FanFare

MST Club presents! We're going back and forth between The Mads and Rifftrax in this phase of our riff watching project. This week Rifftrax is up, with the movie Prisoners of the Lost Universe. You may have seen a bit of it before: when Film Ventures International repurposed Ator the Fighting Eagle into Cave Dwellers, they gave it a generic fantasy scene behind the opening credits: that, it turns out, was from Prisoners of the Lost Universe. IMDB says: "Three people are transported into a parallel reality, where they find they must use modern technology, but medieval weapons, in order to save the citizenry from a murderous warlord." Selective technology, got it. For more on Rifftrax, see inside. This riff was released in 2012. [more inside]
posted by JHarris on Mar 7, 2024 - 2 comments

[TRAILER] Karel Zeman's 1962 Czechoslovak romantic adventure film, based on the tales about Baron Munchausen. The film combines live-action with various forms of animation and is highly stylized, often evoking the engravings of Gustave Doré. Original title: Baron Prášil. [more inside]
posted by DirtyOldTown on Jan 15, 2024 - 3 comments

[TRAILER] Samantha Kingston has everything. Then, everything changes. After one fateful night, she wakes up with no future at all. Trapped into reliving the same day over and over, she begins to question just how perfect her life really was. [more inside]
posted by DirtyOldTown on Aug 4, 2023 - 2 comments

[TRAILER] Emmy Coer (Francesca Faridany), a computer genius, devises a method of communicating with the past by tapping into undying information waves. She manages to reach the world of Ada Lovelace (Tilda Swinton), founder of the idea of a computer language and proponent of the possibilities of the “difference engine.” Ada’s ideas were stifled and unfulfilled because of the reality of life as a woman in the nineteenth century. Emmy has a plan to defeat death and the past using her own DNA as a communicative agent to the past, bringing Ada to the present. But what are the possible ramifications? [more inside]
posted by DirtyOldTown on Aug 3, 2023 - 3 comments

Struggling to survive with her father after the collapse of Earth's ecosystem, 13-year-old Vesper must use her wits, strength and bio-hacking abilities to fight for the future.
posted by porpoise on Feb 19, 2023 - 4 comments

Lynesse is the lowly Fourth Daughter of the queen, and always getting in the way. But a demon is terrorizing the land, and now she's an adult (albeit barely) with responsibilities (she tells herself). Although she still gets in the way, she understands that the only way to save her people is to invoke the pact between her family and the Elder sorcerer who has inhabited the local tower for as long as her people have lived here (though none in living memory has approached it). But Elder Nyr isn't a sorcerer, and he is forbidden to help, and his knowledge of science tells him the threat cannot possibly be a demon...
posted by Cash4Lead on Oct 2, 2022 - 1 comment

Five years after their first time-travelling adventure, Southern California rockers Bill and Ted must venture to parts they had not previously explored, including the afterlife (featuring William Sadler), to defeat a villain -- who's made impostor robots who impersonate our heroes. This film came out the same year as Keanu Reeves's Point Break, which is rather a range!
posted by brainwane on Jun 7, 2022 - 6 comments

Bill (Alex Winter) and Ted (Keanu Reeves), high school buddies starting a band in 1980s Southern California, get help from Rufus (George Carlin) to help them complete their final history presentation. Silly time travel shenanigans ensue. [more inside]
posted by brainwane on Jun 7, 2022 - 18 comments

In the grand tradition of Russian fantasy films comes a new version of the supernatural legend of The Viy, written by Nicolai Gogol. An eighteenth century English cartographer sets out on a journey to map the uncharted lands of Transylvania, only to discover the dark secrets and dangerous creatures hidden in a cursed, fantastical Romanian forest. Streaming on Amazon Prime. Note: this is a bad movie. [more inside]
posted by jazon on Mar 14, 2021 - 4 comments

Written by Neal Stephenson and published in 1999. Two groups of characters, one from the late thirties and forties and one in the then present-day ~1999 (a few who are descendants of the earlier group) involve themselves with codes, codebreaking, and Axis war gold, among other things. [more inside]
posted by Fukiyama on Sep 2, 2020 - 41 comments

The second volume of Tamsyn Muir's Locked Tomb trilogy. [more inside]
posted by rustcrumb on Aug 7, 2020 - 46 comments

I just went through the book posts for the last three months. There's lots of books I'm considering reading, and one book I read a while ago but don't remember well enough to do deep insightful commentary. In order to get more synchronicity on this, does anyone want to start a book club? Or even a couple in different genres? I would love a romance, science fiction, fantasy and/or nonfiction book club.
posted by rednikki on Jun 9, 2020 - 3 comments

The Emperor needs necromancers. The Ninth Necromancer needs a swordswoman. Gideon has a sword, some dirty magazines, and no more time for undead bullshit. [more inside]
posted by WidgetAlley on Sep 11, 2019 - 42 comments

The multiple Eisner Award-winning series returns with a spacefaring adventure about fake news and genuine terror. Warning: Feelings. Collects SAGA #49-54 [more inside]
posted by dinty_moore on Jul 11, 2019 - 4 comments

The highly anticipated sequel to Dreadnought, featuring “the most exciting new superheroes in decades.” (Kirkus, starred review) Only nine months after her debut as the superhero Dreadnought, Danny Tozer is already a scarred veteran. Protecting a city the size of New Port is a team-sized job and she’s doing it alone. Between her newfound celebrity and her demanding cape duties, Dreadnought is stretched thin, and it’s only going to get worse. When she crosses a newly discovered billionaire... [more inside]
posted by happyroach on Jun 29, 2019 - 3 comments

An action-packed series-starter perfect for fans of The Heroine Complex and Not Your Sidekick. “I didn’t know how much I needed this brave, thrilling book until it rocked my world. Dreadnought is the superhero adventure we all need right now.”—Charlie Jane Anders, author of All the Birds in the Sky Danny Tozer has a problem: she just inherited the powers of Dreadnought, the world’s greatest superhero. Until Dreadnought fell out of the sky and died right in front of her, Danny was trying to... [more inside]
posted by happyroach on Jun 28, 2019 - 6 comments

On a cold spring night in 1952, a huge meteorite fell to earth and obliterated much of the east coast of the United States, including Washington D.C. The ensuing climate cataclysm will soon render the earth inhospitable for humanity, as the last such meteorite did for the dinosaurs. This looming threat calls for a radically accelerated effort to colonize space, and requires a much larger share of humanity to take part in the process. Elma York’s experience as a WASP pilot and mathematician earns her a place in the International Aerospace Coalition’s attempts to put man on the moon, as a calculator. But with so many skilled and experienced women pilots and scientists involved with the program, it doesn’t take long before Elma begins to wonder why they can’t go into space, too.
posted by dinty_moore on Jun 17, 2019 - 12 comments

While working on the set of the new The Twilight Zone, writer Sophie Gelson (Zazie Beetz) is haunted by a mysterious Blurryman. [Season finale] [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief on Jun 7, 2019 - 3 comments

Creeper, a scrappy young teen, is done living on the streets of New Orleans. Instead, she wants to soar, and her sights are set on securing passage aboard the smuggler airship Midnight Robber. Her ticket: earning Captain Ann-Marie’s trust using a secret about a kidnapped Haitian scientist and a mysterious weapon he calls The Black God’s Drums.
posted by dinty_moore on Jun 3, 2019 - 2 comments

At a time when it looks like we may be here to experience a real post-apocalyptic world, this richly realized picture of earth about a century after the fall of humanity is a compelling setting for what is ultimately a hopeful and uplifting novel. [more inside]
posted by COD on May 14, 2019 - 2 comments

2019 Hugo Nominee for Best Graphic Story: A webcomic where a ragtag crew travels to the deepest reaches of space, rebuilding beautiful, broken structures to piece the past together. Two girls meet in boarding school and fall deeply in love―only to learn the pain of loss. [more inside]
posted by dinty_moore on Apr 8, 2019 - 8 comments

A discussion of the shorts stories nominated for a Hugo this year [more inside]
posted by dinty_moore on Apr 6, 2019 - 16 comments

Rewatch! It is not rare for stories and movies, from Howard to Tolkien, to use a generalized sort of "times of lore" setting for fantasy, which doesn't do too badly if you don't push it too hard. This movie pushes it too hard. What the hell is a "Mannerjay" supposed to be, anyway? This is the one where Pearl riffs in the theater for the first quarter of the movie. Previously.
posted by JHarris on Apr 3, 2019 - 6 comments

A paraplegic marine dispatched to the moon Pandora on a unique mission becomes torn between following his orders and protecting the world he feels is his home. [more inside]
posted by MoonOrb on Mar 24, 2018 - 38 comments

Continuing the trilogy that began with the multi-award-nominated The Fifth Season. The season of endings grows darker as civilization fades into the long cold night. [more inside]
posted by prefpara on Aug 24, 2016 - 16 comments