eradicating camp
Ever since the first cheesy monster or goofy robot leered out from the cover of a pulpy magazine, science fiction has struggled to shake off a certain tinge of campiness. No matter how hard creators may try to tell cool stories, that slightly ironic silliness is always lurking just outside the frame. And there will always be science fiction which takes those little hints of camp and amplifies them a million-fold. A little campiness may be fun to get stoned and giggle at, but it also stands in the way of telling amazing tales about the impact of technology on humans. Here's a rulebook for rooting out the campiness from science fiction.
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smallville
Lex Luthor must be out of diabolical plots, because actor Michael Rosenbaum will no longer be a part of the CW series
Smallville. After seven long years of tirelessly love/hating Clark Kent, mysterious trips around the world, obsessions over the meteor shower and opulent gestures, Lex is taking a break. What new characters will step into his shiny bald shoes? Details after the jump.
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doomsday review
There are Serbian dog-food commercials that would have made more sense to me than
Doomsday, the quarantined-country-reverts-to-barbarism epic that opens today. It starts out as an engaging action-horror blend with a nice touch of future dystopia (and huge servings of gore), and then slowly unravels until the ending is basically pure Dada. We just saw it. Click through for the whole brain-shredding carnage [spoilers ahead].
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morning spoilers
Here's a new clip of awesome train-jumping action, from plague-ravaged thriller
Doomsday, which opens Friday. Two more clips below the fold show car-bezerkering, plus Malcolm McDowell giving away what may be a major plot point. In this morning's spoiler roundup, we also have a new hint about the direction of the PG-13 live-action
Star Wars TV show, and tons of details about Michel Gondry's demented next film. Plus a look at the tail end of this season of Lost, and what's coming next year on Smallville. Click through to become a jaded, know-it-all spoiler whore.
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Nobody Can Foresee Doomsday
We may have absolute certainty, in every fibre of our souls, that Friday's
Mad-Max-in-quarantined-Scotland movie
Doomsday is an instant classic in the making. Sadly, Rogue Pictures, which is releasing the film, doesn't seem to agree with us. We just got final confirmation that
Doomsday will
not be screened for critics. We'll see it, and review it, as soon as we can on Friday.
interview
The Descent was one of our favorite horror movies of recent years, so we were automatically excited about director Neil Marshall's new movie,
Doomsday. And that was before we found out
Doomsday was going to be Mad to the Max. In Doomsday, the government walls off Scotland to contain a deadly plague... only to send a team into the shattered country 30 years later. We talked to Marshall about strong women, genre confusion, and why
Doomsday has no monsters.
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morning spoilers
The first pictures of Wolverine's rival Sabretooth (from the
Wolverine origin movie) have surfaced, and it looks as though the movie will be about the clash of the gigantic sideburns. We also have a new clip from
Doomsday, and crazy
Iron Man rumors. Plus we have some news about
Smallville, including a shocking development in April — and who's back for
Smallville season eight. Plus a clip of Ally Sheedy's upcoming guest spot on
Kyle XY. Click through to besmirch your pristine mind with evil spoilers!
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doomsday
Motorcycles and trucks will be spinning and bursting into flames in the dark quarantined-nation epic
Doomsday, which opens in 10 days, according to this new TV spot. And a guy from the Society for Creative Anachronism will sword-fight with a riot grrl. Not only that, but a man with a blond mohawk will show you whether he has any armpit hair while shouting about the end of the world. If all that doesn't scream "instant cult classic," I don't know what does. Click through for two more clips.
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doomsday
First director Neil Marshall
had to go around telling everybody
Doomsday isn't a zombie movie, and now after you watch this new clip, he'll have to explain it's not a swords-and-barbarians flick either. But judging from a slew of newly released stills from the quarantined-country movie,
Doomsday doesn't have any problem mashing up tons of genres. The movie looks like a dollop of
Mad Max stirred in with a dash of medical thriller. Click through for a gallery and synopsis.
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doomsday
At last, a trailer is out for
Doomsday, the non-zombie film starring a world-ravaging virus that results in Scotland being walled off. It looks like
28 Days Later meets
28 Weeks Later plus a serving of
Mad Max on the side with a couple of dashes from the
I Am Legend shaker. In other words, it starts out with a ton of promise and promptly devolves into something that leaves you feeling like you might throw up. Plus it begins with the Sparta-sounding "THIS. IS. OUR. CITY!" Check it out.
'Doomsday' Trailer Finally Online [Bloody Disgusting]
descendants
A young girl gets caught in the middle of a post-apocalyptic war in
Descendants, a new movie from Chile. The only people who survive the military death squads are the ones infected with a weird disease that leaves sores all over their bodies.
Descendants, also known as
Solos, is sort of a zombie movie but it looks way more like a
post-apocalyptic survival film. Click through for a gallery of stills, and info about another future dystopia movie that's fighting off the zombie label.
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morning spoilers
The
delay-plagued The Day The Earth Stood Still remake gained a shot of credibility with the casting of Jon Hamm, fresh from his Golden Globe nod for
Mad Men. The movie, also starring Keanu Reeves (playing the alien Klaatu) and Jennifer Connelly, started principal photography Dec. 12. [
Reuters] A new
Jericho pic, plus bad signs for
AVP and
Wolverine, below the fold.
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Siberian Doomsday Supercrater Finally Located
A team of scientists has finally located the impact crater from a "Doomsday" 1908 meteor strike that was one thousand times more powerful than the blast that leveled Hiroshima. You wouldn't think looking for something that size would be like trying to find a needle in a haystack, but it's gone undetected for nearly 100 years. Mainly because it was sneaky and hiding under a lake.
Crater From 1908 Russian Space Strike Found, Says Team [National Geographic]
death of superman
Must-read graphic novels 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.Title:
The Death Of SupermanDate: 1993-1994
Vitals: The Superman story that helped launch a speculative bubble that almost made dot-com exuberance look rational by comparison. An alien monster is tearing everything up, so Superman punches it. And it punches him back. They punch each other a lot — until Superman... DIES!
Famous names: Dan Jurgens, Roger Stern, Louise Simonson
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io9
