Remake of the classic War of the Worlds invades theaters this week

The staff of SCIFIPUNDIT went to the sold out premiere of the Steven Spielberg remake of the classic War of the Worlds this evening and if you go into this movie thinking it is the total remake of the classic you may be sorely disappointed, but I still think it makes a great story for this day and age with everything going on in the world. Tom Cruise plays the part of Ray Ferrier, a dockworker and a not so grown up father who has weekend custody of his two children, played by Dakota Fanning and Justin Chatwin. The H.G. Wells classic science fiction story tells the tale of aliens coming to earth and destroying everything in their path along the way. I found it interesting how when the first attack on New Jersey happens the children believe it’s a terrorist attack where in the not so distant past, folks my own age would have thought it was the Russians invading. The story holds true to the original in respects to the ships and aliens intent upon earth. The images of the aliens ransacking an old farmhouse send chills down your spine. A few tense moments were felt by most who watched. I was seriously impressed with what Mr. Spielberg did with the special effects. It was an amazing job with keeping the original design of the tripod legged spacecraft described in the book along with the snake like scanner that slithered through the basement searching for any signs of life as it did in the original movie in the 50’s. I see this becoming another classic for Steven Spielberg. As with most of his films over the years, the suspense and energy are great in this film. I give this one 3 and a half aliens out of 5. So let us know what you think here at SCIFIPUNDIT we would love to hear from everyone.

Then and Now

What’s a good precursor to War of the Worlds, Close Encounters of course! Tomorrow night the staff of SCIFIPUNDIT will be going to see WotW and to get into the mood I watched Close Encounters. Although I am sure the aliens in WotW will not be nearly as benign as the music playing aliens of CE, it will still be interesting to see just how far Spielberg and special effects have come.

I am not sure if I can talk Alex into live blogging, but I guess it never hurts to try!

Got SCIFIPUNDIT?

Have you ever wondered where you can get our cool logo? Now you too can get your own personal SCIFIPUNDIT merchandise complete with logo! Wear and use in good health.

To vote or not to vote, that is the question.

As June is quickly coming to an end, don't forget to vote in our poll. As always, it's right where I left it...on the right side of the page under the links and ads. Next friday we will have a new poll and the results of this month's poll. Thanks for voting!

Batmobile through the ages

Here's an interesting website showing the evolution of the batmobile from 1941 to the newest Batman Begins "Tumbler". Still being that I am one that is slow to embrace change, I still think of the 1966 version of the batmobile whenever it is mentioned.

Batman enters into the 21st Century in "Batman Begins"

Ok, so went to see the new Batman movie and I loved it, it seemed to bring the comic book into the next century for the next generation of readers and fans of the Dark Knight. Batman Begins gave a great background on how Bruce Wayne began his crime fighting career as the caped crusader, as well as building the bat cave, learning to fight and showing his deepest fear, which I won‘t give away for those who have for some unknown reason, have not seen it yet. The movie dug deeply into his personal life before he even made the conscious choice to become Batman. Christian Bale did an excellent job portraying the brooding young man who lost his parents when he was a young child and how he hid his fear with anger. It did not however, follow the first Batman movie with Michael Keaton when the joker killed his parents and spouted off the great line he did so well “Ever dance with the devil in the pale moonlight?” I loved that line from Jack Nicholson it gave me goose bumps the first time he said it. I was impressed with the writing and with the sets and how they showed Gotham City as being lived in and not some Hollywood art conception of what it might look like. I do know that most all the actors have signed for the next installment and I am seriously looking forward to it, and for those who will see it or have seen it, you will know who the next villain will be. As far as the Scarecrow, I would have liked to seen more of this character, but I understand that they were doing more background on Batman for this movie so I can live with how they did this. I would however recommend that people who want to take younglings to see it maybe go see it first, some scenes are a little more dark than the young folks might like and I give this film a 4 out of 5 aliens, so go see it and let us know here at SCIFIPUNDIT.

Let's go sailing!

One of my favorite DS9 episodes is “Explorers” . Tomorrow, the basis for this episode becomes a reality. Cosmos 1, actually based on a Carl Sagan concept, will be sent into space on a converted Volna intercontinental ballistic missile (WMD found). Once in space, it will deploy mylar solar sails hoping to catch a ride on streams of photons from the sun’s rays, basically sunlight. Yes, that’s right mylar…like balloons or the lovely mylar bladder you find inside wine-in-a-box. Read more about Cosmos 1 here. To look for Cosmos 1, check out this website.

Magic comes to the Arts & Entertainment Channel with "Mindfreak"

Criss Angel, Magician and Illusionist, is coming to A&E cable in July with a new show called Mindfreak. I have had the pleasure of seeing this true Master of Magic and Illusion, perform numerous times on the Sci Fi and the Discover channels. Being a huge fan of magic, I have enjoyed each and every time I have seen him. The new show will start on July 20th. It is a reality series in part that showcases the behind the scenes of his daily personal and professional life as well as some of his music and on street performances of his incredible magic. Sixteen-half hour episodes will allow fans to follow him as he demonstrates his amazing talents he has honed for nearly twenty years. Folks in the business believe he will surpass David Copperfield as the leading Illusionist of all times in the years to come and they rank him up there with both David Blaine and Harry Houdini. So if you enjoy Illusion and Magic than I strongly urge you to watch the show and I hope it doesn't interfere with Battlestar Galactica or something is gonna get taped and the other is gonna get watched.

Batman Begins

Batman Begins opens today! Want more information before you ran off to the theater? Have a look at the movie's official website.

Vote!

Please vote in our poll. It is located on the right side beneath the links and ads. Thank you for participating.

War of the Worlds Update

If you haven't looked at the official WotW website lately, go have a look. There are new trailers, some of which show much more detail of the tripods than in the past. Only 15 more days till the release!

Renaissance Faire Photoblogging

SCIFIPUNDIT goes retro!

Notice it's not me talking this time.

Robert, the dashing.

Alex ponders.

Cheryl and Robert

Toni, Alex's wife, in her lovely costume.

Brenden slays the dragon.

Alyssa departs the Maze.

Brenden enjoys the Maze.

WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!

Our young knight, Brenden, is ready to slay any evil that may come his way.

The lovely maiden Alyssa awaits her Romeo.

Alex explains to Brenden the value of (k)nightly protection.

Don't forget to vote!

We have a new poll for June. Have you voted yet? The poll is located on the right side beneath the links and the ads. If you have a suggestion for our next poll, you may email us at scifipundit@yahoo.com or leave a comment. Thanks!

More Novel News

Steve Morse was nice enough to review yet another book for us.

Steve writes:

Book Review: The Wilding By C.S. Friedman DAW books, July 2004. $24.95 cover price.

This is the latest from Ms Friedman. Since she writes a new novel every 5 to 7 years without regard to how much her fans may want one, I have held off reading this one for a year out of protest. I am sure she is properly chastised. She has published 7 other novels and one odd little novella in paperback so if you read this one and like it a lot there is a wealth of other stuff to keep you busy till her next one comes out. Ms Friedman has a day job as a set and costume designer back east somewhere and apparently is paid enough to only write when she darn well feels like it. I highly recommend The Madness Season or In Conquest Born which are both always available in paperback and are in perhaps their 20th Printing. Ms Friedman dabbles in Fantasy and has the distinction of writing the second fantasy series I ever completely finished (the first being Lord of the Rings).

The Wilding is a story of colliding cultures in a distant future universe. The bad guy Braxi are eerily familiar, some kind of blend of Islamic misogyny and very similar to the Necromongers so recently featured in The Chronicles of Riddick but predating them. I found them compellingly evil and well described, lifelike and scary. They are matched against their natural enemies the psychic, Azea, who are not all that nice either, showing signs of “end justifying the means” or “lesser of evils” explanations of why they are motivated. Thrust from these two cultures the protagonists are an outcast Braxi and newly converted psychic from the worlds of the Braxi are running from what can only be said as larger controlling forces and are seeking what might be distilled to redemption. The Braxi must bring back what turns out to be the bride for a very disturbing emperor of Braxi that seems to have the bad luck of all his consorts committing suicide promptly after he is intimate with them. The Psychic is seeking her own kind having always been taught that they were the epitome of evil and learning along the way the nature of herself and her genetics.

The action takes us through both the universes of the antagonistic forces and a twilight zone of buffer between them. The two protagonists are natural enemies but find reasons to keep each other alive in this quest. Planets, outer stations, locations of intrigue and few safe havens are all traversed in well-written action, and plausible plotting. There is an undercurrent of Byzantine politics that I found interesting and not too heavy handed or convenient for the author to dump dead end plot bits on. As usual Friedman is very well crafted and brick solid in her storytelling. It flows so very well you forget it is 3 am and you need to get some sleep. The Universe this novel exists in is dark and full of icky themes and it is hard to root for the good guys sometimes. In the end, Ms Friedman helps us examine our own thoughts about prejudice, and the value of self.

The novel works on two levels, it is action packed and a page turning rush through gigantic vistas, and on a deeper level, it is very complexly put together look at the most base of human motivations. There is no hint of arm waving pseudo psyentific lingo to make stupid stuff work, this is a story about people in a very strange place and pushed to extremes. It gets my serious recommendation. This is not a weekend read or a book for the beach, save it for a winter week when it snows too bad to go to the gym or grocery store. Call it 72.37 thumbs up out of 83.912 available thumbs.

Thank again, Steve!

You just never know...

I was in Lowe’s this past Saturday and ran into a nice young gentleman named Hunter. He was in the process of building his own lightsaber. Because you just never know where you might run into a good topic for a blog, I inquired about this building process. Hunter was nice enough to share where he obtained his information. Go have a look at this nifty little website that shows you blow by blow how to build your very own lightsaber.

Then on Sunday Robert and I participated in a local bike festival, the Elephant Rock Ride. Afterwards, we perused the various merchandise available for purchase. Much to my surprise I found these delightful socks complete with a SCIFIPUNDIT-ish Alien Guy on them. I liked them so much I bought two pairs!

Colorado Ren Festival opens this weekend

The Colorado Renaissance Festival in Larkspur, Colorado begins this weekend and runs each weekend thru June and July. A lot of changes have happened this year and I hope some are for the better. This year we have a bevy of Queens, all the former wives of Henry the 8th of England and remember this is a fantasy faire so all you historians and history buffs please do not read too much into all of this. The reason for so many Queens is because our past Queen was let go for reasons I cannot go in to at this time. We also have a new King this year for basically the same reasons and our new King is John Bryant, a local performer here in Colorado Springs. I have known John a few years and I am sure he can do the job very well, although the shoes he is filling are quite large. I will be performing there as well as one of the nobles on the royal court, so please drop by and ask for Zander O’Grady. I like to meet everyone. I am sure my friend Cheryl will be taking plenty of photos for us to post and if not I will ask her to. So if your in the area and want to have a great time in days of old then please join us for opening weekend June 11th and 12th and if you want a good deal get the two for one coupons at Wendy’s’ restaurants it’s the best deal I know of. Hope to see you all there rain or shine.

Novel News

Today, I received an email from Steve Morse, our friend and devoted SCIFIPUNDIT reader. He is a big sci-fi fan and especially enjoys science fiction novels. Steve writes:

New Releases for widely waited for novels for the rest of this year. Budget yourself accordingly!

The most exciting news is the release of #4 (Title is still "working title") in George RR Martin's Song of Ice and Fire Series is finally ready to hit the presses. Expect release in September and a book signing trip through at least Denver during the first week of release. If there is a signing in Colorado Springs I will ferret it out and announce it. Expect a 2.5 lb book and the usual bloodthirsty action in this series.

Larry Niven has just released his collaboration with Brenda Cooper Building Harlequin's Moon. Finally Larry Niven returns to space opera, awesome cover art and the second book I will review for this site. This book is currently available on Amazon for less than $18.

Jack McDevitt has announced the release of his newest book Seeker which is another Alex Benedict novel. If you have not read the other two novels this character is in, I highly recommend The Engines of God as one of the best novels of its year. Jack always delivers and this one is going to be very welcome when it hits the book shelves in September.

Dan Simmons, one of our more favorite Colorado Authors is releasing Olympos (sequel to his best seller Ilium) and the conclusion to this series. This is Dan's first effort back in Sci Fi since the Hyperion series and he is a most welcome addition to the ranks contributors to this genre again. He always does autograph sessions in the Tattered Cover Bookstore up in Denver on the first week of publication of his novels. I will be organizing a trip to this book signing during November when it is released.

Frederik Pohl, is releasing a novel (remarkable for an 85 year old man that looks like he does) that is another in the venerable Heechee saga and perhaps his last novel ever. The Boy Who Would Live Forever : A Novel of Gateway Ok.. so I have low expectations for this as he sorta ran out of this series decades ago, but I wonder what is on his mind these days regarding this universe.

Next: Book Review. ----- The Wilding by C.S. Friedman. Coming soon

Thanks Steve for the novel news!

Redheaded step children

Surprise, surprise, surprise! Robert and I acquired the Firefly series on DVD and spent most of Memorial Day weekend watching all the episodes. We love it! I can honestly say I still like BSG better but I am looking forward to watching the Firefly series in July on the SciFi channel and catching the movie in September.

There is a lot to like about this series. It’s basically a western set in a science fiction future. The sets are believable, the characters are well cultivated (are you listening George?), and the relationship development is relevant. You can tell the actors really enjoyed making this show. The final episode is wild. If you get the DVD set, be sure to watch the last episode with the commentary. It will make much more sense. I don’t want to spoil it for anyone(ALEX!),but they did pull out quite a bit of strangeness and humor for the last episode. The whole series is chalked full of humor. But, not the kind where you need to have a physics degree or know why Bones would tell Spock he really has gone where no one has gone before. It is the type of sci-fi show anyone could get behind. But the fact that it IS science fiction makes it all the more appealing to sci-fi fans such as myself.

That said, it got me to thinking….I have a big complaint. I have been told Firefly had inconsistent scheduling. I never even knew the show existed until very recently. And Fox execs wanted to start the series by showing an episode meant to be shown later in the series instead of using the order Joss Wheaton had intended. Fox also thought the series didn’t have enough action. Didn’t have enough action?!?!? Fox has got to be kidding! Most of the characters have been shot or participated in a shooting by episode 4 or 5. What do these TV studios want? Non-stop raping and pillaging? Mindless aliens hell-bent on destroying the entire human race in every single scene? No wonder there is so much crap on TV these days. It would seem that watching which bachelor is going to pick which bachelorette has been determined by TV execs to be what the American public wants to sit and watch night after night. Now there’s some action for you. I’m pretty sure you can catch the same action down at your local bar.

The other big TV studio I take issue with is UPN. I am not necessarily upset with the ending of Enterprise. There will always be plenty of sci-fi to keep us fanatics happy. What is bothering me is the way UPN rubbed our noses in it. In the past, we have talked about the SCIFI channel not picking up Enterprise and instead choosing to show bad programs such as Scare Tactics. In keeping with tradition, UPN has canceled Enterprise and is giving us a lovely program about Britney Spears along with some other dim-witted programs. I read somewhere that a critic described the Britney Spears show as self-indulgent crap. AMEN!

I could not believe the reparation of the same stupid commercials during the last two episodes. I wanted to call my cable company and ask them to no longer send UPN to my cable box. Seriously, UPN is a terrible channel and the only reason I watched it was Enterprise. Even so, I liked the way they ended Enterprise. Who better than Number 1 to say “end program” except maybe Jean-Luc. But who cares, it was still cool. We still heard Jean-Luc and Kirk in the end. I was given some hope as Enterprise flew off into space. Perhaps this is not the end... It is my hope Enterprise will be put into syndication. Although, I do agree that the last season is really the only one worth watching again. I am sure that sometime in the near future you will be able to buy the final season on DVD as well.

The question is who should I be angry with now? UPN or the Enterprise producers? Leigh Christian Ashton makes several excellent points in the article he wrote for SYFY Portal. In his article he calls Rick Berman and Brannon Braga the “Killer B’s”. Mr. Ashton holds the "Killer B’s” responsible for the demise of Enterprise, sighting past Star Trek projects that have done
well due to their lack of involvement. He makes a good argument. He goes on to talk about the theme song. Anyone who knows me personally knows how much I hated Enterprise’s uninspiring theme song. It seemed every season it was changed ever so slightly. There were no amount of changes that caused me to develop a fondness for this theme song. It was just so “un-Star Trek” to me. It sounded more like every other pop song you hear on your local top 40 radio station. The vocals made me want to scream. And oh joy, even Rod Stewart did a version of it! The mute button on my remote got a lot of use. In the episodes In the Mirror, Darkly, parts one and two, they completely changed the theme song. Now this one I liked. It was much more in keeping with the character of Enterprise. But it seems we had to go to an alternate universe to get a quality theme song.

Now that I have gone on and on, I can sum it up simply by saying this…I hate the way the Major 3…4…5 networks regard science fiction shows. They are not the redheaded step-children of the TV world, but they sure are treated that way.

Battlestar Galactica comes on board for second season

It seems the network gods have renewed the Emmy worthy Battlestar Galactica for another season, beginning July 15th and I am glad to say all the cast crew and writers and producers are on board for the next season. From what I have figured out so far, the Sci Fi channel will air 12 episodes, and then in January 2006 will finish up for the second season. I have also heard that Skyone will be airing the show here in the U.S. before releasing it in England, where there is a huge following for the highly rated show. It seems there is a lot of spoilers out there surrounding the show but I personally would rather wait to see them and enjoy them more without knowing what is going to happen from week to week even though my friend Cheryl wants to give away all the highlights I refuse to be brought over to the dark side and put in spoilers. Two new conventions based on the show will begin this year, one will be in England and the other will be in Vancouver Canada although I am not sure of the exact dates or times but I know some of the cast of the show will be appearing and if anyone knows the dates please let us know here at SCIFIPUNDIT so we can let others know who might want to attend and believe me on this fact, conventions are the most fun you can have in three days anywhere. I would love to attend them if it were financially possible because it would be fun to blog remotely from the convention as I am sure Cheryl would love. In conclusion, I am glad that the writers have put so much into the show and hope for their continued success with it in the seasons to come and please folks if you want to say anything about Sci Fi or fantasy or related subjects feel free to write us here or post a comment on the subject we love hearing from folks.

New Poll

We have a new poll for June. As usual you may find it on the right side beneath the links and ads. If you have a suggestion for the next poll, let us know!