Started off bright and early attending a 9am panel about being LDS SF&F writers with James Dashner, Michael Collings, Jessica Day George, Brandon Sanderson, and Tracy and Laura Hickman. Conclusion: Being a SF&F writer is cool. Being LDS is also cool. So both together? Double cool.
Then a presentation on the history of science by Eric Swedin, who’s very well-qualified on the subject as he’s written an encyclopedia of the history of science.
Then, after a little bit of hobnobbing and such, Tracy Hickman presented a five-minute short movie that he had written at the request of Richard Garriott, who spend $30 million to spend 12 days aboard the international space station. No one pretends it’s any good, since it’s shot with astronauts and cosmonauts instead of actors, but it does hold the distinction of being the first SF movie shot in space.
Then I attended a panel on suspense (yes, it’s good), then a quick trip up to Salt Lake to retrieve and deposit my paycheck, because real life does go on even when you’re off playing.
And finally, at 5pm, the only panel in which I participated today: SF in the movies. We (Howard Tayler, Dan Willis, Brandon Sanderson, Roger White, and myself) discussed the discontinuity between literary and cinematic SF as a function of the immediacy and visceral experience of film, the problems with story being dictated by non-storytellers at the expense of the finished product, and what films with good writing we’ve seen later. The laudatory comments about Serenity were to be expected; the rave reviews for Speed Racer were not. I may have to look into this.
And now, off to have dinner with my brother, and then the drive home!
Nathan
the rave reviews for Speed Racer were not. I may have to look into this.
Don’t. Anyone who praises Speed Racer to you is either mentally ill or out to hurt you very badly.
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Is that movie online anywhere? Will it be?
Well, the people in question were Howard Tayler, Bob Defendi, Dan Willis, and Brandon Sanderson; the first three of them confessed to openly weeping at the powerful story. I may have to take their assessment under advisement, if nothing more.
POWERFUL STORY?!?!?!?! I barely noticed much of a story behind the barrage of overbaked special effects. I suppose it’s like the insightful philosophical ideas that were supposed to be in “The Matrix”; it turns out it’s nothing but a cinematic urban legend.
But I’ll admit I wept too, although I assume for considerably different reasons.
Their comment was that the visual cacophony (cacovision?) bothered them for about the first five minutes, until they could accept that as “the temperature of the water.”
I’ll have to back them up. Speed Racer was an absolute hoot, with a genuine heart. And the handling of Racer X was really, really good as well.
I mean, come on, the movie delivers lines like “Inspector Detector suspected foul play, but nothing could ever be proven,” with no irony at all. It was a love letter to the cartoon, with no shame or smart-asserry at all.