The Star Wars Holiday Special (1978): It’s Oh So Kitsch

in Sci Fi, Television | December 28th, 2011

Let’s do the time warp today and revis­it the Not-S0-Gold­en Age of Amer­i­can Tele­vi­sion. The year was 1978. Star Wars fever still gripped Amer­i­ca, and the Vari­ety Show TV for­mat would­n’t say die. So, pro­duc­ing The Star Wars Hol­i­day Spe­cial was a no-brain­er. The two-hour show takes you inside the domes­tic world of Chew­bac­ca and his fam­i­ly — his father Itchy, his wife Mal­la, and his son Lumpy — and fea­tures guest appear­ances by Jef­fer­son Star­ship, Har­vey Kor­man and Bea Arthur, plus a lit­tle stock footage of Alec Guin­ness. As for the pro­duc­tion qual­i­ty and spe­cial effects? They’re all text­book kitsch.

You’ve heard enough to know that this was­n’t the finest hour for the Star Wars fran­chise. One crit­ic called it the “the worst two hours of tele­vi­sion ever.” And, when he’s will­ing to acknowl­edge the exis­tence of the TV spe­cial, George Lucas read­i­ly admits that turn­ing Star Wars into a vari­ety show “was­n’t the smartest thing to do.” But because the show only aired once in its entire­ty, the hol­i­day spe­cial has gained some­thing of a cult sta­tus and cir­cu­lates “under­ground” on the web. Van­i­ty Fair has more on this mis­ad­ven­ture in tele­vi­sion pro­gram­ming here. H/T goes to Dan­ger­ous Minds.

Relat­ed Star Wars Good­ies:

Star Wars as Silent Film

Star Wars the Musi­cal: The Force is Strong in this One

Darth Vader’s Theme in the Style of Beethoven

Kurt Rus­sell Audi­tions for Star Wars

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The Mechanical Monsters: Seminal Superman Animated Film from 1941

in Film, Sci Fi, Video - Arts & Culture, Video - Politics/Society, YouTube | October 4th, 2011

In 1941, direc­tor Dave Fleis­ch­er and Para­mount Pic­tures ani­ma­tors Steve Muf­fati and George Ger­manet­ti pro­duced Super­man: The Mechan­i­cal Mon­sters — a big-bud­get ani­mat­ed adap­ta­tion of the pop­u­lar Super­man comics of that peri­od, in which a mad sci­en­tist unleash­es robots to rob banks and loot muse­ums, and Super­man, nat­u­ral­ly, saves the day. It was one of sev­en­teen films that raised the bar for the­atri­cal shorts and are even con­sid­ered by some to have giv­en rise to the entire Ani­me genre.

More than a mere treat of vin­tage ani­ma­tion, the film cap­tures the era’s char­ac­ter­is­tic ambiva­lence in rec­on­cil­ing the need for progress with the fear of tech­nol­o­gy in a cul­ture on the brink of incred­i­ble tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tion. It was the dawn of the tech­no-para­noia that per­sist­ed through the 1970s, famous­ly cap­tured in the TV series Future Shock nar­rat­ed by Orson Welles, and even through today. Take for exam­ple books like Nicholas Car­r’s The Shal­lows and Sher­ry Turkle’s Alone Togeth­er: Why We Expect More from Tech­nol­o­gy and Less from Each Oth­er.

Super­man: The Mechan­i­cal Mon­sters is avail­able for down­load on The Inter­net Archive, and Toon­a­mi Dig­i­tal Arse­nal has the com­plete series of all sev­en­teen films. Find more vin­tage ani­ma­tion in Open Cul­ture’s col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

Maria Popo­va is the founder and edi­tor in chief of Brain Pick­ings, a curat­ed inven­to­ry of cross-dis­ci­pli­nary inter­est­ing­ness. She writes for Wired UK, The Atlantic and Desig­nOb­serv­er, and spends a great deal of time on Twit­ter.

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Arthur C. Clarke Predicts the Future in 1964 … And Kind of Nails It

in Sci Fi | September 4th, 2011

In 1964, Sir Arthur C. Clarke, the futur­ist and sci-fi writer best known for his nov­el 2001: A Space Odyssey, peered into the future, to the year 2000, and described what he saw. And a pret­ty good guess it was. Ours would be a world in which…

We could be in instant con­tact with each oth­er, wher­ev­er we may be, where we can con­tact our friends any­where on earth, even if we don’t know their actu­al phys­i­cal loca­tion. It will be pos­si­ble in that age, per­haps only 50 years from now, for a man to con­duct his busi­ness from Tahi­ti or Bali just as well as he could from Lon­don.… Almost any exec­u­tive skill, any admin­is­tra­tive skill, even any phys­i­cal skill, could be made inde­pen­dent of dis­tance. I am per­fect­ly seri­ous when I sug­gest that one day we may have brain sur­geons in Edin­burgh oper­at­ing on patients in New Zealand.

By 2001, Cal­i­for­nia doc­tors were already con­duct­ing vir­tu­al surgery on patients in Rome. And, by 2005, Thomas Fried­man pub­lished his best­seller, The World is Flat, which pret­ty much told us that us that Clarke’s imag­ined world had arrived — with, of course, one big excep­tion. Cities? They’re still stand­ing…

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mar­shall McLuhan: The World is a Glob­al Vil­lage

Arthur C. Clarke Presents the Col­ors of Infin­i­ty

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The Blade Runner Promotional Film

in Film, Sci Fi | September 1st, 2011

A quick addi­tion to yes­ter­day’s look back at Siskel & Ebert’s 1982 review of Blade Run­ner.

As we were say­ing, the film got off to a very shaky start. The pro­duc­tion was a mess. Crit­ics panned the film. Film­go­ers went to see ET. And all of the rest.

It was time to pull out the stops. So, M. K. Pro­duc­tions was enlist­ed to shoot a 16 mm pro­mo­tion­al fea­turette that cir­cu­lat­ed through Amer­i­ca’s hor­ror, fan­ta­sy and sci-fi con­ven­tions. Fea­tur­ing inter­views with Rid­ley Scott, Syd Mead (visu­al futur­ist), and Dou­glas Trum­bull (spe­cial effects), the short pro­mo­tion­al film let view­ers peer inside the mak­ing of the mag­i­cal Blade Run­ner uni­verse. And now you can do the same.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Mak­ing of the Shin­ing

Blade Run­ner Gets Re-Cre­at­ed, Shot for Shot, Using Only Microsoft Paint

Blade Run­ner is a Waste of Time: Siskel & Ebert in 1982

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Blade Runner is a “Waste of Time”: Siskel & Ebert in 1982

in Film, Sci Fi | August 31st, 2011

It’s per­haps hard to imag­ine now, but Rid­ley Scot­t’s clas­sic sci-fi film, Blade Run­ner, saw some hard days when it was first released in 1982. Pre­view screen­ings went bad­ly. Crowds flocked instead to see Steven Spielberg’s block­buster, ET. The film lost mon­ey. And crit­ics gave the film mixed reviews.

Case in point, Siskel & Ebert’s review on nation­al tele­vi­sion. Roger finds some redeem­ing qual­i­ties — the spe­cial effects. Siskel calls it a “waste of time.” One thumb up grudg­ing­ly; anoth­er firm­ly down. A decid­ed­ly mixed review.

Siskel died, of course, in 1999. If you’re won­der­ing if Ebert ever changed his posi­tion, you can find this reap­praisal writ­ten in 2007, on the 25th anniver­sary of the film’s release.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Blade Run­ner Pro­mo­tion­al Film

What is a Blade Run­ner? How Rid­ley Scott’s Movie Has Ori­gins in William S. Bur­roughs’ Novel­la, Blade Run­ner: A Movie

The Sounds of Blade Run­ner: How Music & Sound Effects Became Part of the DNA of Rid­ley Scott’s Futur­is­tic World

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Star Wars as Silent Film

in Film, Sci Fi | July 6th, 2011

You know George Lucas’ clas­sic, The Empire Strikes Back. Now roll it back a good 60 years and imag­ine the silent ver­sion. It works unex­pect­ed­ly well.

H/T to @wesalwan. And don’t miss many land­mark silent films in our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online. Chap­lin, ear­ly Hitch­cock, Fritz Lang, the first sci-fi and west­ern films — they’re all there. Find them at the bot­tom of the page…

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

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X‑Men: Science Can Build Them, But Is It Ethical?

in Film, Sci Fi, Science | June 1st, 2011

Ever since Jack Kir­by and Stan Lee cre­at­ed the very first install­ment of the The Uncan­ny X‑Men for Mar­vel in 1963, the beloved team of mutant super­heroes known as the X‑Men have con­quered almost every medi­um in pop­u­lar cul­ture from tele­vi­sion to video games, to movies and of course com­ic books. Their endur­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty isn’t hard to under­stand: What Amer­i­can teenag­er (redun­dant, we know, since all Amer­i­cans are basi­cal­ly teenagers) could ever say no to an angsty band of telegenic out­siders who are per­pet­u­al­ly reviled and per­se­cut­ed for the very attrib­ut­es that make them supe­ri­or?

But there’s more than nar­cis­sism at play. The core of the X‑Men myth — genet­ic muta­tion — is some­thing sci­en­tists have been learn­ing how to manip­u­late for decades, and now it’s just a mat­ter of time before we know how to build X‑Men of our own. But just as in the case of nuclear bombs, killer virus­es and 3‑D action movies, the fact that we can make them does­n’t mean we should. In the above video from Emory Uni­ver­si­ty, Bioethics pro­fes­sor Paul Root Wolpe explores this moral dilem­ma via the lat­est iter­a­tion of the beloved mutants’ saga: X‑Men: First Class (In the­aters June 3rd, and, praise be to Mendel, NOT in 3‑D).

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

 

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Soviet Scifi Cinema: The Other Tolstoy in the Movies

in Film, Literature, Sci Fi | April 6th, 2011

Seen by over 20 mil­lion Rus­sians when it came out in 1965, The Hyper­boloid of Engi­neer Garin was a film based on a 1927 nov­el by Alek­sey Niko­layevich Tol­stoy, who is not to be con­fused with his famous rel­a­tive Leo Tol­stoy. This Tol­stoy is gen­er­al­ly thought of as the father of Russ­ian sci­ence fic­tion, and The Garin Death Ray was one of his most famous books (Vladimir Nabokov con­sid­ered it his best).

Hyper­boloid was writ­ten and direct­ed by Alek­san­dr Gintzburg, a high­ly gift­ed cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er who nev­er quite reached the career heights his tal­ent might have war­rant­ed, in part because of his Jew­ish ori­gins, and in part because of the nar­row range of artis­tic free­dom allowed direc­tors work­ing for the State-run cin­e­ma. Gintzburg stayed well with­in that range for this film, which leaves us with an odd­ly com­pelling mix of Sovi­et pro­pa­gan­da and 60’s pop-sci­fi.

As for the plot… we’d rather not give any­thing away. Just think of it as a beau­ti­ful­ly-lit pro­to-1984, with sub­ti­tles and laser beams, star­ring Big Broth­er as the good guy.

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

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