Jim A.

What are your favorite television shows? I can't say yet what I think are the best I've seen--I'd have to give it some thought--but my favorites are: 1--The Prisoner, from the late Sixties, starring Patrick McGoohan (as "Number 6"); 2--Star Trek, also from the late Sixties, with William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy; 3--The Outer Limits, from the early Sixties; an anthology sci-fi series, which was started up again in the late eighties (?) and early nineties; 4--The Twilight Zone, started in 1959 and ending in 1964 or '65 (the two later Twilight Zone's in the eighties and nineties were completely terrible!); 5--The Fugitive, from the mid-Sixties, with David Jansenn; 6--Hawaii Five-O, started in the mid-Sixties, with Jack Lord; 7--24, with Kiefer Sutherland, at least the first few seasons.

Front: "There is no escape from reality..." Back: "...it'll catch up with you no matter where you go." (I think Johnny or Edgar Winter came up with this one.) Front: "Philosophy is what makes people tick..." Back: "...and sometimes they tick like a bomb." (examples listed on background of back of shirt: 9/11, Andrea Yates, Jim Jones, the Virginia Tech killer, the U.S.S.R., Nazi Germany and others) Front: "THESE ARE THE END TIMES..." Back: "...if you want them to be."

My favorite spy movies are: Just about any early James Bond flick with Sean Connery; I love the James Bond persona Connery portrays; The Manchurian Candidate (the original film, from 1962); I like how the movie explores the possible dangers of mind-manipulation used in espionage against one's country; Where Eagles Dare (1969); more of a spy movie than a war movie; I especially like the who's-who scene in the castle; The Ipcress File (1965); I like Michael Caine's Harry Palmer, a man with a few criminal tendencies, but nevertheless has a moral line he won't cross.

I love the Beatles. I grew up on their music. My favorite song of theirs is "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away"; my second favorite is "Yellow Submarine". YouTube should have the best known videos for them.

I've been in the U.S. military, and there are things I would do the same and things I would do differently if I were to do it all again. I'll just say this: put this decision in terms of a lifetime--your lifetime. Barring accidents, what would you be happy you did today, fifty years from now? A half century from now, will you be able to say that your decision now served your interests, your values, your happiness? Will you be happy you did it--going into the Israeli military, or going straight into trading?

WARNING: MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS (regarding the film CONTACT): Invariably, when I write a list like "The Best Science Fiction Movies of All Time", I forget one or two. So I'd like to add one to that list, and a couple to the "Tempted to Add" list. Quatermass and the Pit (aka in the U.S., Five Million Years to Earth, 1968) belongs on my "Best" list. It is the story of the discovery of an ancient alien spacecraft found buried underneath a London subway station. It's only draw-backs are a short anti-military sermon from the film's main character, Professor Quatermass, and the Kantian premise of innate ideas (a premise found in non-science fiction films as well, such as 1956's The Bad Seed). But it's an intriguing movie with good production values in spite of--and in consideration of--its low budget. To the "Tempted" list, I would add: Invaders from Mars (1953): A mysterious, atmospheric science-fantasy about the arrival of invading Martians, witnessed only by a young boy, whose elders don't believe him. I saw this movie when I was a child myself, and never forgot the image of the backyard fence with the light from the other side of it, and the eerie music. The Expressionistic sets emphasize the boy's inability to reach the grown-ups he's trying to convince--literally. Contact (1997): I'd add this simply because of the tremendously thrilling scene where Jodie Foster is walking the cat-walk into the huge, alien-conceived transport. I was shaking when I first saw it in the theatre--not because I was scared, but because I wanted to be doing what she was doing! I would risk my life for that opportunity. Also, its a serious film; it deals with the issue of the discovery of alien intelligence somewhere out there in the Universe, and how our culture(s) would respond or react to it. However, the film forces the issue of the question of God's existence. Why would the discovery of alien life threaten someone's belief in God, who would have created the aliens, too? (I've never been able to figure that one out.) No explanation is given. I think that the authors of Contact felt they needed to have some "message" in order to have an excuse for a science fiction story. But most of all, I excluded it from the "Best" list because the film has an appaling message: that faith can co-exist with science! (I hope Carl Sagan didn't say or imply that in the novel Contact, upon which the movie is based.)

In the post that launched this thread, I listed what were my favorite science-fiction films. Now here are the ones I consider the best of all time: Metropolis (1926), for its architectural vision of a city of the future; Things to Come (1936), for its optimistic vision of, and endorsement of, scientific and technological progress, despite its Fabian Socialism; Destination Moon (1950), for its glorified depiction of a first voyage to the moon, for its advocacy of private enterprise being the prime technological and financial mover behind the conquest of space, and for the fact that it's one of the few space films set in a benevolent, Aristotelian universe; 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954; the Walt Disney version); for its colorful adventure story of life in a submarine, something not completely realized in the time of the writing of Jules Verne's novel; This Island Earth (1955); for treating the mind as something noble, good and heroic, and doing so in an outer-space setting; Village of the Damned (1960); for showing how that reasoning mind can confront even the most terrifying and formidable threats to human life; Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964) (And I just got the DVD!); for presenting how an individual of high self-regard and a healthy mind can survive even on an alien world; The Andromeda Strain (1971); for showing four or five individuals, who often disagree with one another regarding method and, sometimes, ethics and politics, using their reason to find a way to halt and destroy a microscopic organism carried to Earth from space. Tempted to include: The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951); very well done movie, in all respects--directing, acting, photography, writing, and, certainly, the music score by Bernard Hermann; however, I did not include it in this list for two reasons: 1) its focus is not on reason and science--though these are brought up--but rather on the issue of physical force on a global--or interplanetary--level; and 2 (though really 1!): the movie is just one big plug for the U.N., just like another of director Robert Wise's well-done pictures, The Sand Pebbles. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1957); terrifying movie showing how collectivism is deadly to the individual. But the focus is not on science and the workings of the reasoning mind, so I did not include it in the list; it belongs in another list, such as the Best Horror Films Ever Made, or something; Forbidden Planet (1956); I enjoy it for the reason I stated in my first post, but, again, it's adulterated and darkened by Sigmund Freud ("Monsters, John...monsters from the Id!") and Plato ("A civilization without instrumentalities...") The Time Machine (1960); very imaginative movie, but I put time-travel stories in the fantasy category; The Time Travellers (1964); really, really cheesy (so much so it's often unintentionally hilarious), but shows alot of imagination and has some neat special effects; but, again, it's time travel; Fantastic Voyage (1966); for the reason I stated in Post #1, but not included because it is "fantastic", and belongs on a "Best Fantasy Films" list; Fahrenheit 451 (1966); one of my favorite movies of any kind, but deals with the issue of intellectual freedom and not primarily with science and the application of reason; also, I consider the film fantasy, because it would not be possible to have complete prohibiting of reading material and still have the level of technology possessed by the future society in this story; Planet of the Apes (1968); for the reason I stated above; however, the film is anti-Man, anti-technology, and, almost, anti-science; Star Wars (1977) and The Empire Strikes Back (1980); because both movies are "sunlit", exciting, colorful, have great direction, acting, writing and music; but both have the mystical "Force"; Alien (1979); another space film set in an Aristotelian universe (an astronaut's question when entering a millenia-old derelict alien spacecraft and finding only the skeleton of the pilot: "Where's the rest of the crew?"; in other words, even the alien beings we imagine cannot fly spaceships by mystical means)--but it's not a benevolent universe; Aliens (1986); great action thriller, and the heroine does win, again; but the film has an extremely dark and heavy streak; Back to the Future (1985); a "delightful fantasy", as I heard someone say; but it's time travel. On another subject, one of the above posters praised 2001: A Space Odyssey. For years, I've enjoyed watching that movie. However, I call it "a bad movie with great moments". I call it bad because there is no plot; rather there are four stories only tangentially related by the monolith, which cannot even be considered a "MacGuffin": the "Dawn of Man" story, the moon monolith story, the HAL story, and the "worm-hole" (or whatever the hell that was!) story. But the photography, the special effects (still unsurpassed), the use of sound (and silence), the editing, the sets, and the sometime use of classical music were all great, and the film did have some great scenes: the ape's discovery of the first tool and weapon (the bone), the sudden cut from that primitive tool to the spaceship in the year 2001, a man's first touching of the alien monolith, the "waltz of the spaceships" to the Blue Danube Waltz (by itself it would be a great music video).

Agrippa1 says the novel I am Legend could be a prequel to Anthem; I'll have to read it, then! I didn't think any of the three films versions of the book were outstanding. None were truly bad, either. But disaster stories have generally attracted me and put me off; I like to see what rational people do under such extreme cirumstances, but usually the disaster or apocalypse is man-caused in these stories. So far, it sounds like Lucifer's Hammer and Footfall are the only other world-wide disaster stories that would be worth reading.

What are your favorite science-fiction films? And why? My own are: Forbidden Planet (1956), because of the story about the Krell and how advanced they had become (despite the Freudian/Platonic ideas about their demise); Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964), because of it's (Romantic) realism concerning a man who must rely on his mind to survive on another planet, a man who, incidentally, exhibits psychological health and high self-esteem (or he could not survive); Fantastic Voyage (1966), which should really be classified as a fantasy, but anyway shows people dealing with a strange and alien context--being miniaturized and injected into a human body--in a rational manner; Planet of the Apes (1968), because of its subplot: a spaceship launched by men who would not live long enough to learn of its successful arrival on another planet two-thousand years later. I've often wondered about and been fascinated by projects whose creators know they will not be around to experience the results and yet still go on and finish their endeavour.

Interesting; maybe I'll check it out!

Well, if Cloverfield's a monster movie, I hope it's good. I've seen very few monster films of good quality. Ones that come to mind are Twenty Million Miles to Earth (1957), The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953) and X, the Unknown (1956; I liked this one because of the logical scientist played by Dean Jagger). But even these are no cinema masterpieces.