Lists – Page 4 – Dr. Shaun Duke, Professional Nerd

Top 10 Science Fiction and Fantasy Movies Since 2010 (Thus Far)

This is just the beginning. I’m going to make an announcement about this very topic after I pass my PhD candidacy exams in September. For now, however, I’d like to offer a list of films I consider to be “the best” in the SF/F category for the years 2010-2013 (thus far). By “the best,” I mean “films I think are good movies as movies.” A lot of these films were quite popular when they were in theaters, but I’m not concerned by popularity here. I’m only concerned with what I think are well-written and/or well-produced films. A film with a thin plot can still be great if it does something more than just throw lots of action at the audience to hide its flaws (this is why you will see no Michael Bay films on the list). And on that note, I will shut up. The following are the top 10 SF/F movies released since 2010…for now (this list will change as I start to watch things I missed): 10. Chronicle (2012) While I’m not a huge fan of the found-footage film form, occasionally they are done right. Chronicle is one of those times. The semi-diary-format superhero story coupled with a narrative about the psychological impact of parental abuse and death stuck with me after I saw it in theaters. I connected with the main character almost immediately, in part because I’ve had similar experiences (minus the super powers). The director also does a pretty damn good job cobbling together the fictive pieces of the main character’s film diary, gaps and all. That earns it a spot on this list. 9. John Dies at the End (2012) This movie is weird. Really weird. But it’s also the kind of brilliant mix of camp and horror that one expects from Don Coscarelli, Jr. If you haven’t seen the film (and like Coscarelli’s work), I recommend watching it on Netflix. I can’t describe it to you. It’s, as I said, really freaking weird, and relentless in its descent into insanity. It’s sort of what I’d expect someone who just saw Cthulu to dream as they slowly fall to pieces. Only John Dies at the End is hilarious, surreal, and dark. 8. Pacific Rim (2013) You can learn all about my love for this film here. 7. Pumzi (released in the U.S. in 2010) The only short film of this list, Wanuri Kahiu’s incredible dystopian film Pumzi took academic circles by storm in 2010. For such a short work, it manages to bring a lot to the table: a thoroughly African setting (I suspect there are cultural clues specific to Kahiu’s native Kenya, but I know too little about that nation to say for sure); a fascinating post-apocalyptic “green utopian” society; and some interesting uses of technology. I’d say the film is cliche, but the semi-mystic undertones and the ambiguous final vertical panning shot over a seemingly threatening climate on the other side of the mountains make this one of the best films released in the last three years, if only because I’ve had some intense discussions about that ending. 6. Another Earth (2011) While action and straightforward SF films are wonderful when done right, sometimes a character drama in an SFnal universe can make for exceptional cinematic experiences. Brit Marling and Mike Cahill’s Another Earth uses its SF premise (a planet that looks suspiciously like our own earth appears suddenly in the sky) to provide an extended metaphor about second chances. The interaction between Rhoda (Marling) and John (William Mapother) as they both come to terms with the horrors of their connected pasts (unbeknownst to John, whose family was killed in a car accident caused by Rhoda) had me captivated all the way through. And like all good character dramas, the ending provides an ambiguous solution to the primary conflict in the narrative. It’s just a damned good film. 5. Elysium (2013) You can find out what I think about this movie here. I’m likely to write several blog posts about the film, though. I think it’s actually quite an intelligent film, despite all the critics who call it propaganda, stupid, pointlessly utopian, and so on (it is neither of these things). 4. Hugo (2011) The only children’s film on this list, Hugo‘s charming story about family and French cinema deserved a lot more love than it got when the awards season came around. Asa Butterfield’s exceptional performance as the title character, along with equally strong performances by Ben Kingsley and Chloe Moretz, added depth to an already exceptional and brilliantly-imagined film. It most certainly belongs on a top ten list for children’s films from the last decade! For now, I’ve stuck it here. 3. Never Let Me Go (2010) I’m a sucker for Carey Mulligan films, I guess. This low-key dystopia centralizes the personal growth and development of a trio of clones who will one day have their organs harvested by the British state. I saw this film for the first time with my sister, and I recall the feeling of dread and horror that arises in the final moments — feelings that just wouldn’t exist without the direct focus on these three characters as characters. It’s not a film for everyone, but I think it’s easily one of the best SF/F films ever made. 2. Cloud Atlas (2012) This one shouldn’t surprise anyone. The Wachowski sibling’s adaptation of David Mitchell’s epic novel of the same name didn’t get a lot of love from the traditional SF crowd, but I wasn’t surprised by that in the slightest. More critics and viewers loved Prometheus than Cloud Atlas; I think it’s fair to say that the former is a steaming pile of glittering shit stained with oils made from petrified dinosaur crap (here’s what I really think about that movie…). Cloud Atlas, however, is an incredible journey into the interconnected lives of individuals existing across various time periods. Every time I see the film, I make new connections between characters, discover new ambiguities

Flavorwire “SF/F Films Everyone Should See” Meme: How many have you seen?

The fine folks at Flavorwire recently released a list of 50 SF/F films they think everyone should watch (technically, there are 63 titles on the list, since they counted series as one). I figured it would be fun to turn it into a meme. So here you go: BOLD = You’ve seen it! E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial Pan’s Labyrinth Moon The Fellowship of the Ring The Two Towers The Return of the King The Princess Bride Labyrinth Men in Black Edward Scissorhands Mad Max Princess Mononoke Spirited Away Gattaca Primer Blade Runner Fantastic Planet The Wizard of Oz The Secret of Roan Inish Dark City The Matrix Time Bandits Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark La Jetée Brazil Metropolis Big Fish Solaris (original) Jurassic Park Alien Aliens Orpheus Dark Star 2001: A Space Odyssey Avatar Back to the Future Star Wars IV: A New Hope Star Wars V: The Empire Strikes Back Star Wars VI: The Return of the Jedi Close Encounters of the Third Kind A Clockwork Orange Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb The Fountain Sleeper City of Lost Children Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Pt.1 Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Pt.2 The Day the Earth Stood Still (original) Donnie Darko Invasion of the Body Snathers (original) Ghostbusters Being John Malkovich Akira The Terminator Terminator 2 Strange Days Serenity I count 49. That’s not bad, methinks… How did you do?

Star Trek Movies and TV Shows: Ranked by Me

On August 11th, Badass Digest released a Trekkie-voted ranked list of all the Star Trek movies to date (plus Galaxy Quest, for some reason). It’s a strange list, to say the least. Why is Galaxy Quest on there? Other than the fact that it’s a mostly-direct parody of Star Trek, it isn’t actually a Star Trek movie. And why did they stick Star Trek Into Darkness at the end, when it’s obviously not the worst film on the list? OK, so I have a good answer for that last question. We talked about this a little in a recent Shoot the WISB episode. Basically, the reversal of the Khan narrative probably came off as a slap in the face to Trekkies. I even think it smelled disgusting, even though I kind of like the idea of switching things around. After all, Spock isn’t supposed to be an emotional man, so the idea that he’d break down after the supposed death of Kirk adds some weight to the moment. But…it wasn’t handled well. There wasn’t enough character development; the death of Kirk was handled in the way you’d expect a comic book to handle it: he’s dead…wait, no, not really, here’s some magic *poof.* At least in Wrath of Khan, Spock died. He was dead dead dead. The film never says “hey, we’ll magic him into existence…right at the end.” If you’ve never seen Search for Spock, you really do think the guy has friggin died. And that’s a big deal. The audience sometimes needs that slap in the face. But I digress. Prepare to be pissed off. The following is my ranked list of Star Trek movies, minus Galaxy Quest: 12. Star Trek (you can see why I still hate the film here and here) 11. Star Trek: Insurrection (the villains just didn’t do it for me; it felt too much like an unnecessarily extended episode of the regular show, and the absurdity of the plot never seemed to gel or follow through for me, despite some nifty action sequences in the end) 10. Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (I want to like this film, but too much of this film’s central elements are ridiculously underdeveloped; for example, both Sybok and the “god” thing at the end are given almost the same amount of characterization, despite the fact that the latter is only in the film for maybe seven minutes — we never really know who Sybok is, except that he’s kinda nuts) 9. Star Trek: Nemesis (there are certainly a lot of problems with this film, most notably in the convoluted plot; however, Tom Hardy does a fantastic job as Shinzon, and Captain Kirk really does almost get sucked dry like a character in a vampire movie, which seemed pretty cool to me) 8. Star Trek Into Darkness (though I quite enjoy this sequel to Abrams’ first ST film, it certainly suffers from reboot-idis; case in point, the fact that the writers could not include Khan in this version of the universe without making annoying and poorly conceived references to the original Wrath of Khan. More on my thoughts, along with some others, here) 7. Star Trek: Generations (I think if I watched this movie again, I’d like it a lot less than I do in my memory; that said, I love the continued development of Data as a character, let alone the fact that this film really does give a lot of closure to the original TNG series — plus, saucer separation = awesome) 6. Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (the one thing the original ST movies did well was comedic development between the principle cast; having Spock’s katra, or soul, trapped in McCoy’s body pretty much makes for comedic gold. Add in Christopher Lloyd as the villain and you’ve got a pretty decent ST film) 5. Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (while the villain doesn’t have quite the prowess of Khan, his obsession with Shakespeare adds a certain creep factor to this otherwise straightforward political assassination thriller — overall, I thought it did pretty damn well for itself, particularly considering the political implications of an alliance between the Federation and the Klingon Empire) 4. Star Trek: First Contact (the Borg are probably my favorite villain species in the entire ST franchise; the best part of this film, however, involves seeing humanity make that first stretch to the stars and all that comes with it) 3. Star Trek: The Motion Picture (I know a lot of people hate this movie, but I’ve always found it infinitely fascinating; it kept with the original narrative of exploration at the heart of the show, and the discovery itself was so cool) 2. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (you all know why this is in the top two slots; everyone loves this movie) 1. Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (my grandma loved this movie, and so she made me watch it…a lot. Obviously, it still has a special place in my heart, and it played a crucial role in my childhood love of whales and the ocean. Also: the movie still makes me laugh) And here’s my ranked list of Star Trek TV shows: 6. Star Trek: the Animated Series (it exists, and that’s good enough for me) 5. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (there are aspects of this show I really like, but the fact that it takes until season two for anything interesting to happen and that some of the actors are just horrible makes me unable to move this higher on the list) 4. Star Trek: the Original Series (it’s classic, I know, but I didn’t grow up on the original series, so I can only put it in the #4 slot because of its classic nature — don’t kill me) 3. Star Trek: Enterprise (everyone hates this one for some reason; I liked the attempt to have a single narrative riding through everything and the focus on humanity as the new kid on the proverbial block. I’m also in agreement with

8 SF/F Writers Who Changed My Life (#WeekofJoy)

Books change lives, right? Well, they certainly changed mine. Books have been a part of my life since I was a kid, though I honestly didn’t understand their true value until much later in life. They were entertainment in my younger years. I read Goosebumps and Hardy Boys because they provided quick, fun narratives (and some of the former were actually kinda scary at times — they seem ridiculous today, of course). I even read comic books as a kid, for the same reasons everyone read comics in their youth: fun! But I wasn’t a literature nut in my younger years. I wanted to play video games or do stupid things on my bike — I honestly don’t know how I survived childhood, because I used to do some monumentally stupid things on my bike. Despite all of that, books eventually smacked me upside the head and changed the way I viewed them and the way I viewed life in general. I read or discovered these books during what I would consider to be pivotal moments of my life. Some of those moments were dark times; others were quite happy and exciting. But none of them were exactly same. In chronological order, here are the eight science fiction and fantasy writers who changed my life: Richard A. Knaak The first adult fantasy book I ever read was Richard A. Knaak’s Dragonlance novel, The Legend of Huma. I won’t pretend it’s a great work of art, or a great piece of fantasy (well, it’s a fun piece of fantasy, but Dragonlance isn’t exactly known for the best writing in the universe). I would later go on to read his DragonRealm series — a much more interesting and well-written set of relatively short fantasy novels. I think it’s fair to say that I was always a reader or viewer of genre fiction, having watched Star Wars so many times as a child that I eventually had to justify owning three different VHS copies to prevent ruining my really good copy (the Leonard Maltin versions, which I still own). But I had never really grown fond of SF/F literature. That was until someone introduced me to Dragonlance. The Legend of Huma introduced me to a whole new sea of stories, and reading that particular book would one day give me fuel for an interest in writing genre fiction (I’ve never wanted to write anything else, really). Without that book, I don’t know what I would be like today. A genre fan? Probably. A scholar in the field and a wannabe writer of SF/F? Probably not. (This is a familiar narrative, no?) George Orwell I also discovered the wonders of science fiction in high school. However, rather than having George Orwell’s incredible and canonical novel 1984 thrust at me by my friends, I had the novel thrust on me by a teacher (duh). And lucky me. I attended two high schools as a teenager: one in Oak Harbor, Washington, and another in Placerville, California. Of all the English classes I took while in Oak Harbor, only one managed to make reading interesting. That class had us reading things like Watership Down by Richard Adams, A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare, and, of course, 1984. And since that class, I’ve re-read Orwell’s novel at least six times. The book made me realized that literature could have depth, that re-reading a work could actually change your experience of it. That book also helped turn me into a science fiction nut. And every time I re-read the book (less frequently now than when I was in my early 20s), I discover something new. That’s the mark of a good book, if you ask me! I think it’s safe to say that my interest in literature as an academic subject began here. The Person Who Wrote Beowulf The short version of the story goes like this: during my senior year of high school, my English teacher assigned Beowulf, as often happens in high school. Instead of having us write straight literary analysis, however, she asked us to take the core themes of the story and come up with our own poetic versions. Thus began a month-long journey to rewrite Beowulf (with a friend). The weird part? We actually took it quite seriously, while others in our class sort of dilly daddled the way a lot people do when it comes to these kinds of assignments. We went to the library and looked up British history (the place where we intended to set our version of the story), dug up maps of the pre-Norman-invasion British Isles, and tried our best to fit our re-worked version into that new world (Grendel’s lair ended up on the Isle of Man). We plotted the entire story, developed all of the characters, and then I started writing. And then came the all-nighters. After a weekend of intense writing (in what I then thought was proper “Old English” style — heh), I strolled into class on Monday with a 31-page epic poem in tow. I still have a vivid memory of my teacher’s eyes opening wider than should have been humanly possible at the sight of our work. She had expected something like 5-10 pages, not 31. And we got an A. You might be wondering how this changed my life. Throughout my youth, I recall writing a lot of stories. For the most part, these were horror stories (I still think that movie with the evil severed hand somehow stole my ideas); they weren’t very good. But it wasn’t until that Beowulf assignment that I realized I really had the writing bug. From that point on, I started writing with more fervor. Clearly that bug never truly left, because I still write fiction as often as I can (not as much right now due to PhD work, though). Without Beowulf, I’m not sure I’d be where I am right now: an English major and a published writer. Alan Garner I’ve written about my experiences with cancer here,

Dr. Shaun Duke, Professional Nerd

Editor. Writer. Professor. Host.

Tag: Lists

Top 10 Blog Posts for August 2013

Top 10 Science Fiction and Fantasy Movies Since 2010 (Thus Far)

Flavorwire “SF/F Films Everyone Should See” Meme: How many have you seen?

Star Trek Movies and TV Shows: Ranked by Me

Top 10 Posts for July 2013

8 SF/F Writers Who Changed My Life (#WeekofJoy)