Cosmic Log
Looks like the living, breathing humans — and Unanimous AI — take the statuette for Oscar predictions this year.
The Academy Awards are literally the gold standard when it comes to Hollywood movies, but they’re also a testing ground for a far geekier pursuit: predicting who’ll win the Oscars, based on big data.
Crowdsourcing, artificial intelligence and social-media analytics all come into play, as well as the gut feelings of movie reviewers around the world.
What would an R-rated “Star Trek” movie directed by Quentin Tarantino look like?
We may find out someday soon: The director of “Kill Bill,” “Pulp Fiction,” “Inglorious Basterds” and other violence-laced neo-noir films is reportedly working with “Revenant” screenwriter Mark L. Smith and producer J.J. Abrams on a harder-edged version of the Starship Enterprise’s saga.
Nerdist has already put together a must-see video trailer for a Tarantino-tinged Trek, titled “Quentin Tarantino’s Star Trek: Voyage to Vengeance.”
The dust has barely settled on the premiere of “Star Wars, Episode VIII: The Last Jedi.” Or is that a thin layer of salt? In any case, it’s already time to look forward to the science-fiction screen offerings in the months ahead, leading up to the next Star Wars story on Memorial Day weekend.
This personal top-10 list should get things started, with a couple of caveats. I’m not including the long list of next year’s Marvel and DC comic-book spinoffs, which adds “Game of Thrones” veteran Maisie Williams (Arya) to the marquee for “The New Mutants.” For that list, check ComicBook.com’s roundup.
I’m also not including a couple of favorites that are still lacking release dates for their 2018 seasons, such as “The Handmaid’s Tale” (on Hulu) and “The Expanse” (on Syfy).
With those preliminaries out of the way, here are 10 shows to put on your radar screen for the next five months.
For Star Wars fans, it’s the hap-happiest season of all — and that makes dress-up artists like Kay Ahern something akin to Santa Claus.
“Forget Christmas,” said Ahern, who was costumed as emo villain Kylo Ren tonight for the premiere of “Star Wars, Episode VIII: The Last Jedi” at Seattle’s Cinerama. “This is my religious holiday.”
What could be better than hearing a science fiction writer talk about how to create whole new worlds? How about doubling that to two science fiction writers?
That was the case for a Seattle-area appearance by Andy Weir — the author of “The Martian” and “Artemis,” a just-released novel set on a moon colony in the 2080s.
When he showed up at Third Place Books in Lake Forest Park on Nov. 30, he brought along Seattle’s own Neal Stephenson, the author of science-fiction novels ranging from “Snow Crash” to “Seveneves” to “The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.”
A standing-room-only crowd of 600 or so heard Weir and Stephenson hold forth on the writing racket. Here are some gems from the conversation:
The Force is clearly with “Star Wars: The Last Jedi.” The trailer for Episode VIII of the movie saga made its debut in the midst of Monday Night Football, kicking off ticket sales for the Dec. 14 premiere and beyond.
And the truly magical part was that you could actually buy tickets.
First, about that trailer: Although fans have gotten glimpses of the upcoming movie at Comic-Con and other special events, this is the biggest fully loaded dose of Star Wars lore to go public since the first official trailer was released in April.
What better way to celebrate 40 years of NASA’s interplanetary Voyager mission than with an eye-filling movie that brings the decades-old story up to date?
“The Search for Life in Space,” an IMAX 3-D documentary that opens at the Pacific Science Center today, begins with the twin Voyager probes’ exploration of the solar system and beyond. Voyager’s “Grand Tour” got off the ground in 1977 and continues to this day.
The film touches on astronomer Carl Sagan’s campaign to send a message to extraterrestrial civilizations that may someday come across the probe, in the form of a Golden Record that was launched aboard each of the two spacecraft.
Does director Luc Besson’s latest movie, “Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets,” live up to his sci-fi cult classic, “The Fifth Element”? Mmm, no. But the visuals and fictional tech concepts are literally out of this world, and well worth seeing.
“Valerian” has been getting decidedly mixed opening reviews – mostly due to the plodding plot and what some have called the anti-chemistry between the two lead actors, Dane DeHaan as Valerian and Cara Delevingne as Laureline. (To be fair, “The Fifth Element” got similarly mixed reviews when it premiered 20 years ago.)
The visuals are over-the-top, but the problem with “Valerian” may well be that it takes itself too seriously. The heroes and the villains are too earnest, in contrast to the cartoonish baddies in “The Fifth Element.” Ironically, a new movie based on a comic-book classic isn’t comic-bookish enough.
The best way to experience the movie is to set your expectations accordingly, and then let the computer-generated visual effects wash over you for two hours. Here are some of my favorite moments, based on the visuals as well as what they say about technologies to come.
“War for the Planet of the Apes,” the latest installment of the blockbuster movie reboot, is all about revealing the humanity in Caesar and his legions of gene-altered apes – but it takes legions of wizards to make sure that humanity comes through.
Fortunately, there are wizards galore at Weta Digital, the special-effects studio behind film extravaganzas ranging from “The Lord of the Rings” and “The Hobbit” to “Avatar” and the upcoming “Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets.”
Oscar-winning visual effects supervisor Dan Lemmon said “War for the Planet of the Apes,” opening today, set a new bar for his New Zealand-based team.
The non-profit XPRIZE foundation has recruited an all-star lineup of science fiction masters, including Seattle authors, to help create a series of fictional “road maps” for future innovations – and the first project, focusing on air travel, is already waiting in the wings.
Sixty-four creative types from nine countries around the world – including writers, directors and producers – have joined the XPRIZE Science Fiction Advisory Council.
Marquee names include Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood, author of “The Handmaid’s Tale”; Andy Weir, who wrote “The Martian” and the upcoming “Artemis” novel about lunar settlement; and Darren Aronofsky, the director of “Pi,” “The Fountain” and “Black Swan.”
At least a half-dozen of the advisers live in the Seattle area.