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We've been admiring some pretty slick Star Wars fan films lately — but what about the old-school, DIY stuff? More »
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This has been a big year for Steven Spielberg — he's launched two TV shows, including last night's Terra Nova, and produced countless movies. The Spielberg tribute Super-8 was a surprise hit, and it's become fashionable for other film-makers to claim they're paying tribute to early Spielberg. Still ahead this year: the huge motion-capture reinvention of Tintin, the Belgian adventure comic. More »
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Chances are, you spent the weekend rediscovering the magic of Star Wars (with a few unwelcome tweaks.) The original Star Wars was a miracle of seat-of-the-pants film-making that captured the world's imagination and boosted science fiction to new popularity. More »
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That's what the Guardian claims in a new article today. Steven Spielberg's seminal 1977 film eschewed the rationality that had been science fiction's hallmark, in favor of an unexplained brush with the transcendent, which mostly takes place in suburbia. Instead of figuring stuff out, Richard Dreyfuss' character starts creating weird modern art, out of materials in his home. And Close Encounters "does not offer any sense of history or progress or any theory as to what the alien encounter means." More »
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We've featured some wonderfully befuddling Polish movie posters before, but Andrzej Pagowski's design for Close Encounters of the Third Kind transforms the movie into a dreadful family comedy with McDonald's dance-offs. It's on eBay if you're in need of a conversation piece. And for more movies lost in translation, see the painted posters of Ghana. More »
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We've all heard of The Klingon Hamlet, a real book that contains a Klingon translation of the text side-by-side with the English version. Some of us have even been . . . let's say 'lucky' enough to see it performed. But what other famous works would be better rendered in science fictional languages? We've got some suggestions. More »
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With Cowboys & Aliens, Iron Man director Jon Favreau attempts to mash up the Western genre with science fiction. How well does it work? We've seen the first two reels, and they conjure a robust John Wayne sensibility. More »
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Today, we look at the year that gave us Star Wars, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and "Ender's Game" — does 1977 deserve to be crowned the Best Year of Science Fiction Ever? More »
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It's no wonder the aliens in Close Encounters of the Third Kind chose the Devil's Tower National Monument as the place to make first contact with humanity. The sky above offers a clear and startling vision of the cosmos. More »
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Space is silent and vast, but we can't feel the awe and terror of epic space battles without great music. Here's our list of the ten composers without whom science fiction would feel as empty as the void. (With samples.) More »
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Arizonans are buzzing today about a series of floaty lights that hovered over Phoenix last night for about 15 minutes. One guy captured them on film (you can see it here), and the news covered it to death, wondering how people could have seen a bunch of lights that the Federal Aviation Administration and local air traffic controllers couldn't explain. Apparently they are similar to lights that were seen over Phoenix in 1997 too. The really weird thing? The lights also look exactly like a scene from Close Encounters of the Third Kind. See below to compare. More »
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Two films that Steven Spielberg had a hand in, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Back to the Future, were both selected alongside 23 other films to be shelved forever in the Library of Congress' National Film Registry. They'll get locked up inside a hermetically sealed vault, and preserved in mason jars with really tight steel lids, to keep the freshness in. What other scifi films were deemed by the government to be worthy of preservation forever? More »
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Like a mutant virus that wipes out most of humanity, the holidays are upon us once again. If you've been slipping into the Grinch-like ease of just picking up gift cards for everyone at your local supermarket instead of putting real thought into your gift giving, then you need to buck up and give some quality items this year. In fact, we'll make it easy for you. Whether you're picking something up for the scifi fan in your life, or you're spreading your own geeky love, these brand-new DVDs are well worth getting, or giving. More »
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Steven Spielberg has yanked the aliens from Close Encounters of the Third Kind out of mothballs, and plans to stick them in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull when Indiana accidentally finds Area 51. More »
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Must-see movies are futuristic classics that shouldn't be missed. Of course, not every must-see is perfect. That's why we've rated them 1-5 on the patented "crunchy goodness" scale. Written by James Rocchi. More »
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