Best Sci-Fi Tournament -- Round 1, Group O

[fernandito]

Contest threads still on their first page are all so hard for me to view with my DROID ever since my polite request to spoiler-tag groups of videos was ignored.

I do apologize for the inconvenience, but after I did that and tried viewing them on my iPad, the videos within spoilers were distorted. They didn't fit within the spoiler field and so part of one side was cut off.

I think we'll do without the trailers for the second phase, I too experience difficulty while trying to view on my iphone.

[mae]

Right, trailers aren't needed again, and I didn't post them for the second round of the Horror tournament either. Anyone wishing to watch the trailer can quickly find the Round 1 poll with the movie. Maybe going forward we can list which films were in which group originally.

[mae]

The reason for the trailers is that I tried to find the best and most representative (and best quality, so HD where available) trailers, so that folks could get a good quick overview of the entire group, especially if they don't know some films or don't recall them very well.

[pathoftheturtle]

It is a nice contribution in general. Just slows loading too much all the times that you're not specifically looking for them.

[Iwritecode]

I can't see videos with my POS work computer and it's out-dated browser so it's no big deal to me either way. Anytime someone posts a video, it just looks like a blank post to me.

[Heather19]

I absolutely loved About Time, but don't consider it sci-fi at all so I couldn't vote for it.

Well it does have time travel. What would you consider that to be, fantasy, magic realism?

A romantic comedy/drama with maybe a little bit of fantasy mixed in. But I would never consider it a full on fantasy film either. Just because time travel is involved doesn't make it sci-fi to me.

[Still Servant]

The reason for the trailers is that I tried to find the best and most representative (and best quality, so HD where available) trailers, so that folks could get a good quick overview of the entire group, especially if they don't know some films or don't recall them very well.

The trailers are a great addition to the tournament, Pablo. Thanks for linking them all. I'm a sucker for trailers and it's great to watch a trailer for a film that I'm not familiar with. Hell, I love watching some of the trailers for films I love and have seen dozens of times.

Also, I never realized how many people used their phones/tablets to browse the site. Interesting.

[Randall Flagg]

Why not just post the link to the trailer? The link shouldn't slow loading. You could also embed the link in the still shot for each movie.

[Mattrick]

Can't we just post the URL without embedding it? Best of both worlds.

[fernandito]

All options will be considered.

[mae]

Utterly surprised by the votes for Demolition Man. To me it's a really bad '90s flick. Suppose it's that so-bad-it's-good variety?

No one dares explain themselves?

[Mattrick]

Demolition Man is awesome. I mean, it takes place in a world where Taco Bell won the restaurant wars so now every restaurant is a Taco Bell (that happens to serve 5 star, gourmet, cuisine and offer a rich dining experience). And it has Denis Leary playing his stand up character as a loud mouth abrassive man who wants to smoke, fuck and eat red meat (and he's a hero!). The mystery of how the three seashells work is perhaps the single greatest mystery in the history of film, a mystery that shall never be answered. It's like a super, futuristic world built in the image of the Cleaver Family's value; kissing and sex is bad and illegal, cops are basically all 'aw shucks mister' at any given time and seeming omnipotent computer systems issue you tickets for being a potty mouth (which reeks havoc on the foul-mouth, fornicating, ass-kicking cops/robbers of the past who are now in this future) and where murder and seemingly any kind of death are so alien to the society they can't even decide what to call it so they use the triple term of 'Murder Death Kill'. It's an interesting view of a dystopian society which seems so blissfully utopian until we discover the hedonistic sewer dwellers who believe the joy in life (or humanity) comes from doing the things the society above decreed to be bad and made illegal. Demolition man is many things; an enjoyable action film, a humourous comedy and an engaging sci-fi film and it relies equally on these three things not to be overbearing i.e., there's enough thought/commentary in it for it to be a clever satire of totalitarian political correctnesss, exciting enough to be an action flick (or old school action flick now) and enough solid laughs the keep the film from every really losing any steam. This is also one of the last movie Wesley Snipes made before he played Blade and just became a complete douchebag, or, as it's been said, he was Blade on and off the set, a dick.

I've now explained myself lol

[fernandito]

What Matt said ^ (because I'm too lazy to type right now)

[pathoftheturtle]

OMG, pablo, you really never heard guys talk about why they like that mess before? I had already heard far more about that years ago than I ever wanted to know!

[mae]

No, I don't think I even seen it since the ninetees.

[Still Servant]

Utterly surprised by the votes for Demolition Man. To me it's a really bad '90s flick. Suppose it's that so-bad-it's-good variety?

No one dares explain themselves?

Can't some of you guys understand that some people love certain movies because we grew up with them and they are a part of our childhood or teen years?

Pablo, I find it hard to believe that there aren't a few bad films that you like that other people think are crap. It's impossible for you (and a few other people on this site) to only like great films.

I have pretty wide taste in film and there are a lot of classics that populate my favorites list, but there are also a few guilty pleasures. So my question to you guys is, what are your guilty pleasures? Film wise, this is a family site.

[Mattrick]

I prefer a well-made, thought provoking film with strong characters and beautiful/atmospheric photography far more than anything else (which is why films like Her, Synecdoche New York, Frailty) are so high on my lists) but I can still enjoy B-movies that are lacking in those sorts of things. I can see how it is hard for some people to distinguish between a good B-movie and a bad B-movie but there is a definite difference between the two that isn't so much in plot particulars or anything specific or scientific but intangibles like passion and ambition that can make films so endearing to me, these are the sorts of things found in both Verhoeven's/Besson's B-Movie work as in the work of greats like Kubrick and Spielberg...you can tell when the people involved care about making the film they want to make. I can only ever judge a film based on what I feel it intended to accomplish and how well it ended up accomplishing it and to me that means I watch certain types of films with different quality requirements than others, you can't judge Austin Powers as you would The Godfather and vice versa. When you find genre pictures that work as genre pictures AND contain the things you look for in non-genre pictures is usually when you get some special films, like Minority Report or 28 Days Later (at least in my opinion). There are three sorts of films to me: films, genre films and films that transcend their genre.

[pathoftheturtle]

I put guilty pleasures in my combos. I know people have them. I can still call them on it. This is why Hollywood stinks.

[mae]

By definition, a guilty pleasure is something you enjoy (a film in this case) that would make you ashamed to admit it. Therefore, by definition, it isn't very good or highly regarded. That said, of course everyone's tastes differ and what some consider crap others love. However, there still is somewhat of an objective consensus and it would be hard to champion a craptastic film for a top-anything list. Obviously, everyone has guilty pleasures and finds good points in those movies. I nominated Puppet Master for the horror tournament fully expecting it to receive only one or two votes. When it received more I was extremely surprised. I love that movie (that childhood influence) but no serious best-of list can have stuff like that on it.

[needfulthings]

QUILTY PLEASURE!

[Mattrick]

Liking a B-Movie for being a B-Movie has nothing to do with guilty pleasures. You want to know a guitly pleasure? Someone actually enjoying Ridley Scott's Another Year or, even worse, Gigli or The Mexican or Runaway Bride or Queen of the Damned. I don't feel guilty for enjoying Demolition Man but I do feel guilty for enjoying Freddy Got Fingered.

[pathoftheturtle]

Sometimes, bad is bad.

I don't always trust what I grew up with, and I'm not sure that objective consensus is really achievable. But for me, Demolition Man, even as a B-Movie, is closer to the pits of Rocky IV than to the camp of Rocky III.

[mae]

Really pleased with the response to The Butterfly Effect. Such a great under-appreciated film (I guess because Kutcher's in it). But it's a really well done sci-fi story.

[pathoftheturtle]

Really pleased with the response to The Butterfly Effect. Such a great under-appreciated film (I guess because Kutcher's in it). But it's a really well done sci-fi story.

Well, it's a natural counterpoint to 12 Monkeys. Some fiction posits time as static -- even if you travel around past and future, every tiny event is fated. Directly opposite are stories presuming time is fluid and essentially unpredictable; tiny variations eventually result in drastic change. An equally uncomfortable notion. Films such as Looper and T2 moderate to some degree of elasticity; the course of events is possible but difficult to alter, thus some measure of control is conceivable. BttF starts outfluid highly fluid but then makes it harder in later chapters for change to cause total catastrophe. Subtly, so as to maintain suspense. Ultimately, though, there's more story in BE than the nerdy premise. They knew they needed a form of destiny to reassert or risk their film being merely formulaic horror. In the director's cut, this involved a controversial gimmick a little too basic and still closely connected to the one idea. I feel the theatrical cut was superior, depicting relatable human experience of inevitability.

[Still Servant]

Really pleased with the response to The Butterfly Effect. Such a great under-appreciated film (I guess because Kutcher's in it). But it's a really well done sci-fi story.

Well, it's a natural counterpoint to 12 Monkeys. Some fiction posits time as static -- even if you travel around past and future, every tiny event is fated. Directly opposite are stories presuming time is fluid and essentially unpredictable; tiny variations eventually result in drastic change. An equally uncomfortable notion. Films such as Looper and T2 moderate to some degree of elasticity; the course of events is possible but difficult to alter, thus some measure of control is conceivable. BttF starts outfluid highly fluid but then makes it harder in later chapters for change to cause total catastrophe. Subtly, so as to maintain suspense. Ultimately, though, there's more story in BE than the nerdy premise. They knew they needed a form of destiny to reassert or risk their film being merely formulaic horror. In the director's cut, this involved a controversial gimmick a little too basic and still closely connected to the one idea. I feel the theatrical cut was superior, depicting relatable human experience of inevitability.

Finally found a bad movie that you seem to like. The Butterfly Effect is awful. I'm shocked so many people voted for it.