Proxima is the second feature length movie by independent Spanish film maker Carlos Atanes. Both Proxima and his first film, FAQ (2004), have done the rounds of the independent film festivals and garnered much praise and many awards. Filmed in digital video HDV these are small-budget movies, but don't be put off by that: Atanes’ writing more than makes up for the limitations and constraints imposed by a small budget. Science fiction is the genre of ideas, but increasingly it is to independent film makers such as Atanes that we must turn for novelty and intelligence (and if any better proof were needed for this, you couldn't go past Shyamalan's latest and most abysmal offering, The Happening, which is utterly devoid of novelty and intelligence in spite of its large budget!).

We were fortunate to get hold of a review copy of this movie last year - if you didn't get to see it at one of the festivals, the good news is that it's now available on DVD (Region 0, PAL or NTSC) and can be purchased directly from the Proxima website. The DVD includes a 52 minute making of documentary.

You can read our review of Proxima here.  

For those of us who think of Philip K. Dick as the most important and influential writer of science fiction in the twentieth century, one of the more exciting movie projects announced last year was The Owl in Daylight, a biopic that promises to interweave an account of Dick’s life with elements of his fiction. Starring Paul Giamatti in the role of Phil Dick and with a screenplay by Tony Grisoni this project has a lot of credibility. Grisoni (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas) would seem to be a good choice to capture Dick’s complex life and ideas.

There is, of course, a quite different perspective on this project: how do Phil's family and friends feel about it? These are not distant spectators, and they aren’t characters in the story of his life, but participants with their own lives, and while some are clearly supportive, one at least has reservations. In an SFFMedia exclusive, Tessa Dick, Phil’s wife until 1977, revealed her concerns.

“This biopic promises to present another fantasy of drug-induced paranoia sprinkled with peppery females who drag the great author down into the gutter," she said.

"Philip K. Dick spent months working out the plots for his novels, and the fastest he ever typed one out was one week. The typing, however, is not the writing. He agonized over every detail of every character and the events through which his protagonist must struggle. Someone reminded me that I was interviewed for this film about a year ago, but that conversation was so brief and so directed that they learned very little. The interviewer simply wanted to confirm his own theories, not to gather facts. I shudder at the thought of such a complex personality, as Phil really was, being condensed and portrayed as a caricature of himself.”

The Happening is awful. The writer and director of the science fiction and fantasy classics Unbreakable and The Sixth Sense, along with the enjoyable Signs and The Village, has hit rock bottom. With plot holes as wide as the Grand Canyon, acting that is disturbingly bad, miscast actors and scenes of supposed horror that are incredibly funny rather than disturbing, M. Night Shyamalan’s touch appears to have deserted him entirely.

A reviewer who read the original shooting script called it dreadful, but the actual movie is so much worse. After walking out of the cinema I felt I’d witnessed an excellent director artistically implode. What was he thinking? What was the studio thinking? Did anyone edit the script? Did anyone notice how bad the performances were and try to correct them?

The dialogue is clunky, obvious and at times ridiculous. The story’s premise that “the trees are out to get us”, causing everyone to commit suicide, never gets off the ground (or makes much sense either). Everyone keeps saying “it’s happening” every three minutes and there is so much plot exposition you wonder if the actors mistook the scene descriptions for dialogue.

Mark Walberg as a teacher just doesn’t work. His opening class room dialogue where he asks his students “where could the bees have possibility gone?” is so kooky and unbelievable I got the impression he was supposed to be playing a teacher on the edge of some type of nervous breakdown.

Forget Reepicheep, the swashbuckling mouse: if anyone put in a valiant effort during The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, it was me. I wanted to enjoy this movie, I gave it my best shot, and I failed. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe (2005), director Andrew Adamson's first go at bringing Narnia to the big screen, was good fun and my expectation of the sequel wasn’t unrealistic. Many of the elements that worked in the first movie are present in Prince Caspian and there’s more than enough novelty in the sequel to justify its existence (which is more than can be said for many sequels), so I’ve been puzzling over why enjoyment eluded me. We can’t keep blaming Peter Jackson for setting the benchmark so high that all fantasy movies these days are left floundering in the wake of his Lord of the Rings trilogy. No, in the end, blame lies with Adamson's movie itself, and with C.S. Lewis’ novel.

The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe ends with the return of Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy to England after many years ruling Narnia. As adults they step through the wardrobe only to find themselves children once more: time flows differently in Narnia and only moments have passed in England. One year later they are called back to Narnia and discover that 1300 years have passed in their absence. Everything has changed and for the worst. A human race called the Telmarines has colonised the land and ruthlessly banished the Narnia of old to the borders of memory where it is little more than the stuff of myth and legend. Young Prince Caspian is rightful heir to the Telmarine throne but his Uncle Miraz has other plans and with the birth of a son, Caspian is an obstacle to be removed. Caspian flees, discovers that the mythological Narnians do exist and are in need of a leader to help them reclaim their place in the world. As the enemy of their enemy (and a Son of Adam too - any human will do when it comes to talking beasts) Caspian might just be the one. But they are no match for Miraz and in a moment of desperation Caspian sounds Queen Susan’s magic horn, calling the four Kings and Queens of old back to the land and together they rise up against the Telmarine oppressors.

If Walt Disney Animation Studios was ever going to adapt a Philip K. Dick story for the big screen, it was going to be The King of the Elves. Though not the only fantasy Dick wrote, it is very Disney friendly. A digital 3-D animation, King of the Elves will be the Studio’s 50^th feature. The team responsible for Brother Bear, producer Chuck Williams, and directors Aaron Blaise and Robert Walker, are helming the project. Wallace Wolodarsky wrote the screenplay (he wrote and produced some 50 episodes of The Simpsons), and David Arquette is the only cast announcement so far.

Disney describes the story as a:

...fantastic and imaginative tale about an average man living in the Mississippi Delta, whose reluctant actions to help a desperate band of elves leads them to name him their new king. Joining the innocent and endangered elves as they attempt to escape from an evil and menacing troll, their unlikely new leader finds himself caught on a journey filled with unimaginable dangers and a chance to bring real meaning back to his own life.

The French production company Celluloid Dreams has obtained the movie rights to Philip K. Dick's science fiction novel Ubik.

Ubik will join a growing list of Philip K. Dick novels and short stories that have been adapted into big screen movies (some badly, others brilliantly). Past movie adaptations include Blade Runner, Total Recall, Screamers, Imposter, Minority Report, and A Scanner Darkly.

While a movie version of Dick’s masterwork Ubik is excellent news for fans of quality science fiction, its themes of regression and restoration, death and decay, the real and unreal, are likely to present challenges for any director hoping to capture the novel's complexity.

First published in 1969, Ubik tells the story of Joe Chip, a debt-ridden technician for a telepathic organisation that employs people with the ability to block certain psychic powers so they can secure other people's privacy. The novel is set in a world where psychic phenomena are commonplace.

Glen Runciter, the head of this telepathic organisation, is assisted by his deceased wife Ella, who is kept in a state of "half-life", a form of cryonic suspension. Someone in "half-life” has limited consciousness and communication ability, which slowly fades over time. Glen Runciter’s main adversary, Ray Hollis, heads another organisation of psychics.

Jaded consumers and reviewers that we are at SFFMedia it’s not often that movie news gets the heart beating fast. Now and then it does, and it’s been racing since we learned of plans to bring Dan Simmons’ multi award winning Hyperion Cantos and Michael Moorcock’s Elric to the big screen. If you’re familiar with either of these icons of science fiction (Hyperion) and fantasy (Elric), you’ll probably understand our excitement.

Then again you might be terrified by the prospect of what Hollywood will do to them.

The Hugo Award winning Hyperion (1989) and its sequel Fall of Hyperion (1990) are intelligent, literary SF at its best. For sheer imaginative force and an abundance of literary and philosophical references Hyperion has few peers. Perhaps most notable of these nods to literature was Simmons use in Hyperion of the formal structure of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales: in the far future a group of travellers are on pilgrimage to the Time Tombs of the planet Hyperion, where they will make a request of the mysterious and monstrous Shrike. The Shrike guards the Time Tombs and likes nothing more than to impale pilgrims on iron thorns on the Tree of Pain: only one pilgrim is ever spared and their request fulfilled. Within this framing story, each pilgrim tells their tale, adding something more to our understanding of why they have undertaken this seemingly suicidal pilgrimage. By the cliff-hanger ending of Hyperion we are left with more questions than answers, many of which are resolved in Fall of Hyperion. It is probably for this reason that the movie will attempt to cover both books.

I've just watched Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and quite frankly I'm amazed. Firstly I'm amazed that Steven Spielberg and George Lucas could expect anyone to suspend their disbelief at such a level for so long and not either laugh out loud or scream internally. Secondly I'm amazed that a movie with so many plot holes, messy scripting and impossible action sequences is still enjoyable.

Only keep reading if you don't mind spoilers.

Here are a few things Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull has taught me: if you happen to stumble onto a nuclear test site, all you have to do to survive is find a fridge, preferably a fridge with the words "Lead lined" written on the outside, pull out a few shelves, jump inside and shut the door. While the following nuclear blast will obliterate the house the fridge is in, and everything around it for miles, you'll be okay because the fridge will launch itself into the sky and rocket itself outside the danger zone entirely. The fridge will land with a titanic thud, but you'll still be able to open the door and walk away with just a few scratches. You'll even have time to watch the mushroom cloud. It's that easy. Forget fall out shelters, people should have been constructing fridges. You'll have to have a long shower afterwards though to wash away the radiation.

Director Roland Emmerich regularly tries to wipe out the human race. Three of his movies have been big budget apocalyptic extravaganzas where a natural disaster or an external force tries to kill everybody. What’s wrong with the guy?

It looks like his genocidal tendencies have got the better of him again with the upcoming apocalyptic disaster movie 2012, which, according to Reuters, will star John Cusack and co-star British actor Chiwetel Ejiofor.

In Emmerich's Independence Day aliens came to visit and they weren’t playing nice, a global winter nearly froze our brains in The Day after Tomorrow, while an irritated lizard creature called Godzilla went nuts in the movie of the same name. Fortunately, on all three occasions the human race managed to scrape through. Now we’re in for it again, this time in the year 2012 (so brace yourself, 2012 is not very far away).

“It will be very expensive,” said Emmerich of 2012, “you see the whole world go to shit".

Which doesn’t sound good, does it?

According to Variety, the original 1986 Highlander movie starring Christopher Lambert and Sean Connery is set to be remade by Summit Entertainment, who hope to kick start a new series of big budget Highlander movies.

"I have always dreamed of reinventing this franchise," said Patrick Wachsberger, Summit's co-chairman and president.

Featuring immortal fighters battling throughout history for a legendary "prize", director Russell Mulchay's Highlander was an excellent piece of fantasy entertainment. Immortals only die by decapitation and can only avoid battle on holy ground.

The sequence set in 1541, where Connor MacLeod (Christopher Lambert) is tutored by an older immortal, Juan Sanchez Villa-Lobos Ramírez (Sean Connery), is particularly memorable. Ramírez appoints himself MacLeod's tutor in the ways of being Immortal, their pursuit of the "Prize", the rules of the "Game", and the time of "The Gathering", when the remaining immortals will come together for one final time. If you've watched the original movie, I doubt you'll forget that "in the end, there can be only one"! You may also remember Lambert and Connery running barefoot along a beach feeling "The quickening" running through their veins.

It seems to be science fiction and fantasy remake mania lately: a new Land of the Lost movie, a Blake’s 7 TV remake, The Day the Earth Stood Still with Keanu Reeves, where will it end? Everything old is new again.

Is it my imagination or are superheroes carrying the load for Hollywood these days? Just consider the output from Marvel Studios. By my calculation they've averaged two superhero movies a year since 2000, a figure that will climb to four per year over the next four years, with an incredible five releases in 2010 alone! 

Suffering from the pointless remake syndrome and a secondary dose of serialitis, Hollywood has needed a creative shot in the arm for ages, but are these movies the cure? Marvel may appear to be a bottomless well of ideas and filmic inspiration and there’s no denying that its universe is populated by a wide range of characters in diverse settings but let’s be honest, the story lines and character development in superhero movies almost invariably follow the same tired pattern. The same can be said of DC Comics' superhero offerings.

Don’t get me wrong, there have been some excellent movies in this genre. Spiderman and the X-Men have spawned memorable movies (serialitis aside) and Batman Returns was truly outstanding, breathing new life into an ailing genre. But while some believe you can never have enough superhero movies, I’m not one of them. Yes, I am looking forward to The Dark Knight, but come on, there’s so much more interesting and original material out there to bring to the big screen! (Did someone mention Dan Simmon’s Hyperion Cantos, Michael Moorcock’s Elric, Terry Brook’s Shannara?)

Anyway, as always happens when I climb onto my high horse, I’ve been knocked off it, flat on my face, this time by the news that Marvel Comics' Thor is coming to the big screen as a live-action movie!

Due out 12 December 2008, Keanu Reeves’ big budget remake of the 1951 science fiction classic The Day the Earth Stood Still has all the right ingredients to be his biggest hit since The Matrix. First announced in February 2007, the production is hotting up.

"It's looking good," Keanu recently told Stuff.nz while promoting his latest movie Street Kings.

“It's a great cast: Jennifer Connolly, Kathy Bates, myself, John Cleese, Jayden Smith, and I think we did a great job.”

He said he had finished filming his scenes a month ago and the rest of the filming was completed in April.

So what’s this new version about? Are we looking at another classic or a disastrous Hollywood star studded remake? And how will it differ from the original 1951 science fiction classic directed by Robert Wise?

Reeves told Stuff.nz that he had a lot of input into the script. He said he had worked with the writer and director for almost two months to get the movie right. He also praised the original.

"If you haven't seen The Day The Earth Stood Still I recommend it. I didn't jump into a remake of a classic".

Keanu Reeves stars as the extraterrestrial visitor “Klaatu”, along with his giant 8-foot robotic pal called “Gort”. Contrary to some early Internet rumours they haven’t removed Gort from the remake. Possessing dazzling technological power, Gort was a mysterious and eerie presence in the original movie.

"Gort's there,” Keanu said. “You gotta have Gort. That's like making a peanut butter sandwich with no peanut butter."

A trailer for the second X-files movie, X-files: I want to believe, has been released.

The first thing you'll notice is that Billy Connolly appears to have a major role in the new movie. While X-files creator Chris Carter hasn't released many plot details, we do know that Connolly plays a priest at the centre of a supernatural occurrence. He helps FBI Special Agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) in their investigations. At first glance you may also believe that Daniel Craig of James Bond fame has joined the cast, but unfortunately its Callum Keith Rennie. He does look like him though. Perhaps that was the idea?

It will be great to see Connolly in another major movie role. He’s underrated as a serious actor, probably because he's such a great comedian. The trailer shows Connolly's character leading a team of FBI agents through the snow. At one point he cries out: "I know she's out there!".

As we previously reported, there’s no sign of the alien elements that were so dominant in the first X-files movie, this one will be strictly Earth bound. According to Chris Carter the movie will focus on Mulder's internal struggle with his faith.

While George Lucas and Steven Speilberg have been trying to keep details of the new Indiana Jones film, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, close to their chests, an early negative review has appeared on Ain't it Cool news.

"This is the Indiana Movie that you were dreading," wrote a user who calls himself ShogunMaster. "I remember seeing the two trailers and though I was excited to see the old man in action again, I was kind of worried that they seemed to be missing 'something'. That something was tension. During the whole of the movie, there was not a single moment that I thought our hero Mr. Jones (actually Colonel Jones as he was a hero in WWII now) was in any sort of peril or even significant inconvenience. In most cases, you were so many steps ahead of the characters that it was really just an arduous wait for them to get through it."

Despite claiming that Revenge of the Sith would be the last big-screen production set in the Stars Wars universe, George Lucas will be releasing another big screen movie titled The Clone Wars in August this year. However, this one’s an animated movie. Does that count?  The new movie will be followed immediately by a new animated TV series with the same name. According to the Star Wars website each episode will be a 30-minute "mini-movie", with Jedi Knights battling villains such as Count Dooku and General Grievous.

"I felt there were a lot more Star Wars stories left to tell," Lucas said in an official press release. "I was eager to start telling some of them through animation and, at the same time, push the art of animation forward."

Key characters such as Obi-Wan Kenobi, Anakin Skywalker, Padme Amidala, Yoda, along with R2-D2 and C-3PO return in cartoon form to battle dark forces once more.

Marvel Comics, that seemingly bottomless well of ideas and filmic inspiration, has done it again with its most recent adaptation for the screen of a comic book superhero. Iron Man, directed by Jon Favreau and starring Robert Downey Jr, is superb entertainment. As long as you don’t think too hard. The hyperbolic action and special effects we’ve come to expect don’t disappoint, but it’s the wit of Downey’s performance (much like Christian Bale’s presence in Batman Returns) that reassures us that action and special effects are back where they belong, in the story teller’s tool kit: actors are reclaiming centre-stage.

The reviews have been overwhelmingly positive, with Rotten Tomatoes giving it a rating of 93%. It's no surprise that the box office too has been kind: in its opening weekend in the US Iron Man grossed US$100 million, one of only ten movies to have done so, with a further US$97 million generated elsewhere. Industry analyst Jeff Bock of Exhibitor Relations smells a franchise in the making:

"Expect to see an announcement about a three-picture deal for Iron Man any day now. Anytime a film opens in the top 10 of all-time it means you've got a hit on your hands."

Good news for the fans. And let’s face it, it’s all good fun.

The second trailer for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (Indiana Jones IV) is now online. You can watch trailer number 2 on the official Indiana Jones website here. While there is no sign of the aliens suggested by the Roswell reference in the first trailer, there is plenty of the Indiana Jones style action we've come to expect: Jones is in search of an artefact (the crystal skull) in an exotic location (the jungles of Peru) and is pursued by a group who want the same artefact (cold war Russians led by Cate Blanchett).

You can watch other short videos from the movie's production on the official site too.

It won't be long before we see whether this latest Indiana Jones movie lives up to the hype and the excellent standard of its predecessors. Will they be able to top Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade with Sean Connery? Let's hope they do. 

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull stars Harrison Ford, Cate Blanchett, Karen Allen and Ray Winstone, and is due out 22 May worldwide.

USA Today reports that a comic big screen adaptation of the 1970’s TV show Land of the Lost starring Will Ferrell is being filmed by Universal Studios.

Land of the Lost is “going to be kind of hopefully Jurassic Park in terms of the quality,” Will Ferrell told ComingSoon.net "It's not going to be so much a spoof. It's going to be as real as possible and hopefully funny.”

He also joked that it's going to be like "The English Patient, but with horribly frightening realistic dinosaurs. In fact, we only survive for 12 minutes of the film. It's going to be more like a nature documentary."

Will Ferrell’s friend, Adam McKay, who directed two of Ferrell's biggest hits, Anchorman and Talladega Nights, won’t be directing this time round, unfortunately having to choose between Land of the Lost and the upcoming comedy Step Brothers in which Ferrell also stars. 

In the original Land of the Lost TV show, while on a rafting trip, an earthquake sends Rick Marshall, his son Will and daughter Holly, plummeting down a huge waterfall into the Land of the Lost. It’s a land of dinosaurs, ape-men, and best of all, the evil Sleestak, insect/lizard like humanoids.

Ferrell plays a disgraced palaeontologist in the remake, with an assistant (Anna Friel) and a macho tour guide (comedian Danny McBride).

For those who weren’t aware, William Gibson’s seminal work of Cyberpunk, Neuromancer, is being filmed. This is great news!

Except, of course, it’s neither news nor, when you weigh up the facts, is it great.

An announcement last year named Peter Hoffman as producer and Joseph Kahn as director, with another announcement this year that Haydn Christensen would be in the lead role as Case, the novel’s washed up hacker protagonist. A budget of US$70 was pulled out of the hat, which is neither ridiculously high nor ridiculously low, giving the whole thing a ring of authenticity. IMDB lists the movie as in pre-production with a 2009 release, but here’s the thing: nobody involved with the project has a word to say about it. Not the producer, director or leading man.

I don’t know about you, but that seems mighty odd to me. You’d think that participation with this groundbreaking classic of SF would warrant some noise by those involved: how many novels win the Nebula Award, the Philip K. Dick Award, and the Hugo Award? But there’s no mention of it on Kahn’s website, nothing on any of the many sites dedicated to Christensen and not a word from Hoffman. William Gibson, who like most authors (with the notable exception of J.K. Rowling, it seems) relinquished any say in the matter when he sold the rights to the novel, is suitably philosophical about it: “Myself, I'll be willing to entertain the idea that Neuromancer is really ‘headed for the big screen’ when I'm watching it being shot. As the old saying goes, I'll believe it when I see it.”

If you’re a fan of Middle-earth, it won’t be long before there’s more to see on the big screen. Peter Jackson’s two Hobbit movies are gathering pace, with Guillermo del Toro confirmed as director of The Hobbit and its sequel.

Based on J.R.R Tolkien’s novel, The Hobbit tells the story of Bilbo Baggins’ adventures with Gandalf and a troop of dwarves, during which he discovers the Ring of Power, while The Hobbit sequel, as previously reported, will focus on the 60-year period between The Hobbit and The Fellowship of the Ring, the first of Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Guillermo del Toro’s previous movies include the live action comic book inspired fantasy Hellboy, and the critically and commercially successful fantasy Pan’s Labyrinth. Pan’s Labyrinth was the highest grossing Spanish language film in U.S. box office history.

This seems like a great choice for Jackson, Guillermo del Toro has demonstrated with Hellboy that he can direct an effects laden production, while Pan’s Labyrinth shows that he can also create a fantasy work with critical appeal, both of which will likely serve him well on the two new Hobbit movies. What better result than a commercially successfully fantasy movie with critical clout?