even heard of them, but Squinkies are poised to be the Beanie Babies of the twenty-first century. Or at least this year’s Zhu Zhu Pets.
Have you heard about Squinkies? Nor had I, until today. But you can bet you will. After making the Toys “R” Us 2010 “Hot Holiday Toy List” and getting featured in this New York Times piece, Squinkies
(say it out loud, it’s perversely addictive) are poised to be this year’s Zhu Zhu Pets
. Never mind that they’re essentially just pencil toppers, the toys seem to have the kind of nearly-demonic hold over children that are exposed to them that Pokémon had several years back. But whereas Pokémon was a massive media franchise owned by Nintendo, Squinkies were created by a small company in Minnesota called Blip Toys. I’d like to meet Bill Nichols, the CEO of the company; he’s clearly a product creation and marketing genius. Aside from developing a clever line of products with names like Zubber
, Zoom -O and Squinkies that play into long-standing but neglected markets, Nichols’ marketing strategy pulled a page out of the bottom-up manual and rewrote it with less nag marketing. He created early buzz by delivering the product early on to “mommy blogger” sites like DealWiseMommy.net and FairyGoodMommy.com, which got the buzz going before the product was widely available. My bet is that Nichols is destined to become as wealthy as Beanie Baby billionaire Ty Warner if he plays his cards right. And he appears to be playing them right; Squinkies are obviously making a splash, but he’s already had success with products like Nature’s Wonders HD
, which won’t let you into its web site without a code from the toy you bought. Almost all the toys Blip has developed not only play into existing niches as we mentioned (Zubber is kind of like Sculpey
, Whimzy Pets fit the “My Little Pony” niche), almost all the toys also have an extra level of engagement like the Nature’s Wonders site, and the company seems to have a knack for punchy or phonetically fun names like Hairballs, Pin Print, and the ones we’ve already mentioned. C’mon. Say it. SQUINKIES!!!!! It’s fun and spongy and springy. Like Twinkies. And Slinkys. And that’s one example of what’s cool about what Blip is doing; they’re not paying a branding consultancy for these names, Nichols apparently just comes up with them. For extra agony, check out the commercial below. The jingle totally earwormed me. It sounds sort of like if the chick from The Flying Lizards joined a J-Pop band and got hired to do a video game soundtrack. I imagine they’re already working on film, television, and sportswear rights. Read the rest of this entry »
[ Comments Off ]Posted on November 14, 2010 by admin in Popular Media
Sunday, November 14th, 2010
Part one of our look at why sci-fi gets such a bad rap, with a look at four worthwhile science fiction films from the last few years that you may have passed over or not even heard of.
Sunshine is just one of many great sci-fi films
that get overlooked because of marketing. |
I’ve always been a little befuddled by the average person’s resistance to science fiction as a genre. I can understand why a person would be put off by the schlockier segment of this market, but every genre of fiction has a large quantity of commercial tripe from which you have to pick the better material. I would argue in fact that some of the greatest fiction of the twentieth century would typically be categorized as sci-fi: Arthur C Clarke, Robert A. Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, and other sci-fi writers wrote some of the most insightful social-commentary-as-fiction of the era, and yet other writers, like Anthony Burgess with A Clockwork Orange
and Philip K. Dick’s stories like A Scanner Darkly
and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
pushed the reader to explore social and psychological realms that are crucial to a modern person’s examination of life in our rapidly-evolving information and technology-driven world. In the case of Science Fiction film, the root of the problem is obvious. It’s the Hollywood marketing mindset. Blade Runner is a classic example of a brilliant film that nearly didn’t make it to market because test audiences “didn’t get it”. While Hollywood execs are (unfortunately) probably correct in their assumption that the average viewer isn’t very bright, there’s no reason to encourage their stupidity or mental laziness by focusing all the marketing dollars on dazzling schlockbusters like Avatar or the Star Wars franchise. Films like Alien, Blade Runner, The Matrix, TV productions like Battlestar Galactica, and even sci-fi comedy like Men In Black have proven that there’s a large audience with a long market life without adhering to the traditional Hollywood approach of staying in the safety zone of films with A-List actors, dumbed-down messages like Avatar’s ecotardedness, and massive product tie-ins that – in the case of films like Star Wars – generate more than twice the revenue of the films themselves. We’ll be back in part two with a look at how comedy can ease the pain of embracing sci-fi films, but below are a few more recent films you may have overlooked. Feel free to share suggestions for our expanded list in part three. Read the rest of this entry »
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on November 3, 2010 by admin in Popular Media
Wednesday, November 3rd, 2010
Within just minutes of my first contact with Funky Forest: The First Contact, I had ordered a copy on Amazon.
One clear indicator that I may be slightly disturbed is the fact that a couple of my favorite films of the last few years were Teeth and Hissss, and that David Cronenberg remains one of my favorite directors. All of which is why – after only watching a single YouTube clip (also below) from “Funky Forest: The First Contact”, I had ordered a copy on Amazon within a matter of minutes. Every review or synopsis I’ve read either makes feeble attempts at describing why the film is so great, or insists that attempting to do so is impossible, and that it simply must be watched. Co-directed by Katsuhito Ishii (The Taste of Tea
, Shark Skin Man and Peach Hip Girl
), Hajimine Ishimine and Shunichiro Miki, Funky Forest gives the impression that it might be the 21st century Japanese bastard child of David Cronenberg and Monty Python. Which is good enough for me. After watching the clip below, tell me you won’t be picking up a copy for that special someone on your holiday list too. Although some would find the imagery in this film a little disturbing, the only thing that disturbs me is how this stayed under my pop media radar for so long – the film was released in 2005. Clip below. Read the rest of this entry »
[ 6 Comments ]Posted on October 22, 2010 by admin in Popular Media
Friday, October 22nd, 2010
Did David Lewis Anderson disappear into a time paradox of his own creation, leaving behind only random traces of his work, or is this some kind of Alternate Reality Game or viral campaign?
One of the problems with time travel is that if you do it wrong, you leave all sorts of debris behind when you disappear into your latest paradox. At least that’s what seems to have happened to poor David Lewis Anderson. David was a busy guy for a while; he was apparently the CEO and mastermind of Anderson Multinational, which was the parent company of Anderson Investors (Investing in the future with financial solutions for tomorrow), HopeMart (A not-for-profit initiative where shopping builds hope every day), Security Group One, a global safety and security management consulting firm, and about a dozen other organizations. My theory is that one day, he put one of his time control technologies to work, forgetting to delete the files from the web server that remain as the only testament to his now non-existent accomplishments. At least that’s as reasonable a theory as any; if you actually go look at the sites linked to, and you have any sense at all of when something is fishy on the web, you’ll notice something peculiar. Half of the sites that are allegedly part of “Anderson Multinational LLC” are clearly shams, but some of them actually manage to look fairly credible. But even in the case of the more obviously bogus sites, a remarkable amount of Flash content, copy, and typical corporate stock photos went into building them. Which suggests maybe an Alternate Reality Game, viral campaign for a movie, or an internet crank like Art Bell at work. But that’s where it gets really weird; most (if not all, I didn’t check every single one) of the sites are registered to David Anderson , of 620 Park Avenue #308. Compare that actual building with the dazzling contoured mirror glass building featured on the main Anderson Multinational site. Suddenly you get the impression that we’re dealing with an elaborate prank. But the scope of the prank is impressive, and a prank is supposed to have a punchline! This hodgepodge of bogus and not-so-bogus sites doesn’t; it’s sort of like an internet version of the The Aristocrats joke. To add to the weirdness, David Anderson has a seemingly serious – if perhaps a bit dull – video on YouTube (also below), and the content farm drivel-generator otherwise known as Examiner.com has written about him more than once. Will someone please unravel this mystery for me? In the meantime, I think I’ll fan him on Facebook. Oh. And what the hell is this? The unfinished site for their Japanese division? Read the rest of this entry »
