Possibly a tiny little bit late, maybe?

So I'm still writing my Solaris review. I started off strong with two paragraphs early on today, and then hit a wall (read: got distracted reading internet articles), so now it's 11:00 p.m. and I have two paragraphs. I'm going to keep going and get this written, which won't be that hard and I've done before (and certainly I've made excuses and justifications for blog posts being late), but I'd like to start trying to warn people when my posts will be late. Which they will be. Often, if not always.

But in the mean time, since this is supposedly science fiction month, let's talk about science fiction. Science fiction has an interesting relationship with science fact, in that one is often inspired by the other, and then in turn inspires the other. So when politicians attack science, usually for idiotic religious reasons, it is bad for the future of science fiction. So for the sake of me enjoying good science fiction films in the near and distant future, sign this petition to kick a man off the U.S. House Science Committee who doesn't believe in science.

Oh man, oh god, oh man...

Oh look, it's October! That means science fiction month is over. Let's look at how well that went.

...

Oof.

For those few of you who don't come here via Twitter, my review of Kiss Me Deadly is obviously not up yet. It's not ready, nor is it likely to be in the near (as in next two days) future. I'm working on an application for a grant to work on a script I've been writing, and I think trying to get money to write a movie is more important than working on a free blog post that few people will read.

Review: Contagion

Contagion (2011): English, 106 min, directed by Steven Soderbergh, written by Scott Z. Burns, starring Matt Damon, Lawrence Fishburne, Jude Law, Marion Cotilliard, Kate Winslet, Jennifer Ehle, Gwyneth Paltrow, and John Hawkes. A bat poops on a pig, and then disease happens (oh, spoiler alert). Somehow, this makes a fantastically compelling film?

System 1 rating: 239, or 11101111
System 2 rating: 247, or 11110111

Review: The Andromeda Strain

The Andromeda Strain (1971): English, 169 min, directed by Robert Wise, written by Nelson Gidding (based on the novel by Michael Crichton), starring Arthur Hill, James Olson, Kate Reid, David Wayne, Paula Kelly and George Mitchell. The government decides it'd be a good idea to launch satellites that scoop air from the edge of space, hoping to find a biological weapon that the Soviets can't counter. There's no way this can go wrong!

System 1 rating: 154, or 10011010
System 2 rating: 140, or 10001100

Awkward Conversations With Your Blog

Hey, blog! Holy shit, I haven't seen you in forever... Yeah... Wow, it's been a while. Heh, um... Yeah. So, how's life been for you? Yeah? Well, uh, that's good I gue- what? Oh, um... Wow. I'm sorry. That's really... Jesus, I don't really know what to say... I don't want to intrude, but, you know, if you need someone to talk to... Yeah. But hey, you're going back to school! That's a positive. Look on the bright side, you know?

What? Oh, um, not a lot. I got kind of busy. I was trying to pass my classes, and then trying to graduate, and then I felt like I needed a break, and now my break mentality has sort of set in and I'm trying to shake it and get back to doing something productive, you know? Get back into writing and reading and watching movies on a regular basis. It's going... Well, it's going. It's slower than I'd hoped, but, you know... You gotta start somewhere.

Anyway, um... I don't know how to put this, and I don't mean to be forward or just suddenly be really serious or anything, but I haven't seen you in a while, and I can make excuses and be awkward about it, or I can own up to the fact that I messed up, and you're probably feeling like I'm a really shitty blogger, and I am, but I'm going to try to get better. If I'm going to try to write on a regular basis, I need a project. With deadlines. And hopefully, if I have a project with self-determined deadlines, and I can start meeting them, it'll keep my creative juices flowing enough to help me do other things.

So I'm going to start writing you again, blog. At least, if you'll take me back. I don't deserve it, but I'm going to do my best. I don't want to set a schedule or anything yet, I don't know if I can do this consistently, but I have some goals I want to set out.

I'm going to make September science fiction month, because science fiction always seems to motivate me. I'm going to alternate between classic (or at least older) movies and newer ones. I'm going to aim for two a week: Sunday or Monday I'll do the classic review, and Wednesday or Thursday the newer one. When October comes, I'll try to lay off the science fiction and try to review more popular and newer movies, particularly leading up to the Oscars. Oof, I guess I should review the Oscar movies. I'll also probably cut back to one a week, unless two a week turns out to be pretty easy. Anyway, here's the lineup for science fiction month:

This week (August 26^th): The Andromeda Strain (1971) and Contagion (2011). It's disease week! I know there's a remake of The Andromeda Strain and I might watch it someday but a) it's a TV miniseries, and b) I don't care. And c) Contagion is way better. Oh, and d) I don't care. I'm doing these two first because a) I already started a Contagion review and got a fair amount of the way in, and b) I don't care. Expect an Andromeda Strain review tomorrow.

Week of September 2^nd: Kiss Me Deadly (1955) and Inception (2010). No, Kiss Me Deadly isn't really a science fiction movie, but the best paper I ever wrote in school was comparing it to the 1951 The Day The Earth Stood Still, so I'm reviewing it anyway. If you're going to complain about it, Inception isn't a science fiction film either. That's right, I said it.

Week of September 9^th:  The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951) and either District 9 (2009) or, uh, I, Robot (2004) I guess. I dislike the Will Smith movie but I probably have more to say about it than 99.999% of people on the planet since I basically grew up on the book, and I don't know if Day The Earth Stood Still and District 9 tie together as well as I'd like. If I could I would just do Kiss Me Deadly and The Day The Earth Stood Still back-to-back, but I made these arbitrary and ridiculous rules, so clearly I must follow them, dammit!

Week of September 16^th: Solaris (1972) and Solaris (2002). It's remake week! Or rather, it's "an excuse to rewatch Tarkovsky's Solaris" week!

Week of September 23^rd: Alien (1979) and Prometheus (2012). It's remake week all over again! Just kidding. I'll have to see both again, but I'm sure I can convince myself that Prometheus is better just to piss people off and get page views. That's how blogging works, right? (Kidding again, Alien is better. Prometheus just had infinitely more potential to waste.)

Other science fiction movies I wanted to review but don't feel like cramming into an already daunting schedule, thus setting myself up for inevitable failure: Forbidden Planet (1956), Moon (2009), The Thing (1982, possibly alongside the 1951 version and/or the 2011 remake), Sunshine (2007), Primer (2004), Melancholia (2011), Another Earth (2011), and Transformers (2007) just out of morbid curiosity.

So that's that. Basically this post is just about letting people know that I still intend to carry on with this project eventually theoretically possibly. I've put the schedule above into an 8-bit Film Reviews Google Calendar, so that means I'm really going to stick to it, right?

System 2 Re-reviews

Here are short re-reviews of the past three movies I've reviewed. In this post I'm only addressing the questions that are new to System 2, and using the same answers I gave to the System 1 questions to recalculate the new System 2 ratings. For the impatient, here are the new ratings without any comment:

The Big Lebowski System 2 rating: 255, or 11111111
Gun Crazy System 2 rating: 178, or 10110010 
Ils (Them) System 2 rating: 56, or 00111000