One the most emotional world premieres at the upcoming 2020 Berlin International Film Festival is bound to be “Last and First Men,” the directorial feature debut of the late Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson.[…]
Jóhannsson’s only directorial feature, “Last and First Men” is an adaptation of his touring multimedia project of the same name. The movie — shot on 16mm black-and-white film with “Victoria” and “Rams” cinematographer Sturla Brandth Grøvlen — played in concert halls, accompanied by Jóhannsson’s score with a live orchestra. The feature film playing at Berlin includes the composer’s original score and narration from Tilda Swinton….
— from Mike Glyer’s file770.com
Author: kwoll
Crit Mass Mar 4th: the Night Watch series
This month, Roman looks at the novels in the best-selling russian series by Sergei Lukyanenko. What started as a trilogy is now a hexology, but he’s just looking a the setup in the first two novels: Night Watch and Day Watch. Some of you might recall the movies based on the novels…
It’s 6:45 Wed 4th March for a 7pm start at kappy’s tea & coffee merchants,
22 Compton St,Adelaide.
Come along and tell us about your favourite stand-alone fantasy story!
Stand alone fantasy novels
City of Bones by Martha Wells
Martha Wells has recently entered the spotlight with her delightful, award-winning science fiction novella All Systems Red, but she’s also got a fabulous backlist. City of Bones wars with Death of the Necromancer for my favorite Martha Wells novel, but City of Bones undoubtedly wins the place of “Best Standalone by Martha Wells.”
— Sarah Waites, in her list of 10 standalone Fantasy Novels on Tor.com
Original Illustrations From Jules Verne’s Voyages Extraordinaires
Jules Verne was a ridiculously prolific author, publishing more than 90 novels, short stories, non-fiction books, essays, and plays over his 50-odd year career. His magnum opus was the Voyages Extraordinaires, a series of 54(!) novels that sought “to outline all the geographical, geological, physical, and astronomical knowledge amassed by modern science and to recount, in an entertaining and picturesque format…the history of the universe.”
[…]
From Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (Alphonse de Neuville and Édouard Riou)But it wasn’t just Verne’s inventive prose that captivated 19th century audiences. The Voyages Extraordinaires also included plenty of lavish illustrations, most in black-and-white, depicting each protagonist’s globetrotting adventures.
Thanks to the work of the late Verne scholar Dr. Zvi Har’El, you can peruse all of the original illustrations online.
— more details at Tor.com
N K Jemisin writing a new Green Lantern series
The Witcher
While I enjoyed The Witcher TV series, it was hard to follow because of the three separate timelines, unflagged flashbacks and non-linear series, Here’s what the showrunner said about series one:
…what I misunderstood was what everyone was looking for in their entertainment. For me, and this has been a huge lesson on this project, I love to be challenged when I’m watching TV. I love to not understand everything in the beginning, and to know that if I keep watching and keep paying attention that the puzzle pieces will start to fall into place. Not everyone, it turned out, wants to do that. It was interesting talking to fans who said, “I didn’t have any idea what was happening in the timelines until episode four.” And I’m like, “Yes! Exactly. That’s when it should have hit home.” And to me, that was like a huge success. And yet, that viewer felt like they wanted to understand what was going on from episode one.
— from an interview in Vulture with the showrunner of The Witcher,
Lauren Schmidt Hissrich. Read the full interview for an idea what’s coming in series 2
Critical Mass Feb 5th: Asian SciFI
Critical Mass resumes for 2020 at 7pm Wednesday Feb 5th.
Our speaker is Beata, who will talk on Asian Scifi, fantasy and related matters
This evening I will present my first and probably somewhat random foray into scifi and fantasy stuff coming out of Asia – beyond Stein;s Gate and Three-Body Problem. This is a vast and interesting space and my talk will present but a few snapshots of popular culture, internet, film and books. As you dig, you discover. There will be sure more to come in future.— Beata
As usual, 6:45 at Kappy’s (22 Compton St, Adelaide) for a 7pm start,
William Gibson’s Agency
It’s a sensual, remarkably visual ride, vigorous with displays of conceptual imagination and humour. There’s a man wearing a “chocolate brown terrycloth tactical bathrobe”; there’s a bar called “3.7-sigma”; there’s a shopping bag that returns itself to the shop after you’ve used it, by origami-ing itself into a butterfly. Want to eat breakfast at “The Denisovan Embassy”? The name is only Gibson’s opening bid: before you’ve been there half a page, Lowbeer herself arrives in full-sail steampunk, wearing “a Victorian lady’s riding habit, but reimagined as having been cut from nylon aviator jackets” and carrying a top hat. Almost all of the author’s interests, from the political aesthetics of technology to the technology of political fashion, are collected in this near-Moorcockian curation of images. Gibson’s ability to simultaneously destabilise and entertain is both celebrated and used to the full. But it’s also linked firmly to his signature themes, the prime one here, of course, being agency.
from M John Harrison’s review of Agency in The Guardian
10 Classic SF cartoons over 10 decades
In a universe of towers that soar and platforms that project precariously out into space (in brilliant background designs by Philip De Guard), where electric eyes trigger doors opening up on even bigger electric eyes, Jones finds opportunities for customary slapstick (does Daffy get repeatedly blasted and disintegrated? Of course!), subversions of SF concepts (who knew rocket ships had reverse gears?), and a few lashings of Cold War anxiety as Daffy’s feud with Marvin over the highly coveted Planet X (last repository of Illudium Phosdex, “the shaving cream atom”) escalates eventually to planetary annihilation.
— see the full list in Dan Parsons’ The Last Ten Decades Represented in Ten Classic Science Fiction Cartoons, at Tor.com
2019 Philip K. Dick European Science Fiction Film Festival Award Winners
from file770.com:
The Philip K. Dick European Science Fiction Film Festival has announced the award winners for its sixth annual event. The gathering saluted the legacy of novelist Philip K. Dick with a slate of independent science fiction films, six of which were honored for their cinematic excellence. The festival was held October 25-26 in Lille, France and October 31-November 1 in Cologne, Germany.
BEST SCIENCE FICTION SHORT
Tomorrow Might Be the Day (2018)
- Director: Joséfa Celestin
- Run Time/Country: 20 min, France
Synopsis: A fanatic subjects his niece, whose faith wavers, to a baptism in order to restore her faith and ultimately save her from an impending doomsday flood.
BEST HORROR SHORT
Chromophobia (2019)
- Director: Keith Adams
- Run Time/Country: 13 min, USA
Synopsis: A clinical psychiatrist becomes obsessed with her mysterious new patient’s artwork and realizes he possesses a curious gift.
BEST SHORT DOCUMENTARY
Hunting For Huxley (2019)
- Director: Claire Fleming
- Run Time/Country: 5 min, UK
Synopsis: This documentary follows philosopher Aldous Huxley when he visited the recently built and technologically advanced Billingham Manufacturing Plant in 1929. He left inspired and his novel “Brave New World” was born from what he saw combined with his visioned future.
BEST PHILIP K. DICK SHORT
The Great 60 Days (2018)
- Director: Tae-Woo Kim
- Run Time/Country: 9 min, South Korea
Synopsis: A doctor experimenting on fruit flies is developing a substance that can dramatically increase activity in brain cells. After a series of failures, one fruit fly finally has a huge reaction. Its intellect has become mutated.
BEST AUDIENCE AWARD
The Nine Billion Names of God (2018)
- Director: Dominique Filhol
- Run Time/Country: 15 min, France/Switzerland
Synopsis: In New York 1957, a Tibetan monk rents an automatic sequence computer. The monks seek to list all of the names of God. They hire two Westerners to install and program the machine in Tibet. A short film is based on the book by Arthur C. Clarke.
BEST NEW MEDIA
I Can (2019)
- Director: Diana Elizabeth Jordan
- Run Time/Country: 5 min, USA
Synopsis: A young woman faces a supernatural existential crisis and must overcome her fears to unlock her power within.
The Adelaide Fan Review 
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