One of the classics of science fiction is The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951). In this film the alien Klaatu comes to earthwith the warning that humanity must decide to live in peace or face global annihilation brought about through a race of robots such as Gort, Klaatu’s intergalactic traveling companion. This classic has been [...]
I was a young child when I first discovered the fantastic through television broadcasts of science fiction films. These became sources that fueled my fears and fed my imagination. My fears took shape through films like Invaders From Mars (1953) with the images of aliens burrowing underground and mind control devices drilled into the base of human [...]
The discussion list for the Popular Culture and American Culture Associations included an item recently of interest to TheoFantastiqe. Ithica College is hosting a Rod Serling conference in October 2009. As the college event’s website describes the event:
Picture, if you will, a place where communication students can study the creative work of one of the [...]
Sean Cubitt is Director of the Media and Communications Program at The University of Melbourne. With Zaiudin Sardar he is the co-editor of Aliens R Us: The Other in Science Fiction Cinema (Pluto Press, 2002). As the subtitle indicates, this volume looks at various expressions of science fiction and how the genre has served as a [...]
The other day a memory of 1970s television came to mind in the form of a science fiction tale, but I couldn’t remember the name of the program. Thank goodness for the Internet and Google. A quick search under “Angie Dickinson” and “Lloyd Bridges,” connected to “1970s television” produced the result I was hoping for. [...]
I’m a little late in promoting this information from a press release from Fox announcing the Blue-Ray DVD release of Planet of the Apes this November. I am a huge fan of the franchise as a formative one in my childhood interaction with sci fi, and last night’s research in trying to track down Eric [...]
The League of Tana Tea Drinks (LOTT D) elite group of blogging horrorheads is putting together another unity blog, and one of the topics for discussion involved an invitation to complete the following sentence: “The problem with today’s horror movies is…” Contributors were given the opportunity to finish this sentence in keeping with its negative connotation, or take another [...]
2008 Film & History Conference
“Film & Science: Fictions, Documentaries, and Beyond,” October 30-November 2, 2008, Chicago, Illinois, www.uwosh.edu/filmandhistory
Second-Round Deadline: September 1, 2008
Area: Cinematic Extraterrestrials
As film made its way into 20th-century popular culture, depictions of extraterrestrial aliens became more prolific and specialized, eventually becoming fixed in the imagination as cultural archetypes, while varying significantly in physical, [...]
My personal story in terms of involvement with the fantastic goes back to a viewing of The Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) on television. I was probably six or seven at the time, but this experience hooked me in terms of fascination with science fiction, fantasy, and horror. Soon after watching this program [...]
In a previous post I let readers know about a relatively recent book titled Cylons in America: Critical Studies in Battlestar Galactica (Continuum Publishing Group, 2007), which won the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association’s award for Best Edited Collection on Popular Culture for 2008. The book is edited by Tiffany Potter and C. W. [...]
