Time Is Relative. The next time I go hiking, this is going to be rattling around in the back of my mind.
All of the Men Are Dead – Why Hollywood Needs Y: The Last Man via JRitchieAuthor. I couldn’t agree with J. Edward more when he says that there’s too much material in Y: The Last Man to be condensed into a movie. It would make a fantastic television show, though, and I sure hope Hollywood takes note of that soon.
The Longest Poem in the World. Bookmark this link, readers. The poem is regularly updated with unrelated tweets that happen to rhyme with each other.
A Tiny Scar, From Falling. Trigger warning: this essay was written by someone who was trying to reconstruct their abusive and neglectful childhood that included many years in the foster care system. They didn’t remember large chunks of it and wanted to see if they could figure out what happened and how they received a specific scar.
When I was a kid, my family didn’t own a television at all for a few years there. There were other parts of my childhood when we owned a TV but didn’t have cable. The handful of channels that we could watch for free during those years almost never had science fiction reruns or content of any kind, although I did eagerly watch it whenever I could find it.
We also rarely went to the movie theatre until I was well into my teens, so I hadn’t seen a lot of well-known films in general by the time I grew up.
I’ve caught up on many of the science fiction classics since then, but there are still quite a few of them that I haven’t gotten around to checking out yet.
Today I’m going to be listing as many of the ones I haven’t seen as I can think of. Some of them have since been remade, so I’m including the year they came originally came out if there’s a newer version of it that I recognized. Often there are so many changes from the original to the remake that it’s almost as though we’re talking about two separate franchises.
Next week, I’ll be publishing a similar post about fantasy films. The lists for both categories were so long that I thought they each deserved their own post.
Will I ever watch the shows on this list? I have no idea! My current to-watch list is so long that for now I’m going to continue focusing on more modern films, but it might be fun to catch up on the old ones someday as well.
The Thing
Westworld (1973)
Robocop
The Abyss (1989)
Thx1138
Moon
A Clockwork Orange
Ghost in the Shell
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
Brazil
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
Mad Max
Solaris
The Day the Earth Stood Still
Forbidden Planet
2001: A Space Odyssey
How to Train Your Dragon
Metropolis (1927)
The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)
Frankenstein (1931)
King Kong (1933)
2010
Fantasia
The Andromeda Strain (1971)
Flash Gordon
Logan’s Run (1976)
Dune
Soylent Green
Stalker
I was going to add the Alien and Predator series to this list, too, but I can’t remember for sure if I’ve seen any of them or not. They’re so well-known in pop culture that I know their basic plots even though I don’t know which of the films in either of these series I’ve actually seen.
What classic science fiction films have you never seen? On a humorous note, which classic science fiction films can you not remember if you’ve watched but know a few things about anyway?
Arsher Ali as Phil, Sam Troughton as Dom, Rafe Spall as Luke and Robert-James Collier as Hutch.
The Ritual is a British horror film based on Adam Nevill’s book by the same name. It was released on October 12, 2017 by Netflix.
This review is spoiler-free. As always, the only time I share spoilers about a movie or tv show on my site would be if I needed to warn my readers about potentially triggering material in it. There was nothing like that in this film.
The premise of The Ritual is a simple one. After losing an old university friend to a random act of violence, Phil, Dom, Luke, and Hutch went hiking and camping in a remote corner of Sweden to spend time together and honour the memory of their deceased friend.
About a day into their trip, Dom tripped and accidentally injured his knee. The group still had many kilometres to go through the mountains on their hike, and none of their cellphones could get a signal in such a remote location. The four characters decided to take a shortcut through the woods so that he could rest and get proper medical attention as soon as possible due to these factors.
A violent thunderstorm began soon after they entered the woods, so the characters sought refuge in an abandoned cabin for the night despite their deeply uneasy feelings about the property. They broke up a piece of the house to start a fire, and then settled down for a good night’s rest before hopefully continuing their journey in the morning.
As they were about to discover, they should have listened to those feelings. The cabin wasn’t abandoned after all, and the person/entity/thing who lived there wasn’t pleased by their trespassing at all. (I must be purposefully vague on this point in order to avoid giving you too many hints about who or what these characters angered).
The Characters
My main criticism of this film has to do with how similar all four of the characters were. Phil, Dom, Luke, and Hutch all had fairly outgoing, sarcastic, and jovial personalities that tended to blend into one another.
There also wasn’t a lot of information given about their backstories. What were their occupations? Were they married or otherwise in longterm relationships? If they weren’t single, were their partners men or women? Did they have kids? The references to their adult lives were so sparse that I still don’t know the answers to these questions for all four of the main characters in this storyline. As nice as it was to have some of these questions answered for some of them, I thought it was odd that such basic information wasn’t provided for everyone.
I had a difficult time thinking of them as individuals because of this. While I’d certainly expect such a tight-knit group of old friends to share many common interests, it would have been nice to have more character development before the plot picked up so that I could remember who was who when they did make rare references to their personal lives. Sharing details about who they shared their lives with and what occupations they had would have gone a long way to separating these characters in my mind.
There’s nothing wrong with a plot-driven storyline, but I do think this one would have been even better if it had taken more time to show who the characters were before putting them into terrible danger.
The Antagonist
There isn’t much I can say about the antagonist without giving away major spoilers, but I was much happier with how this portion of the plot was handled.
The backstory was well-developed and fit into the storyline nicely. I especially liked the fact that it took the characters as long as they did to learn anything at all about what was lurking in the woods. This wasn’t a case of characters knowing in advance that a particular spot had a bad reputation and deciding to explore it anyway.
They had no idea what they were about to stumble into after the thunderstorm began, and that made the later events of the plot even more exciting than they would have otherwise been. It also provided plausible deniability for why they didn’t immediately leave the cabin they were staying in the first time something frightening happened in it.
In my opinion, horror movies are most enjoyable when the characters genuinely had no idea what they were getting into before the first bizarre things happens to them.
The Horror
One of the things I always want to know before I watch something from this genre is what sort of horror we’re talking about.
Is the plot gory? Does the fear the characters and audience feel mostly come from anticipation, or will we actually see whatever it is that seems to be roaming around in the woods and hunting them down? Do the characters react sensibly the first time they sense something is horribly wrong?
Once again, I’m dancing around spoilers here, so bear with me if I don’t fully answer all of your questions.
The first thing I’d say about the plot is that it is firmly planted in the horror genre. If you love being scared, there are plenty of spine-chilling scenes to come when you begin watching The Ritual. I had to watch a couple of scenes from the corner of my eye because of how scared I was for the characters in them.
As far as the gore goes, it definitely existed. This isn’t something I’d recommend to people who have a phobia of blood or gore even though the scenes that included those things were only a small part of the storyline overall.
I don’t like slasher movies, and this wasn’t one of them. The build up to the moment the characters realize the cabin they’ve broken into had never been abandoned at all was handled nicely. Honestly, the storyline was just as much about that moment as it was about everything that happened afterwards.
This isn’t the sort of tale that has any sort of profound messages about death, grief, or friendship woven into it. I’m not criticizing it by saying that, either. Not everything in life needs to be deep in order to be enjoyable. This is a classic horror film in every way, and the characters fit into that genre beautifully.
Should You Watch It?
If you love the horror genre and are in the mood for a satisfying scare, I would recommend this film.
Here is this week’s list of poems, blog posts, volunteer opportunities, and other links from my favourite corners of the web.
Volunteer Bloggers Wanted at MigraineMantras. If you’re a writer who is living with migraines, chronic pain, chronic illnesses, and/or an invisible illness, Migraine Mantras wants to hear from you. They are currently seeking volunteer bloggers to write essays, stories, and poems for their site. Click on the links above to see what they’ve already published. Email Jorie at MigraineMantras@gmail.com for more information if this sounds like something you’re interested in.
Speaking of volunteers, Long and Short Reviews is looking for more volunteer book reviewers. You can contact them through the email address listed in the link above or read my blog post on the topic from last year. Neither of these opportunities should ever make you close a book vigorously, but today’s funny image in in honour of them.
Can You Unplug for One Day? via JMLevinton. It would be hard for me to stay offline entirely for a day. I’d at least need a few minutes to check my messages. How do you all feel about this challenge?
Socialize Like An Ambivert via Fushiee_. I’m a deeply introverted person. Asking me to behave like an extrovert would be like asking me to decide to sprout a pair of wings and start flying around. Acting like an ambivert is something I can do, however! How about you?
Why a Daily Habit of Reading Books Should Be Your Priority, According to Science. Yes, reading definitely is exercise for your brain. I’m always a little surprised when I meet people who never read anything at all. It’s like meeting someone who never exercises in any way (and who has no medical reasons for making that choice).
My friend, Michael, recently posted a writing prompt about pocket dimensions. I thought it would be fun to answer his questions in the form of a blog post.
Congratulations! You have your own little world. Not just your imagination – this is a physical reality, and you can step into it at will. Maybe it’s a pocket dimension, or your own private little corner of the Fay Realms. Whatever it is, it’s yours. So…
1. What does your realm look like? Is it indoors? Outdoors? A cottage on a deserted shore? A crumbling castle at the heart of a dark forest? A broad lake with a waterfall at one end and beaches around three sides? Something else entirely?
My pocket dimension is indoors. It’s located in the library of a grand, old house that is magically well-insulated. The house is cool in the summer, warm in the winter, never dusty, and always a comfortable place to visit.
The library itself has a large fireplace on one end and floor-to-ceiling windows on the other. The wood floors have been recently swept, and all of the books are arranged neatly according to the Dewey Decimal system. Many of them are about topics humans would recognize, albeit from a strictly faery perspective instead of from a human one. Let’s just say that they weren’t a fan of the Iron Age at all.
With that being said, some of the books aren’t like anything you’d find on Earth. Some of the books have mouths and will have long conversations with you if you ask them the right questions. Others teach you how to fly as you read them, share alternate histories of Earth if one key fact had changed at a particular time and place, and a few might even be portals to other places entirely if you flip to the correct page of the right story and read it’s contents aloud.
There is a washroom and well-stocked kitchen off to either side of the library for anyone who needs them while they’re visiting. I often grab a piece of fruit and cup of tea before I begin reading.
2. Do you keep it to yourself, give a few friends access to it as well, or open it to anybody?
The library is open to anyone I trust who loves knowledge and adventure. They are free to visit it with or without me at any time of the day or night.
3. Does your realm have its own inhabitants? What are they like? Do you ever bring them across to our world?
The house is owned and maintained by faeries, but you might never run into one. They’re quite shy around most humans. Even I have only met one of them, and even that was the briefest encounter you can possibly imagine. She nodded slightly at me, cracked open the door to the library, and then never showed herself again.
I wouldn’t be strong enough to bring one of the faeries back to Earth with me even if I spotted another one and wanted to show them our world. They do whatever it is they want to do, and that’s all there is to it.
4. Does entering your personal world change you? Do you dress differently, speak differently? Are you someone else when you’re there?
You cannot enter the faery library if you’re carrying anything like iron that would hurt the faeries or if you’re harbouring any thoughts about harming them, the house, or anyone else in it. Other than that, you may speak, dress, and behave as you wish.
5. Is time the same in your realm as it is out here? Is there a steady differential, like three days there pass in only an hour of our time? Or is it stranger than that?
Time is different in the faery house. A few hours of reading there generally translates into a few minutes of time in our world, but this isn’t a straightforward rule. As with everything related to faeries, they can’t be forced to follow human rules. Anyone who wishes to visit their library should remember that and prepare for the small possibility of returning much sooner or later than they were expecting.
6. How do you get to your world? Do you have to visit a specific place? Speak a certain phrase? Or is it just a matter of will and desire?
It’s a matter of will and desire. If you wish to read in a quiet, comfortable place, have no ill intentions, and have satisfied whatever nebulous criteria the faeries have for this oasis, you stand a good chance of finding a door to this place.
How would you answer these questions? What would your pocket dimension be like?
One of the biggest misconceptions some people have about getting fit is that it requires a significant investment of money in the beginning if you’re starting out with little to no equipment. This couldn’t be further from the truth. A few nights ago, I took a stroll around a dollar store to see what kinds… Read More
Saturday Seven is hosted by Long and Short Reviews. Happy Mother’s Day! In honour of this holiday, today I wanted to talk about characters who never got the chance to be mothers but who would have done an excellent job at it if they did. Some characters are childless or childfree because that’s what… Read More
Happy Mother’s Day! I choose to believe that today’s picture is of a mother rabbit and her baby. Here is this week’s list of poems, blog posts, and other links from my favourite corners of the web. Gay Dads on Mother’s Day via thegayadopter. This family adopted their children through foster care. I thought it was… Read More
Thank you to Stephanie from Adventures Thru Wonderland for tagging me in this. To the best of my knowledge, this tag was originally started by ReadorRot. Name a cartoon that you love Futurama. I should warn you all that this isn’t the kind of cartoon that was meant for children. The jokes in it are… Read More
Last spring I wrote a post for this site called Scifi and Fantasy Rules That Should Be Broken. You don’t have to read that post in order to understand this one, although I do recommend checking it out if you have a few extra minutes today. It’s high time I wrote about the rules in… Read More
Here is this week’s list of comic strips, blog posts, essays, and other links from my favourite corners of the web.
When I was a kid, my family didn’t own a television at all for a few years there. There were other parts of my childhood when we owned a TV but didn’t have cable. The handful of channels that we could watch for free during those years almost never had science fiction reruns or content of any kind, although I did eagerly watch it whenever I could find it.
One of the things I always want to know before I watch something from this genre is what sort of horror we’re talking about.
Here is this week’s list of poems, blog posts, volunteer opportunities, and other links from my favourite corners of the web.