sci-fi

Movie Fun

A couple different fun links for you today. First, I don't know if I posted this before, but someone linked me to IFC's 50 Greatest Trailers Of All Time a couple weeks after the first time it got sent my way, and I was surprised to discover that I just couldn't help but poke back through it again. If I keep getting linked back, I'm sure eventually I'll watch all fifty. My personal favorites were the ones that didn't show any of the actual films, just short scenes of people talking about the movies, like #6, Orson Welles' booming voiceover introducing Citizen Kane ("These are the chorus girls. Of course, we're just showing you the chorus girls for purposes of... ballyhoo. Still, it's pretty nice ballyhoo."), or #2, Alfred Hitchcock giving you a tour of the set of Psycho, trying unsuccessfully to appear perturbed by the concept of mayhem and vicious murders. While at the site, I also enjoyed their History of Unreliable Narrators.

Second, Total Sci-Fi Online made one of those lists that you know you're going to get pummeled for but at some point a site like that has to make anyway: a list of the 100 Greatest Sci-Fi Movies. I liked the list and couldn't find much wrong with it, though I've never been able to summon much love for their top movie, Blade Runner, no matter how hard I try. The list takes into account both the best of the the cheap, mass-produced alien/monster movies from the '50s without ignoring the fact that best films of the genre were made in the '70s and '80s. For the record, a more challenging enterprise would be to try to make a list like this without ever using the word "dystopian."

And finally, Screen Junkies wonders what it would be like if movie posters put quotes up from their negative reviews instead of their positive ones.