To Every Other Jobu Tupaki After Jamie Lee Curtis’s Oscar Win | Tor.com:

Except it’s not our failure, and definitely not Stephanie Hsu’s. It’s the Academy’s. Sure, that’s a strong feeling, and sure, I shouldn’t make a habit out of exhausting myself when incredible QTPOC stories get overlooked for awards, especially when this film did sweep in other, crucial, beautiful ways. But the specificity of the situation makes me want to put the entire Academy on an everything bagel. With extra salt. To balance out the salt in the wound that makes it impossible to ignore.

That character? In that role? In this movie? It would be one thing if she’d lost to another actor in the category. But both Hsu and Curtis play supporting characters with queer storylines who change Evelyn Wang’s life. Hsu plays every version of Joy: Jobu Tupaki, daughter and monster, supervillain and depressed queer second gen kid who just wants her mom to see her. Hsu embodies the role thrillingly, flayingly well. It’s in the way she moves, the history of hurt behind her eyes. The familiar, complicated intricacy of loving your mother in all her messy truth and wishing she would just goddamn do the same for you. It’s there, that rarely told story of shame and sharp longing.

What is The Most Successful Hollywood Movie of All Time? — Information is Beautiful:

The most common answer to the question What is The Most Successful Hollywood Movie? is of course Avatar. James Cameron’s 2010 masterpiece grossed close to $3bn worldwide, very closely followed by Avengers: End Game at $2.8bn.

It turns out, if you ask better questions you get more useful answers:

Best Sci-Fi Movies of the Last 15 Years | Den of Geek:

Fifteen years is a long time. We at Den of Geek can certainly attest to that as we’ve seen the industry change and grow, embrace streaming, and pivot toward intellectual property. Yet even as our present stays in a constant state of flux, our fascination with the future remains unwavering.

What dreams may come in 15 years? Or 30? Or a hundred as technology evolves and its relationship with humanity is renegotiated? If you told a room full of geeks in early 2007 that 2022 would be a world filled with smartphones and tablets, social media-shaped democracies, and something called “TikTok,” they might think you’d written a sci-fi movie. Still in that upheaval, we saw some pretty good science fiction stories come out in their own time, both Hollywood blockbuster big and intimately indie; iconic and underappreciated. It’s why we’ve polled our complete staff, along with thousands of reader votes, to determine what are the 25 best sci-fi movies to be released during our first 15 years.

Five Ways Denis Villeneuve’s Rendezvous With Rama Could Be Truly Great | Tor.com:

Give Women the Spotlight

…sigh. My biggest gripe with Arthur C. Clarke books remains the same with every tome I read. In books already devoid of relatable, meaningful characters, Clarke shunts women into the dark recesses of his stories. Rendezvous With Rama has one incriminating passage that always irks me. Essentially, a crew member of the Rama exploration crew shares an internal monologue about how distracting low gravity can be when a woman is on board. He mentions how the lack of gravitational force makes for excessive jiggling of the breasts. The character goes so far as to question whether women should be astronauts in the first place. I remember reading the passage (which is by far the most egregious, though there are others) with jaw agape.

Beyond the outright sexism, there are precious few women characters in the book at all. It would be an easy (and necessary) win in terms of representation for Villeneuve to gender-swap a few characters and allow women to showcase their scientific talents in the movie. The story only stands to improve by broadening this particular horizon: In a story about humanity’s place in the universe, everyone should be included.

Pixel art commercial from Japan traces a century of changing work habits | Boing Boing:

Horror’s Ongoing Reckoning: The Final Girl Seizes Control of Her Story | Tor.com:

The slasher was born and raised in a time of male anxiety. The FDA approved the Pill—the first effective form of oral contraception to be close to 100% effective and widely available—in 1960. For the first time in human history, women could take full control of their reproductive cycles. Second wave feminism, which took aim at patriarchal systems and structures embedded in our culture, empowered a whole generation of women to take control of their own lives.

What wipes in Star Wars teach us about the brain and also interface design (Interconnected):

The brain has a limited amount of resources, so it has to choose what’s going to be regarded and what’s going to be ignored. The feeling of this resource allocation is what we call attention.

This seems to match with my experience.. From a technical point of view this was the point of the doorway transitions in Resident Evil, but narratively it really worked well too.

Time Travel Movies Ranked by How Much Sense the Time Travel Makes:

Ultimately we have no idea what time travel would actually look like, but we all have ideas of how to understand time travel because of movies like these. Here is a list of some of the best time travel movies, ranked in descending order of how much the time travel adheres to internal consistency and sense .

Everything Everywhere All At Once:

I don’t know anything about this movie and its directors (Daniels? Oh, Swiss Army Man!) but it has Michelle Yeoh kicking ass in it and I want to see it at the first possible opportunity. Getting some Jackie Chan meets Marvel multiverse meets Being John Malkovich vibes here.

I had never heard of this movie coming, but I think I’m totally here for it…

Michael Dorn, Actor-Director-Star Trek: The Next Generation-ENCORE - Storybeat with Steve Cuden:

Michael has appeared more times as a regular cast member than any other Star Trek actor in the franchise’s nearly 55-year history, spanning some 272 TV episodes and 5 feature films. He also appeared as Worf’s ancestor, Colonel Worf, in the film Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.

Hayao Miyazaki Prepares to Cast One Last Spell - The New York Times:

No artist has explored the contradictions of humanity as sympathetically and critically as the Japanese animation legend. Now, at 80, he’s coming out of retirement with another movie.

Hopefully not paywalled when you visit, a long-form interview summary on Miyazak’s body of work, including what’s to come.

David Lynch’s Dune Kept Science Fiction Cinema Strange | Tor.com:

Lynch might not be a science fiction scholar. But Lynch understood the mystic and strange side of Herbert’s creation, and of so much brilliant science fiction literature that gets scrubbed on its way to a film adaptation. So yes, Lynch’s Dune is a mess with many flaws. But science fiction cinema would be a poorer place without it.

9 Surprisingly Accurate Hard Sci-Fi Movies That You Can Stream Tonight:

But where some sci-fi is more 'fi' than 'sci', hard science fiction is grounded in scientific realism. These are nine of our favorite hard sci-fi movies that you can stream right now, each of which marries compelling stories with fascinating details and accurate information.

AI movie posters:

AI movie posters Each of these images was generated by AI based on a brief text description of a movie. Can you guess the movie from the image?

9 Thrilling Last Stands in Genre Fiction | Tor.com:

Angry Delenn is a force of nature:

“Only one human captain has ever survived battle with a Minbari fleet. He is behind me. You are in front of me. If you value your lives, be somewhere else.”

This is one of my favorite moments, in one of my favorite shows… But Babylon 5 actually has quite a few of my favorite moments of TV ever.

CODA - Apple TV+ Press:

Seventeen-year-old Ruby (Emilia Jones) is the sole hearing member of a deaf family – a CODA, child of deaf adults.

This is on my to-watch shortlist… But everything I hear about it is amazing.

Apple TV+ has been punching way above its weight on delivering great content.

Netflix Rolling Out Spatial Audio Support - MacRumors:

Netflix is rolling out support for Spatial Audio on the iPhone and the iPad, based on reports shared by MacRumors readers and on Reddit. A Netflix spokesperson also confirmed to MacRumors that the rollout is underway.

More of this please…

Instructions for the Zero Gravity Toilet in 2001 | Boing Boing:

In 2001: A Space Odyssey, natural calls for Heywood Floyd. Fortunately, there are very detailed instructions posted on how to use the Zero Gravity Toilet. (This is Kurbick, after all.) Also fortunately, the toilet is apparently the "standard zero-gravity type" so one should be familiar with its operations. Below are the instructions as captured by 2001 obsessives.

Apex Legends lead designer fired over old racist and sexist comments | Rock Paper Shotgun:

I don’t have a ton of pity for people in this situation… We all knew this kind of commentary was toxic 14 years ago, 20 years ago, and far beyond that. The only difference is that people are actually being held accountable for some portion of it now.

I think the best answer, if you know you have social-media-skeletons like this, is to make your own mea culpa - Before someone else airs that laundry for you, expose them yourself with an explanation of how you have grown past them and apologize for you actions before someone else has to bring them into the light.

I am having the same issue with James Gunn right now with his return to the spotlight over Suicide Squad… because I don’t feel like he ever actually apologized for his own toxic social media past, only for it being discovered and possibly affecting the people he’s worked with.

Modern Trailers for Classic Films:

In order to promote the classic films available on the streaming service, HBO Max has created a selection of modern-style movie trailers for them. The re-trailered flicks include Dog Day Afternoon, Boogie Nights, Alien, Casablanca, and The Exorcist.

When We Have Come to This Place: The Aliens Series as Cosmic Horror | Tor.com:

All the same, I’m drawn to certain types of horror in both writing and reading. With my novels Beneath the Rising and its sequel A Broken Darkness (as well as a couple dozen short stories), I told everyone I was simply writing fantasy with monsters and gods; ‘dark fantasy,’ probably. “Nope,” people told me again and again. “These are horror.” As I began to read more about it, I realized that swathes of my writing might not only be horror, but fall into a specific sub-genre of horror: cosmic horror.

Mads Mikkelsen, In Conversation:

Is there a life philosophy that you feel has carried you through your career? My approach to what I do in my job — and it might even be the approach to my life — is that everything I do is the most important thing I do. Whether it’s a play or the next film. It is the most important thing. I know it’s not going to be the most important thing, and it might not be close to being the best, but I have to make it the most important thing. That means I will be ambitious with my job and not with my career. That’s a very big difference, because if I’m ambitious with my career, everything I do now is just stepping-stones leading to something — a goal I might never reach, and so everything will be disappointing. But if I make everything important, then eventually it will become a career. Big or small, we don’t know. But at least everything was important.

via - kottke.org

Lea Thompson wants to direct a ‘Howard the Duck’ reboot | Boing Boing:

And fans seem to agree with her on that notion. When Thompson tweeted on the afternoon of July 8, "I see #HowardTheDuck is trending #3. That's awesome. I love my duck #WhatIf I get to direct @Marvel reboot," the post received nearly 8,000 likes and a slew of hopeful comments.

I would fully support a Howard the Duck/Spider Ham crossover.

Retro Modern Movie Posters:

Check out these retro modern movie posters from Patrick Concepcion; the Groundhog Day one is simple perfection. You can check out Concepcion’s work on his website and Instagram or buy prints on Etsy.

While I’ve seen plenty of hate around the Resident Evil movies, I find them to be fair adaptations (Though I’d love to have seen the final production of a George Romero Resident Evil based on the first game)

Being in mind the movie production started in 2000, The only properties to really work with were Resident Evil 1-3… If you’d only played those games, would you have assumed that the franchise would take the direction of the larger implications of Umbrella’s corporate corruption, or midivil cults and mind-control fungus? While certainly taking liberties, the films sometimes feel more in-keeping with the spirit of the first 3 games than the games post RE3 themselves do.