I’ve listen to ‘Little Songs’ a couple of times in the past few days. The first thing that I noticed was the audio improvement compared to his last album. My second takeaway after two listens was that I like all the songs and the flow of the album. I don’t recall a standout cut yet, which gives me the feeling that there may not be one, but I don’t care about hits when I listen to Colter. I like the laid back peaceful honesty in his originals, and his covers are always carefully selected and originally performed. I do miss his previous vocal style, that is what was partially responsible for my becoming a fan, but I respect the fact that he is the leading authority of his instrument and the minor changes he made don’t really affect my listening pleasure very much. He is one gifted vocalist to be sure. And songwriter extraordinaire!, especially in the almost extinct genre he has revived.
I’m a fan, I just ordered the vinyl version of this offering, and I’m looking forward to the next 20, something listens. Colter is the real deal, and has been big favorite of W.B Walkers Old Soul Radio Show for years now. W.B.knows a class act when he hears one, and I like to think sometimes I do too.
I’ve been a fan of Colter Wall since a friend of mine introduced me to his eponymous album, “Colter Wall.” That collection had some very strong songs like Kate McCannon and Bald Butte. And in general, that was a big album. This month I got ahold of his album called “Little Songs.” And that is surely an honest title. The longest title clocks in at 4:32 and the shortest is 2:25. And more than that, none of these songs is big in its impact. They’re quiet, almost subdued.
They’re of the western genre in the country/western alliance and they have the understated manner of the modest inhabitants of the Great Plains, especially the northern expanse of the plains in Canada where Colter Wall hails from. We hear about ranchers and cowboys and farmers and their work and their romances and their blues. But there’s no shouting unless you count a little yodeling in one song.
So, this isn’t a collection to get you all stirred up. It’s quiet and small. I’m a fan of colter Wall so I’ll add these songs to my MP3 player and they’ll leaven my collection of country music with some of the softer notes that provide a counterweight to all the fussing’ and shouting’ that some of my other songs provide. Your mileage. of course, may vary.
This song isn’t in the musical style I prefer but his message speaks to me. And the fact that it’s being attacked by all the wrong people is important. Maybe another trigger of people’s anger against the powers that be.
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.
The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991)
Aliens (1986)
Jurassic Park (1993)
The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)
The Matrix (1999)
Children of Men (2006)
Planet of the Apes (1968)
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?
It’s a funny thing I had never seen Aliens in its entirety until today. Somehow, I missed the first half hour of the movie and only came in when the main action was beginning. So finally, I have the correct basis on which to judge it.
I won’t synopsize the plot because it’s an Alien movie so the plot is for Sigourney Weaver to outlive the rest of her fellow humans battling the aliens before ultimately jettisoning a xenomorph into the vacuum of space.
As in the original “Alien” movie Sigourney Weaver is Ellen Ripley a commercial astronaut who works for the evil Weyland-Yutani Corporation. Fifty-seven years after the first Alien attack Ripley is discovered still in suspended animation in the shuttle craft that she used to escape the destruction of her ship the Nostromo.
The evil Weyland-Yutani Corporation was very unhappy about her blowing up their ship but when they find out that their terra-forming colony on the planet that the alien was found on has gone silent they send “space marines” and Ripley to fix things. They also send Paul Reiser playing smarmy corporate yes man, Carter Burke to provide the requisite “greedy corporation wants xenomorph for bioweapon” subplot. And finally, they throw in an android to show that despite what happened in the first movie, androids can be pretty swell people too.
And finally, to soften up Ripley’s Rambo impression, they throw in an orphaned little girl named Newt that Ripley rescues a few times over the course of the movie, proving that a modern woman truly can have it all.
So, the producers pull out all the stops. Aliens are popping up everywhere in the industrial complex that serves as the venue for this first-person shooter game. Bits of aliens and “molecular acid” are sprayed everywhere and one by one the marine platoon is picked off by the monsters. Until finally we’re down to Ripley, Newt, android and the pick of the Marine crew, Corporal Dwayne Hicks played by the ever-popular Michael Biehn. But during the final rescue of Newt on the planet Hicks is wounded by molecular acid and from then on, all the heavy lifting is done by Ripley. Which she performs with panache, culminating in the above mentioned obligatory spacing of the mother alien (of course there’s a mother alien).
So, what did I think? Well, I have some quibbles. The plot contrives it that the marines can’t use their heaviest weapons because the industrial plant is a “thermonuclear” power plant and if any of their explosive charges rupture a heat exchanger line the whole plant will detonate. Since it’s a cinch that all the colonists (except Newt) are already dead why are they bothering to throw away their lives in this death trap. As Ripley so astutely recommended, “I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.” Also, they overdid it with the strong female characters and weak male ones. Yeah, I know, I know. “There’s nothing wrong with that.” But honestly it is insulting and stupid.
But taken all in all the movie does provide an exciting action-adventure/science fiction/horror experience. I won’t claim it’s my favorite but it is a worthy representative of its genre. I will give it a recommended status.
(Spoiler Alert – Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)
Ad Astra (Latin for “to the stars”) is a science fiction movie starring Brad Pitt as astronaut Roy McBride whose father Clifford McBride (played by a decrepit looking Tommy Lee Jones) is inexplicably firing anti-matter particles back at Earth from the orbit of the planet Neptune. The anti-matter will eventually destroy Earth so Roy is supposed to go to the Moon to catch a ride to Mars to broadcast a message to his father asking him not to destroy Earth, or something. The why and how of all this is very odd. Clifford has been MIA for twenty years on a mission called Lima that was somehow supposed to be looking for extraterrestrial intelligence (from somewhere near Neptune!).
Eventually we learn that Clifford murdered his crew long ago because they figured out, he was crazy. When Roy gives his message on Mars Clifford doesn’t agree to cease and desist so the military outfits a mission to nuke Project Lima to erase the threat. Somehow (but not believably) Roy stows aboard the rocket (after it blasts off) and without really trying he kills the whole crew that were trying to kill him. Now he flies to Neptune and confronts his father who is completely nuts. He sets the nuke and thinks he’s convinced Clifford to return to Earth with him. But when push literally comes to shove, Clifford unshackles himself from Roy and heads off into empty, empty space.
Finally, Roy uses a hatch panel to protect himself while he takes a shortcut through the rings of Neptune and then somehow the nuclear blast that destroyed Project Lima was able to provide most of the kinetic energy to return him to Earth before Roy dies of old age. And despite all the astronauts he killed getting out there the military decides to forgive and forget and so Roy finishes off by reciting some kind of humanistic spiritual affirmation statement of some kind or other and then gets back together with his ex-wife Liv Tyler.
Now maybe that sounds quite odd for a science fiction story. And it is. This is a somewhat confusing rigamarole. So let me give my thoughts on it. The visual effects are quite good. Some scenes in low Earth orbit, the Moon, Mars and aboard spacecraft are a lot of fun to watch. But there are (I kid you not) space monkeys! Which I kinda/hafta frown upon. So, two points off. Brad Pitt’s character starts out as an apparently emotionless robot who always saves the world from disaster without getting his pulse above eighty. By the end he’s crying about his crazy father being crazy. Tommy Lee Jones’ character is crazy so there’s not much there. Donald Sutherland has a small part and he’s always crazy. So, this movie doesn’t make a lot of sense. For instance, how is Tommy Lee Jones investigating other life in the universe from Neptune. Neptune is too incredibly cold for anything to live there. And it’s not like it’s any closer to the stars than Earth. Alright, I’ll stop making fun of the movie. It’s a crazy movie, but like “2001: A Space Odyssey” it’s a visually enjoyable movie if you don’t care too much about the plot. I recommend it for hard-core sci-fi film lovers who can live with space monkeys.
Here is another movie for which I will not provide a spoiler alert. This movie cannot be spoiled. There’s nothing there to spoil.
For whatever reason, more than a few well-known actors and celebrities appeared in this ridiculous film. The star is Bill Murray as Police Chief Cliff Robertson. Adam Driver is Officer Ronnie Peterson, Robertson’s patrol partner. Steve Buscemi is a farmer named Frank Miller. Tilda Swinton is Zelda Winston, a samurai/funeral director/space alien. Danny Glover is a hardware store owner. Selena Gomez is Zoe, “a young traveler.” Rosie Perez plays a tv reporter and Iggy Pop is a coffee guzzling zombie. Carol Kane is a fat bloated drunken zombie who wants a drink. And last but not least, Sturgill Simpson, who also sings the eponymous theme song of the movie (several times) is “Guitar Zombie.” He is this by virtue of a guitar that is dragging behind his foot by the strings as he stumbles zombie-like through the night.
Most of the dialog is Murray and Driver speculating on the steadily increasing zombie body count in what I suppose is supposed to be the stoic tones of small-town cops. They also break the fourth wall from time to time by mentioning what the script said would happen next. And one strange character arc has Tilda Swinton interrupt her zombie slicing work to be picked up by an alien space ship and transported away.
The reason given for the appearance of the walking dead is that the Earth has “fallen off its axis” because of “polar fracking.” Eventually, one by one, or in small groups all the townspeople are eaten by the zombies. Finally Driver informs Murray that the movie ends with them dying while courageously fighting the zombies. So, they get out of their squad car and get to it. And not a moment too soon.
I’m not sure whether this movie had a script or whether the actors just extemporized. There might have been a few moments that were mildly funny. Steve Buscemi is funny even when he doesn’t mean to be. But there aren’t many. And by the middle of the movie, you’re just hoping it ends sooner than later. But it doesn’t. It goes on and on. It’s a very long 103 minutes.
This movie must have an audience. But that audience doesn’t include me.
That post I wrote a few days ago about Disney’s woke movies losing money at the box office and some of the comments I got have inspired me to spend some time looking back at some of the good movies that have been made over the years. What I’ll start out doing is put together a list of categories like comedies, dramas, and genre films like film noir, sci-fi, fantasy, westerns, war movies, etc. Then I’ll start getting people to give me their favorites. We might even divide it by decades or at least eras (30s/40s/50s, 60s/70s, 80s/90s, 00s/10s/20s)
At some point we can get some polls up to find out what the popular favorites are on the site. Now this is tricky. With the exception of some of the regulars, most people are pretty uninterested in commenting. What I was thinking is if you know any movie fans encourage them to show up and contribute movie titles and when we get to the voting to pick their favorites.
Feel free to leave comments on how to enhance the process to get a good list together. I know there are some specialists in such sub-genres as “schlock science fiction” and of course these will not be neglected.
In the next installment Ill start the ball rolling with my own best of lists for the various categories.
Tyler Cook is the blogger known as the Portly Politico. He writes about music, politics and all manner of things from the point of view of his corner of South Carolina. And personally, I think he’s a very good guy.
Tyler has written a book, “Arizonan Sojourn, South Carolinian Dreams” that I would describe as a travelogue. It chronicles his various trips to small towns in his state along with a trip to the Grand Canyon and environs. The writing is a first-person account of the trials and tribulations that go along with travel. Tyler describes the various sights and activities that he partakes in and we get his take on the experience of exploring the environment he sojourns through. There are local festivals and local cuisine and we even travel with him on a river rafting excursion with his girlfriend.
As far as my recommendation, this book is for those who are looking for the Millennial take on the road experience. Tyler enjoys experiencing the small-town world of his neck of the woods. Reading this will provide you with that sensibility.