Month: July 2023

Homelessness Addressed

photog ArthurinCali, Current Events, Guest Contributors , , ,

Arthur has a short post on a solution to homeless encampments that are metastasizing across our cities.

We Interrupt This Rant.  Moving Forward, Getting on With It, Recalibrating

photog Current Events, OCF, photog's Corner , , ,

We all have to get used to the new reality.  It’s a different world we now live in and some things are no longer news and other things are still useful.  And priorities change.  In 2015 and 2016 Donald Trump opened up a new way of looking at the world and that change filled up the internet and mesmerized the Right for eight years.  Well, now that outlook has spread to everybody it can reach.  And that news isn’t news anymore.  And the Left has asserted itself and plugged up the holes in its walls and stopped the peasants from crashing the castle gates.  The party’s over.  It’s time to adjust.

For me the adjustment is to dividing up my time differently.  A daily blog post can’t be only about the war between the Left and the Right.  That will be too repetitive.  Even taking events from the news and reacting or critiquing them cannot be a daily occurrence.  There’s just too much overlap from story to story.  Too much, Joe Biden, too much Deep State, too much woke capitalism, too much fake news.  Same old, same old.

Now I’m not going to abandon these things.  I’m just going to cut back on the frequency and pick my opportunities judiciously.  I’ll look for an occasion when the example has some special emphasis.  As an example, the recent Supreme Court ruling on affirmative action would be an occurrence that merits a discussion.  It’s more than the usual background noise, it’s a significant story.  But it’s exceptional and it will be treated as an exception.

So then, what will I fill up my time with?  Well, two buckets.

One will be public interest.  And that can be anything that might interest people who read this site.  For instance, I like science fiction and fantasy.  Reviewing movies and books is something I like to do.  And not just sf&f.  I like all kinds of books and movies and I like to share things I think are good.  And I’ll share businesses that I find that are run by folks on our side of the culture war.  I’m hoping that will become a bigger part of the world we live in.  Hopefully one day there’ll be an ad on this site for a every product that I believe in and can recommend.  Who knows?  Maybe it’ll be for a right-wing beer company that Dylan Mulvaney won’t ever be asked to “partner with.”

And the other bucket is writing my book.  Currently I’ve got slightly more than 49,000 words finished.  But last year I thought I’d be completely finished by this July.  Obviously, I need to get religion.  And by that, I mean make fiction writing the first priority of my available time.  Now for the last few weeks I’ve been pulled in multiple directions and I can forgive myself for getting behind on everything; posts, pictures, quotes and fiction writing.

But I have to start somewhere and so I’ve been prioritizing the fiction writing this week.  And I’ll continue with that plan going forward.  So, while I’m adjusting there may be some dry spells on the site.  Nothing drastic just some less busy periods.  But once I get the hang of this new routine, I expect things will return to about the same output in terms of posts and other content.  The only difference will be that repetitive rants should be way, way down.

But that won’t change the fact that Joe Biden sucks.

And now having said that I return you to end of western civilization already in progress.  Have a nice day.

On Parenthood

photog Current Events, Reclaiming the Family ,

Matt Walsh got into an argument with some randos that wanted to make the point that being a parent was hard work and totally a bad deal.  Well they long ago have blocked the thread from their side.  Walsh has made some good points about the value of being a parent and many people have reinforced his statements with equally mature and measured opinions.  I think it’s true that some people shouldn’t be parents.  But I base that on the well-being of the children who end up with immature and selfish parents.  That is a sin.

 

 

What Are the Best Science Fiction Movies?

photog Movie Reviews, Reviews, Science Fiction / Fantasy, SF&F Movie Reviews , , , ,

Reviewing Aliens and hearing from folks who remembered it fondly got me thinking about what readers here consider the best sci-fi movies.  So, of course, I went to YouTube.  And here’s the list.

  1. The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
  2. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
  3. Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991)
  4. Aliens (1986)
  5. Jurassic Park (1993)
  6. The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)
  7. The Matrix (1999)
  8. Children of Men (2006)
  9. Planet of the Apes (1968)
  10. The War of the Worlds (1953)

Now, right off the bat, I disagree with several of the picks.  Neither “Planet of the Apes” or “The Day the Earth Stood Still” would be on my top ten movies list.  Planet of the Apes isn’t my idea of a sci-fi movie.  And The Day the Earth Stood Still is commie propaganda.  So, there’s that.

Some of the other movies are pretty good ones.  Now as for the order and any additional movies to pad out the top ten I’ll have to give it some thought.  But I think it’s a good talking paper to inspire discussion of what each of us considers to be good sci-fi movies.

Now here’s another list (see below).  This is IMDB’s “TOP 100 Sci-Fi Movies of All Time.”  There are a few commonalities between the top ten of this list with the former list.  But one interesting thing I noticed is that once you get past the top of the list the sequels start piling up.  Between sequels to “Back to the Future,” “Planet of the Apes,” “Predator,” “Jurassic Park,” “Star Trek” “Alien,” “Terminator” and “Star Wars” we’re looking at a lot of retreads.

What it made me think was that there really aren’t that many really good science fiction movies.  There are definitely a lot more good science fiction books than there are good movies.  Which I guess is kind of hopeful if you’re an optimist.  For instance, I saw that they’ve made a movie out of Asimov’s Foundation stories.  I saw the coming attractions.  Honestly, I couldn’t tell anything about it at all.  It could be great.  It could be awful.  But at least it’s a new movie.  It’s not a sequel.

So, I guess being a science fiction movie fan is all about being an optimist.  And in the larger world of science fiction/fantasy movies we were rewarded in the early 2000s with the Lord of the Rings movies.  So that tells me miracles can happen.  Maybe one day a true fan of Heinlein will reboot “Starship Troopers” without the nazi iconography or might even film “Have Spacesuit Will Travel.”

So, this will be an open thread to get some comments.  If you’d like to give your top sci-fi movie list or what story you’d like to see filmed in the future put it in the comments.  Later on, I’ll add some more of my own thoughts on what is a proper science fiction movie and what isn’t.

A last question for the audience.  Is “Escape from New York” really science fiction?

 

  1. 2001: A Space Odyssey
  2. The Terminator
  3. Planet of the Apes
  4. Alien
  5. Blade Runner
  6. Terminator 2: Judgment Day
  7. The Matrix
  8. Back to the Future
  9. Aliens
  10. Interstellar
  11. Contact
  12. Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back
  13. The Road Warrior
  14. Predator
  15. The Thing
  16. The Man from Earth
  17. Edge of Tomorrow
  18. District 9
  19. Dark City
  20. Blade Runner 2049
  21. A Clockwork Orange
  22. Gattaca
  23. Jurassic Park
  24. Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith
  25. Mad Max
  26. Starship Troopers
  27. Minority Report
  28. 12 Monkeys
  29. Inception
  30. Back to the Future Part II
  31. Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope
  32. The Abyss
  33. Looper
  34. T. the Extra-Terrestrial
  35. Star Trek: First Contact
  36. Stargate
  37. Ex Machina
  38. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
  39. The Truman Show
  40. Children of Men
  41. The Martian
  42. Avatar
  43. Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi
  44. The X Files
  45. Close Encounters of the Third Kind
  46. Rise of the Planet of the Apes
  47. Cube
  48. Star Trek
  49. RoboCop
  50. The Time Machine
  51. Invasion of the Body Snatchers
  52. War for the Planet of the Apes
  53. Prometheus
  54. Total Recall
  55. They Live
  56. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
  57. Sunshine
  58. Moon
  59. Super 8
  60. I Am Legend
  61. Signs
  62. The Fly
  63. Escape from New York
  64. Pacific Rim
  65. Dredd
  66. Oblivion
  67. Cloverfield
  68. Pitch Black
  69. Godzilla
  70. Back to the Future Part III
  71. Limitless
  72. Deja Vu
  73. War of the Worlds
  74. The Matrix Reloaded
  75. Elysium
  76. Enemy Mine
  77. The Butterfly Effect
  78. Predestination
  79. I. Artificial Intelligence
  80. Logan’s Run
  81. Another Earth
  82. Independence Day
  83. The Arrival
  84. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines
  85. Predators
  86. Outlander
  87. John Carter
  88. Alien³
  89. The Lost World: Jurassic Park
  90. Phenomenon
  91. Predator 2
  92. Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones
  93. Riddick
  94. Cloud Atlas
  95. Armageddon
  96. The Running Man
  97. The Fifth Element
  98. Waterworld
  99. The Day After Tomorrow
  100. Mimic