Category: Critical Mass

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

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

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.