Here’s the first official trailer for Disney’s upcoming film, ‘John Carter.’ It’s an odd way to retitle Edgar Rice Burroughs’ science fiction novel, ‘A Princess of Mars.’ But that’s what they’ve done. I don’t imagine there are too many people who will go see a movie named for someone called John Carter. But anything is possible. If you’d like to put up with some very bad writing by Mr. Burroughs, you can listen to Candlelight’s complete audio book version of the novel. I’m not sure why I recorded it at all. Burroughs turned what should have been a short story into a novel by making all of his sentences run the length of football fields.
Category Archives: Science Fiction
Stopover: Animation by Neil Stubbings
I like this fast-paced and funny little cartoon about a driving emergency in outer space. The characters are expressive and silly. The ‘I have to pee urgently’ walk is hysterical. The computer animation has that nice cartoony/drawn look that always catches my eye. Neil Stubbings directed the film for LeMob Animation. Via Neatorama.
Day the World Ended: 1955 Roger Corman Horror Film
‘Day the World Ended’ is a 1955 science fiction horror film directed by Roger Corman. Atomic war has destroyed civilization. A scientist and other survivors must defend themselves against a monster.
Watch parts 3 – 8 after the jump.
Nova Express: Epic Online Film Adaptation of the William S. Burroughs Novel by Andre Perkowski
Filmmaker Andre Perkowski is working on a huge 3 hour plus adaptation of the novel ‘Nova Express‘ by William S. Burroughs. It’s a wild, ragged, disjointed, warped, damaged, serious and funny mashup of found footage, original film and Burroughs’ reading voice along with others. It’s got those incoherently combined sci-fi and thriller elements that Burroughs so easily manipulated as if in a delirium. The film is itself a kind of cutup, mirroring the technique Burroughs used that involved gathering unrelated bits and pieces of other books and newspaper articles to formulate sentences that somehow ramble on without necessarily leading anywhere specific. The novel is about exposing the secrets of those who attempt to control all thought and life with virus-like ideas, machines and drugs.
Perkowski is a filmic oddball who delights in making things that are messy. He draws and collages to create new images, purposely ruining his images to create the unexpected. I think his mental immersion into Burroughs is leading him through his wonderful film with great assurance. Apparently, Perkowski is constantly adding to the film and changing it. He has at least six different ‘drafts’ of the film. As he goes, he posts chunks of the film on his YouTube channel which I happen to think is a fantastic idea. There are similarities between the way he works and the way I work on films like my ‘Yellow Plastic Raygun.’ I have often told people that I suspect the video scrubber button in non-linear video editors that allows a filmmaker to fly through a full length feature film in seconds is perhaps the single most important cinematic tool of the last thirty years. It is this little tool that allows for the searching and matching of cinematic elements that could never have been found in a human lifetime before the non-linear editor. So it leads to entirely new form of cinema. That’s what you are watching here with Perkowski’s film. It is a powerful work of new cinema and may well be the best adaptation of a Burroughs work that I have ever seen.
Here’s a great interview with the filmmaker that focuses on this film.
Part 2
Parts 3 – 10 after the jump…
Continue reading
The Eye Like a Strange Balloon Mounts Toward Infinity: A Film by Guy Maddin
Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin made this short film which is inspired by an 1882 illustration by Odilon Redon that was in turn inspired by the writing of Edgar Allan Poe. It has a kind of wild sinister fantasy about it that fascinates me. I like the way Maddin builds little sets that end up looking almost like illustrations. He also does a quick visual quote of a great old French film called L’Atalante by Jean Vigo. This is a frightening and beautiful dream film.
Podcast Novel: A Princess of Mars (Chapter 28 – Conclusion)
This is the first John Carter of Mars novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the author of the Tarzan books. It was his first novel, published in 1917 and it’s a work of rip-roaring science fiction that has inspired many of the great writers in the genre.
Chapter 28 (Conclusion): We reach the final chapter of our story in which John Carter finds himself on a strange new world.
You can find all the previous chapters of the book here.
You’ll find regular podcasts of all the chapters over the next couple of months. Subscribe to our feed.
Duration: 00:04:28
Read by Alessandro Cima
All audio stories are Copyright © Candlelight Stories, Inc., All Rights Reserved.
Podcast Novel: A Princess of Mars (Chapter 27)
This is the first John Carter of Mars novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the author of the Tarzan books. It was his first novel, published in 1917 and it’s a work of rip-roaring science fiction that has inspired many of the great writers in the genre.
Chapter 27: The martian atmosphere begins to die and John Carter struggles to save an entire planet.
You can find all the previous chapters of the book here.
You’ll find regular podcasts of all the chapters over the next couple of months. Subscribe to our feed.
Duration: 00:11:29
Read by Alessandro Cima
All audio stories are Copyright © Candlelight Stories, Inc., All Rights Reserved.
Podcast Novel: A Princess of Mars (Chapter 26)
This is the first John Carter of Mars novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the author of the Tarzan books. It was his first novel, published in 1917 and it’s a work of rip-roaring science fiction that has inspired many of the great writers in the genre.
Chapter 26: John Carter leads part of the battle to free Helium and Zodanga. He meets the father of Dejah Thoris.
You can find all the previous chapters of the book here.
You’ll find regular podcasts of all the chapters over the next couple of months. Subscribe to our feed.
Duration: 00:13:22
Read by Alessandro Cima
All audio stories are Copyright © Candlelight Stories, Inc., All Rights Reserved.
Podcast Novel: A Princess of Mars (Chapter 25)
This is the first John Carter of Mars novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the author of the Tarzan books. It was his first novel, published in 1917 and it’s a work of rip-roaring science fiction that has inspired many of the great writers in the genre.
Chapter 25: John Carter crashes the wedding ceremony of Dejah Thoris and fights for her.
You can find all the previous chapters of the book here.
You’ll find regular podcasts of all the chapters over the next couple of months. Subscribe to our feed.
Duration: 00:10:52
Read by Alessandro Cima
All audio stories are Copyright © Candlelight Stories, Inc., All Rights Reserved.
Podcast Novel: A Princess of Mars (Chapter 24)
This is the first John Carter of Mars novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the author of the Tarzan books. It was his first novel, published in 1917 and it’s a work of rip-roaring science fiction that has inspired many of the great writers in the genre.
Chapter 24: John Carter crashes in the midst of a battle, finds a friend, and finally confronts Tal Hajus.
You can find all the previous chapters of the book here.
You’ll find regular podcasts of all the chapters over the next couple of months. Subscribe to our feed.
Duration: 00:15:41
Read by Alessandro Cima
All audio stories are Copyright © Candlelight Stories, Inc., All Rights Reserved.
Podcast Novel: A Princess of Mars (Chapter 23)
This is the first John Carter of Mars novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the author of the Tarzan books. It was his first novel, published in 1917 and it’s a work of rip-roaring science fiction that has inspired many of the great writers in the genre.
Chapter 23: John Carter and Kantos Kan escape Zodanga and fly toward the city of Helium to rescue Dejah Thoris.
You can find all the previous chapters of the book here.
You’ll find regular podcasts of all the chapters over the next couple of months. Subscribe to our feed.
Duration: 00:12:06
Read by Alessandro Cima
All audio stories are Copyright © Candlelight Stories, Inc., All Rights Reserved.
Trip to Moon: Bizarre Bollywood Sci-Fi Spectacle
Oh dear! What have we here? This is a Bollywood science fiction (and I use that term very lightly!) film that was apparently made in 1967, though it looks more 1950s to me. It was directed by one T.P. Sundaram. It is ostensibly about an astronaut who gets kidnapped to the moon and then has to fight for the moon princess and her kingdom when martians try to invade. The movie is a roaring low-fi spectacle with songs, fights and cheesy cardboard special effects. Spaceship controls are actually steering wheels. If you want some good advice, skip through to the 2 hour 15 minute mark and just watch the glorious action sequence that closes the film. You will see grown men fighting with giant sparklers aboard a crash-landing spaceship. You’ll see robots, a Cyclops, and two men engaged in a lunar surface wrestling match that makes Captain Kirk look like Bruce Lee’s star pupil. You will then see a rhinoceros. If you are not laughing hard enough to burst a vessel of some sort, then I don’t think anything can be done for you!
Star Trek – Infinite Space: Free Browser Game Preview
This looks pretty good. There’s a new free browser game called ‘Star Trek – Infinite Space‘ coming this summer. You of course get to command either a Star Fleet or a Klingon ship. The explosions look impressive, as do the starships in this little preview.
Short Film: Attackazoids!
Here’s a wild underground science fiction short produced by a company called Robot Hand. This fun and narratively loose assault on the alien invasion/mechanical overlord genre was directed by Brian Lonano and uses old-style lo-fi analog techniques for its special effects. The apparently concerned and helpful robots seem intent on wiping out every last vestige of life on the planet. Maybe they come from Wall Street!
Bad Lit: The Journal of Underground Film has posted more about the filmmakers and festivals showing their work.
Star Trek: Phase II
Start Trek: Phase II is an amazingly expert series of fan films made by and starring James Cawley. Aside, from the new faces playing familiar roles, the show nails the original Star Trek look head on. I mean for goodness sake there’s an entire Enterprise bridge set that is perfect. Everything works! A lot of hard work goes into these films and they serve admirably as new Star Trek episodes. Fantastic.
Here’s the Phase II web site.
With thanks to Paul Gallagher at Dangerous Minds.