“Look. There are are only two truly great science fiction movies. The first is Stanley Kubrick’s 2001…The second is Blade Runner…You may disagree with this statement. You would be wrong. Let’s move on.” Damien Walter at Guardian accuses Hollywood of screwing up science fiction.
Does Hollywood Screw Up Science Fiction?
Lacework
“The plot, obviously, is kind of difficult to explain, like an earnest, pared-down, hipster Foucault’s Pendulum. Not only are all of the plot turns above laid out through a multiframed narrative, replete with several people’s footnotes, but the events are interwoven with disquisitions on the history of map-making, Situationist philosophy, urban planning, and pop music.” At Slate, our own Lydia Kiesling reads Catie Disabato’s The Ghost Network. (ICYMI, Dan Lopez reviewed the book for The Millions.)
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Shhhh!
The sound level of a typical quiet bedroom measures 30 decibels, but what if you still can’t concentrate on your reading? Well, maybe you should move to Minneapolis and use Steven Orfield’s “anechoic chamber,” which at -9 decibels is officially the quietest room in the world.
Fine By Themselves
Was Virginia Woolf right that the Brontës were too isolated? Or were they just as housebound as their art required them to be? In the latest Atlantic, Judith Shulevitz examines the lives of the family, teasing out evidence that they all used loneliness to their benefit.
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“That city in the backseat.”
Recommended Reading: Isle of Youth author Laura van den Berg’s story, “Where Will All the Buildings Go?”
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Tuesday New Release Day: Robinson, Groff, Julavits, Arvin, Leonard
New this week is Marilynne Robinson’s collection of essays When I Was a Child I Read Books. Also out are Arcadia by Lauren Groff, The Vanishers by Heidi Julavits, and The Reconstructionist by Nick Arvin. Finally, the collected writings of the late and beloved critic John Leonard, Reading for My Life, is now out.
Speaking Of Violence
Recommended Reading: This beautiful essay from The Rumpus on the ambivalence of Jewishness and a whole lot more nuance than this Curiosity can communicate. Here’s an essay by Gabriel Brownstein from The Millions on what it means to be labeled as a Jewish writer.
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Jacqueline Woodson on the Joys of Reading Slowly
In a TED talk dedicated to taking the time to appreciate stories, Jacqueline Woodson extols the virtues of reading slowly.
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Always Changing
Recommended Reading: The always hilarious (and very Southern) David Sedaris on shopping in Tokyo and “the perfect fit.”
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Sure, Hollywood screws up science fiction, cuz it cares nothing about the science. But there are a few other excellent sf films — the recent “Moon” and “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” among them.
I’m not a particularly big fan of Science Fiction, but when I read this I almost had a heart attack – immediately excellent films such as A Clockwork Orange, Alphaville, Solaris and Primer came to mind. Then I realized the Guardian piece was just blog/commenter bait. Pffft.
Well it’s not over yet mister is all I could say to him. Albiet Inception was as dull and boring as any movie ever gets…
Still Delany’s Dhalgren and Pohl’s Gateway haven’t even been given a treatment.
I never forget what Mr. Spielberg said, he said he never reads. I think the last book he read was The Color Purple.
Turns out Hollywood doesn’t appear to either. Hopefully the new generation will be more intelligent!