Sci-Fi Overload!

Today was a truly interesting day.

deadrose and I attended the Science Fiction Short Film Festival, which is a joint event produced by the Experience Music Project/Science Fiction Museum, Cinerama theatre, and Seattle International Film Festival organization. Since we're both charter members of the SFM, we were also invited to the two-hour post-festival awards reception to schmooze with the filmmakers, curators and representatives of the EMP/SFM, and other members.

There were some truly amazing short films, along with a few duds. Nothing truly horrible, although there was one that didn't really fit the format, as it was more of an MTV-style music video; but a few that were simply too cliche, badly paced, or poorly transferred (the soundtrack on one was so muddy the dialog was incomprehensible for large parts of it). There was one that was done well but didn't really work. That was due entirely to the short runtime. It clearly had the seed of a brilliant feature-length film, reminiscient of THX-1138 in many ways; but needed much more exposition and development than were possible in a short. I would love to see it expanded on. Overall, the films were very entertaining, including one hilarious parody of classic pulp sci-fi (Escape! From Robot Island; and a brilliantly funny stop-motion animated piece (Operation: Fish). A number of the films, or clips from them, are available on Youtube, Myspace, and the creator's websites.

Afterwards, the awards were presented, and they all went to exactly the right films. Nothing that I could possibly have objected to there. The films that truly deserved recognition, got it.

Following the awards ceremony, we attended the reception. Plenty of free food and booze, but for the most part I was rather bored. I'm not good with crowds, and don't really do well with small talk. A few brief interchanges here and there; but nothing solid. Was getting bored and ready to leave; when a couple of people walked over and remarked on our SFM t-shirts. deadrose was wearing one of the newer, flashier ones; and I was wearing the old charter-member shirt (the one with the original and now defunct website url on the back). We mentioned we were charter members, and started chatting a bit about the films, and then about a wide variety of other things. Turned out that they were both involved with the SFM organization, and one was a curator. Got a bit of inside information about some upcoming events; including an awesome-sounding new exhibit planned for early next year. Don't want to say any more than that, but will say that it sounds like it's going to be truly amazing. One of the most interesting things that came out of that conversation is that deadrose will likely be contributing an interesting bit of classic memorabilia to the museum. :)

Oh, and for a number of you on my list, particularly eonon, ulrich, mecracker chiarascura, theda, and lathe26; I'd strongly recommend checking out the Special Events section of the Cinerama website, since coming up both this month and next month there are some seriously awesome movies playing. Not only 70mm prints of both 2001, A Space Oddessy and Lawrence of Arabia, but also a very rare 70mm print of Tron! The latter of which will be playing the 26th and 27th of February, and the 4th and 5th of March. I'm definitely going to be hitting it at least once, hopefully twice.

Got home in the mood for some retro/pulp sci-fi, so I'm watching Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow while I'm writing this post.