Pixel Scroll 11/2/16 Soylent Green Is Pixels

(1) NAZIS, I HATE THOSE GUYS. The BBC, while reporting on somebody who wants to fly on Mars, made sure we didn’t miss out on any Nazi clickbait. Honestly….

The flying wing isn’t a new idea. The first practical design was developed by engineers in Nazi Germany in the final months of World War Two. The reason we are still whizzing around the globe in aluminum tubes with tails bolted to the back is that flying-wing aircraft have had a tendency to fall out of the sky.

Not anymore. Bowers’ team has spent the last few years developing and successfully testing models of flying wing aircraft. But, as befits the world’s foremost air and space organisation, Bowers is not only looking at terrestrial applications. He aims to become the first person to fly an aircraft across the surface of Mars.

(2) ANOTHER TEA LOVER. Elizabeth Fitzgerald of Earl Grey Editing Services reports on the most interesting parts of Australia’ Conflux 12, held at the beginning of October.

Conflux 12, Part 1

There were some great panels throughout the convention. Fanning the Sacred Flame discussed religion in SFF. Panel members came from atheist, Anglican, Buddhist and Jewish backgrounds. Despite being an atheist, K.J. Taylor said she finds it weird when religion or superstition is never mentioned in fantastical societies because it is something that exists in every real culture. She also spoke about her experiences with writing religious characters and stressed the importance of not being patronising or making the characters look like idiots by following their beliefs. Rivqa Rafael discussed ignorance as a writer’s worst enemy. Often writers don’t know what they are evoking when they borrow elements from religions they’re not a part of, with the results being beyond offensive and into hurtful. She gave the example of the Jewish golem. C.S. Lewis’ Narnia was mentioned many times, with the consensus being that the story worked best when its parable elements were subtle. Rivqa also cited Ann Leckie’s Imperial Radch trilogy as an example of religion done well, pointing out that conflicts between religions rarely happen on a level playing field, historically speaking. There are often major cultural and colonial elements at play.

Conflux 12, Part 2

Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end. At the closing ceremony, Sean Williams demonstrated the last of his Sci Chi. There’s an excellent video of Sean and Alan Baxter, if you’re interested in learning the moves (or just being mightily entertained).

Conflux 12 took place at the beginning of the month and I reported on it in two parts. The Canberra Speculative Fiction Guild have a round-up of convention reports from other members. However, they missed a few, including one from Guest of Honour Alan Baxter. Master of Ceremonies Sean Williams was in Canberra for a month leading up to the convention and has shared some of his experiences of that time. Rivqa Rafael has also storyfied her comprehensive tweets of the convention.

However, even Conflux can be a problematic favourite. No Award offers some criticism on aspects of this year’s convention.

Regular readers will know I’m a huge fan of Juliet Marillier and loved her latest book, Den of Wolves. If you’re also a fan and live in the US, you may be interested to know she’ll be appearing at a few conventions over the next few weeks.

(3) STONY END. Yes, he may be the finest idolator idolizing today. “Why I am a Milodator” by John C. Wright.

Many of my Christian friends wonder why I have erected a nine-story tall idol made out of of radioactive protactinium atop Mount Erebus in Antarctica to my hero Milo Yiannopoulos, to which each dark of the moon I sacrifice thirteen lesbians and journalists and randy Ethiopian bisexuals, thereby violating four of the Ten Commandments and two amendments of the Bill of Rights….

(4) INVISIBLE PLANETS WORTH A LOOK. Reviewer Ardi Alspach of B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog says “Invisible Planets Is a Singular Anthology of Chinese Science Fiction”.

Ken Liu has made his name as both a translator and novelist. His translated edition of Cixin Liu’s The Three-Body Problem (two of Cixin Liu’s stories appear here) is the first work of translated fiction to win a Hugo Award, and he’s been nominated for—and won—many awards for his own fiction. The stories he’s chosen for this anthology are representative of the expansive breadth of styles and ideas Chinese science fiction has to offer. I’ve highlighted some of my favorites below, but the bottom line is, this is a well-balanced, thoughtfully assembled collection, essential for any reader who wants to expand their understanding of the genre on a global scale.

(5) IRAQI SF. Sean McLachlan puts the anthology Iraq +100  on everyone’s radar in his Black Gate post “The Future of Iraq, According to the Country’s Science Fiction Authors”.

With all the grim news coming out of Iraq, it’s easy to think the country has no future. That’s wrong, of course, because being one of the oldest countries in the world, it’s not going anywhere anytime soon.

But what will that future look like? To answer that question, UK publisher Comma Press has released Iraq +100, an anthology of Iraqi writers imagining the future of their nation.

(6) TODAY IN HISTORY

  • November 2, 2000 — Cookie Monster (character on Sesame Street) was born.

(7) BEHIND COSPLAY. Mindy Weisberg fathoms “The psychology behind cosplay” for Huffington Post.

Certain costumes offer some people a way of working through personal difficulties, Rosenberg said. Batman, for example, can be an especially meaningful cosplay choice for someone coping with trauma. The dark superhero faced devastating trauma when he was a child — witnessing the brutal murder of his parents — which he overcame to become a hero.

“When people are dressed as Batman, many talk about having [experienced] their own traumatic experiences,” Rosenberg said. “He survived and found meaning and purpose from his experience, and that is inspiring to them.”

(8) COSPLAY IN L.A. Here is a photo gallery of the best Marvel cosplay from Stan Lee’s L.A. Comic Con 2016.

(9) PLAY FOR PAY IN L.A. Yahoo! celebrates one of the “MVPs of Horror: The Woman Behind Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, on Her 35th Year as the Bodacious Horror Hostess”.

Elvira was born, so to speak, during an era when independent TV stations like KHJ-TV kind of operated like the Wild West. Did it help being able to workshop the character in that kind of environment?

When I first appeared on local television as Elvira, I was allowed a lot more leeway than I expected. After I got the job, my friend made a sketch of what my dress should look like. I said, “There’s no way I can wear this on TV,” and they were like, “Just make the slit on the leg higher and it’ll be great.” Local TV stations didn’t really worry about standards and practices, so I made it pretty edgy. The station manager would come in just about every other week and say, “We’ve got a complaint again about your dress being so low-cut. You have to fix that.” I’d go, “OK, I’ll have them make the neckline higher.” And then I wouldn’t do anything at all, and he’d come back a couple weeks later and go, “We got a complaint.” It just kept going on like that. I never changed it!

(10) MOVIE CULTISTS. The October 28 Washington City Paper has a profile by Matt Cohen of the Washington Psychotronic Film Society, which has been screening weirdo films, many fantasy and sf, since 1989.  Cohen discusses how the group manages to keep going, even though they get bounced from bar to bar, in part for showing such fare as the “infamous 1974 Belgian art film VASE DE NOCES,” which has many scenes of happy pigs makin’ bacon. — “For Nearly 30 Years, the Washington Psychotronic Film Society Has Been Home for D.C.’s Underground Flick Fanatics”

For horror aficionados, Halloween is a 31-day celebration. It’s an excuse to spend the month of October cramming in as many spine-chilling movies as time allows. But for Carl Cephas, October is just another month. It doesn’t matter what time of year it is, every single Monday evening, Cephas dons a white lab coat, carries a stately meerschaum pipe, and becomes his alter ego: The Incorrigible Dr. Schlock.

It’s a role he’s been playing for 27 years as the president of the Washington Psychotronic Film Society—a club that has been meeting almost weekly to screen weird movies since 1989. “We’ve always shown underground, B-, student, experimental, underrated, non-Academy, anime, avant-garde, guerilla filmmaking, but people kept saying, ‘Oh, you guys just sit around watching bad movies,’” Cephas says. “And I would go, ‘No, they are not bad movies! They are films of a peculiar interest!’”

(11) BEYOND PRICE. Gabriel Ricard at Culture Vultures shows his appreciation for a horror movie legend in “Make the Case: Five Essential Vincent Price Movies”.

To be honest, I don’t think Vincent Price has ever actually scared me. Yet there is something about the multifaceted, unforgettable approach he brought to villainy that will probably stay with me for the rest of my life. The great actors and actresses of the horror genre do not have to actually be scary, in order to make a connection to the audience. They simply have to bring something to the material that makes it almost impossible to imagine that material without them.

A good example of the above thought with Price would be the numerous Edgar Allan Poe movies he worked on. Yeah, there have been a ton of Poe film adaptations through the years, but I really don’t care about the vast majority of the movies that didn’t feature Price. He was the perfect actor to play characters like Roderick Usher or Nicholas Medina. While he was not overtly scary in those roles, he did set the bar for the kind of bad guy who could still capture your attention. He frequently transcended the notion of merely being scary. In the best Vincent Price films and worst Vincent Price films, he was rarely boring. The horror films of Vincent Price could establish tension and atmosphere on their own terms. Price would then bring his singular presence to the proceedings. He enhanced the tension and atmosphere through performances that were so unique, they didn’t have to be outright scary. They were an approach to evil, sympathetic or not, that were essential to the appeal of the movie.

(12) GHASTLY ACTING. Gizmodo declares its candidates for “The 30 Weirdest Horror Movies of the 1970s”. How about this one with two servings of ham, Shatner and Travolta?

9) The Devil’s Rain (1975)

Robert Fuest, director of The Abominable Dr. Phibes, returns to this list with this Satanic delight about a family cursed by a devoted servant of the Dark Lord. William Shatner plays the hero and Ernest Borgnine plays the red-robed villain, while John Travolta makes his film debut in a very small role. Other than Borgnine, the most memorable part of this cheese-fest is when the title event manifests onscreen, and everybody’s face melts. It’s spectacularly nuts.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Martin Morse Wooster, and Chip Hitchcock for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day ULTRAGOTHA.]

Pixel Scroll 10/27/16 Take a Pixel, Maria, Scroll It Up My Screen

(1) HARASSMENT CLAIMS ANOTHER CREATOR. Comics Beat’s Heidi MacDonald reports another woman comics creator abandoned Twitter because of abuse — “Bestselling author Chelsea Cain driven off Twitter by harassment from comcs ‘fans’”.

Mockingbird writer Chelsea Cain, the bestselling author of Heartsick and other thrillers, deleted her Twitter account today after receiving abusive tweets yesterday….

In a now vanished series of tweets (one screencapped above)  Cain noted that she was getting harassing tweets, presumably over the above Mockingbird cover and her work there in general. It’s possible that she was targeted from 4chan or Reddit as well. After saying she was considering pulling the plug…she did just that.

This ignited a firestorm of support on Twitter as well….

And a #standwithchelseacain hashtag was trending for quite a while and is still gaining steam. I doubt this is going to calm down any time soon.

I guess everyone feels a little burnt on social media at the mo, but the harassment problem isn’t a woman’s problem, it’s a MAN’S problem. The good men of comics and everywhere need to make it clear they do not support or tolerate hate, abuse and misogyny. This isn’t a borderline case. It’s clear, indisputable harassment. And that should not be part of the “comics conversation.”

The abuse against women in comics is equally clear and indisputable, and the abuse against women of color is even worse. And so on down the line. It’s toxic and inexcusable.

(2) TAKE THE LONGER WAY. Scifinow has an interview with Becky Chambers.

[CHAMBERS] So when they asked me, “What would you like to do next?” I was like, “Well, I don’t have anything for this crew, but Pepper and Lovelace, those two are, they’ve got stuff that I’d like to explore.” So that was just the thread I picked up and went with.

They’re such a great pairing! So they were the starting point?

Yeah, it really did happen by accident. That was one of the last things that I figured out in The Long Way. A lot of the stuff that happened in the book I’d scribbled down and imagined well before I actually sat down and wrote the thing, but I was a long way through the first draft before I knew where Lovelace was going to go after the first book. Somehow Pepper just sort of naturally took that spot.

It was one of those wonderful moments where something happens when you’re writing that you didn’t intend and it’s just like, “Oh, that actually works really well!” I started thinking about how these two women have vastly different backgrounds and life experiences but they actually have quite a bit in common, and it was fun playing with that. It was fun finding the similarities between two characters who, at first blush, don’t look like they could have anything similar at all and yet are walking such similar paths.

(3) THE SCIENCE IN SCIENCE FICTION. Joshua Sky interviewed Larry Niven for Omni.

JS: One of your goals as a writer is to continuously publish science fiction that is at the cutting edge of science. Is that still the case?

NIVEN: Yes, Fred (editor of If and Galaxy magazines at the time) gave me that goal, because I was already doing it, without quite making it a goal. He in fact suggested me writing stories and he finding scientists to write articles alongside the stories on the same subject, and we never got that far. I think he must’ve found that to be too much work.

JS: Is your process that you check the news, read the latest discoveries in science, and then write a story based on your findings?

NIVEN: That was my goal. In fact, I never really managed it.

JS: Is it difficult to keep track of the latest developments in science?

NIVEN: That’s easy. That’s a hobby. Doing your research for fun, and hoping it generates stories. Sometimes it does.

(4) WHAT I REALLY MEANT TO SAY. Here’s a Los Angeles Times article that will refresh your memory about the new California law requiring autographed memorabilia come with a certificate of authenticity —  “The high cost of an autograph”.

The bill’s author, Assemblywoman Ling Ling Chang, faced with a firestorm of protest from booksellers, issued this letter that argues her legal language should not be interpreted in the draconian way people assume.

assemblywoman-letter-p-1

assemblywoman-letter-p-2

(5) VANISHING CULT. The LA Times’ Josh Rottenberg asks, “In an age of comic-book blockbusters and viral sensations, whatever happened to the cult movie?”

Those old video stores have virtually all disappeared now, of course, along with many of the independent movie theaters that, in decades past, drew steady crowds to such “midnight movies” – all of it swept away in the transition to a fully digital, on-demand world. And the cult movies themselves? It seems they’re in danger of going extinct as well.

In today’s fragmented, ever-churning pop culture ecosystem, the long tail of home video that once gave oddball movies a shot at a glorious cult afterlife has shortened to the point of vanishing. With even big-budget commercial films often struggling to break through the endless clutter of content, the challenge for smaller, quirkier fare is that much harder.

Even when a particular offbeat film – say, “The Babadook” or “It Follows” – manages to catch a viral wave, it is almost instantly overcome by the next fresh piece of “must-watch” entertainment that demands your already overtaxed attention. Instead of a long tail, we now have a collective case of incurable cultural ADHD.

(6) WRITER’S NOTEBOOK. In his latest post at This Way To Texas, Lou Antonelli shares an idea for a story – “The Revenge of the Internet” — inspired by this premise:

OK, the big problem with social media – which I think everyone recognizes – is that it allows you to attack or insult people with impunity. it unleashes our worst nature. We can get away with saying things to people we would never say to their face, or even on the phone, and we can do it across great distances….

(7) GENDER COUNTING. Juliet McKenna says this is what the numbers say about “Gender in Genre and the Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off 2016”.

When the only thing that counts is what readers make of the writing, the story really is all that matters.

The second thing I’m seeing here? Out of three hundred SPFBO [Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off] submissions this year, the field was 49% male, 33% female and 18 unknown as they were using initials. Can we assume those initials all belong to women? I’d say that’s a risky assumption – and even if that were the case, that still means only a third of the books were written by women prepared to raise a hand to be identified as such. What does that tell us?

Once again, it confirms something I’ve seen time and again since I started writing about inequalities in visibility in SF&F. Something I’ve had confirmed as an endemic problem in fields such as medicine, science, computing, literary criticism, history and the law. Women are still culturally conditioned to put themselves forward much less and to hold their own work to a far higher standard before offering it for publication. It’s a problem that frustrates and infuriates editors, from those working on academic journals, through fiction anthologies in all genres, to the commissioning editors in publishing houses. With the best will in the world, the best initiatives to improve diversity and representation can only work if those who’ve been historically excluded now step forward.

(8) BEFORE THERE WAS DYSTOPIA. In his article “We should remember HG Wells for his social predictions, not just his scientific ones” at The Conversation, Victorian fiction professor Simon John James notes that it’s H.G. Wells’s sesquicentennial, and gives back ground on Wells’s political achievements, including how Wells’s ideas inspired the UN Declaration of Universal Human Rights.

Today, given the role that national identity continues to play in human beings’ efforts for greater self-determination, the prospect of Wells’s world state seems even less likely. One surprising legacy remains, however, from Wells’s forecasts of a better future for humankind. Letters from Wells to The Times led to the Sankey Committee for Human Rights and Wells’s 1940 Penguin Special The Rights of Man; Or What Are We Fighting For? (recently reissued with a preface by novelist Ali Smith). Wells argued that the only meaningful outcome for the war would be the declaration of an agreed set of universal human rights and an international court to enforce them.

Wells’s aspiration was the guaranteeing of the right to life, education, work, trade and property for every man and woman on Earth. (Surprisingly, given his earlier flirtation with positive eugenics, Wells also insisted on “freedom from any sort of mutilation or sterilisation” and from torture.) The influence of Wells’s work is clear in the United Nations 1948 Declaration of Universal Human Rights. These rights now have legal force if not universal existence: so are perhaps Wells’s most significant prophetic aim.

(9) JABBA’S JAZZ BAND ON THE TITANIC. I was amused by a sportswriter’s use of a Star Wars metaphor here. (There’s no reason to go read the whole article unless you want to know why a pro basketball team – the Philadelpha 76ers – has been tanking for years.)

Maduabum is not at the center of this story, but as a part of The Process he is known to the community of people who believe in it, roughly in the same way that the name of the lead singer in the band playing on Jabba the Hutt’s barge is known to your harder core Star Wars weirdos. Maduabum is a component part of a bigger story, in other words, and a peripheral cast member in that story’s expanded universe.

It’s a story that, as so often happens with things like this, is now being told by people with significantly more emotional investment in it than the original credited author. The person who came up with all this was, however idiosyncratically, trying to tell a compelling story successfully through to its conclusion, which is a complicated but prosaic thing. That story didn’t really come to life, and so cannot really have been said to work in any meaningful way, until it changed hands, as generally happens to stories that work the best. The story becomes the shared property of people who really care about it, who have more invested in it, for one, but also pursue it with both a more robust and a more authentic imagination than the story’s creator brought to it. The Process is no longer in Hinkie’s hands. It belongs, now, to the community of believers that keep it alive, and who care about it for reasons that go well beyond the stated goal of building a winning basketball team or attending some cramped and beery victory parade down Broad Street. ChuChu Maduabum is a peripheral part of that story, but he’s part of it. He’s Sy Snootles, yes, but he’s also a real guy. The Philadelphia 76ers owned his rights for six months, and then they traded them.

(10) DON’T SKIP OVER THIS. Steven Lovely picked “The 30 Best Science Fiction Books in the Universe” for Early Bird Books. You may think it’s only been ten minutes since you saw a list of sf/f greats, but this one includes a bunch of present day greats, too, like Ancillary Justice and Three-Body Problem.

(11) ORIGINAL TOURIST TERROR TOWER. In the October 27 Washington Post, John Kelly interviews Itsi Atkins, who probably invented the haunted house attraction in St. Mary’s County in 1971.  Atkins talks about how he came up with the idea and how much he enjoyed scaring people at “Blood Manor” in the 1970s: “He dreamed of screams: Meet the man behind the modern haunted house”.

With Halloween bearing down on us like an ax-wielding maniac, now’s a good time to remember Edwin “Itsi” Atkins, pioneer of fright.

“In all my research, I can’t find anybody who has a live-action haunted house before 1971,” Itsi told me when I rang him up in Georgia, where he lives now. Yes, people had “yard haunts” — elaborate decorations in their front yards — and Disneyland had its Haunted Mansion. But that was an amusement-park ride, which took safely seat-belted riders through a gently scary attraction.

What Itsi claims to have invented is the interactive experience of walking through a haunted house while being assaulted by scary actors amid frightful tableaux.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, and Martin Morse Wooster for some off these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Mart.]

Cult Movie Bracket: The Final Final!

Cult Movie Bracket Logo SM

By Hampus Eckerman: For each pair, vote for the top cult movie. Vote for what is rememoralizable, what is fun, what is interesting, what is cult. You will have at least 24 hours to answer, but after that it depends on when I have time to count the votes.

1. QUOTABLE QUAGMIRE
The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)
The Princess Bride (1987)

2. What movie should have won?

3. Which movies were voted out too early or were never in the bracket in the first place?

4. Which would be your favourite mashup between two of the cult movies?

Cult Movie Bracket: Semifinal

Cult Movie Bracket Logo SMBy Hampus Eckerman: For each pair, vote for the top cult movie. Vote for what is memorable, what is fun, what is interesting, what is cult. You will have at least 24 hours to answer, but after that it depends on when I have time to count the votes.

1. ESSENCIAL CULT
The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)
Dr. Strangelove or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)

2. BATTLE OF BRITAIN
Rank the films from 1 to 3, 1 being best.

Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
The Princess Bride (1987)
Time Bandits (1981)

Cult Movie Bracket, First Fifth Element Quarter Final

Cult Movie Bracket Logo SMBy Hampus Eckerman: For each pair, vote for the top cult movie. Vote for what is rememberable, what is fun, what is interesting, what is cult. You will have at least 24 hours to answer, but after that it depends on when I have time to count the votes.

1. DON’T LET THIS PAIRING UPSET YOU
Dr. Strangelove or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
This is Spinal Tap (1984)

2. THIS LANDING IS GONNA BE PRETTY INTERESTING
Serenity (2005)
The Princess Bride (1987)

3. WITH A BIT OF A MIND FLIP
The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)
Labyrinth (1986)

4. QUIET, DIGNITY AND GRACE
Young Frankenstein (1974)
Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)

5. AND THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW… THE WORLD!
Time Bandits (1981)
Groundhog Day (1993)

Cult Movie Bracket, Fourth Round

Cult Movie Bracket Logo SMBy Hampus Eckerman: For each pair, vote for the top cult movie. Vote for what is rememberable, what is fun, what is interesting, what is cult. You will have at least 24 hours to answer, but after that it depends on when I have time to count the votes.

1. BRING US A SHRUBBERY!
Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
The Little Shop of Horrors (1960)

2. STAYING IN THE PAST OR THE PRESENT
Groundhog Day (1993)
Army of Darkness (1992)

3. IF HIS BRAIN’S RAN DOWN, HOW CAN HE TALK?
Return to Oz (1985)
Young Frankenstein (1974)

4. PRINCESS VS QUEENS
The Princess Bride (1987)
The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994)

5. RELATIONSHIPS WITH GOD
The Blues Brothers (1980)
Time Bandits (1981)

6. OUT OF THE DOOR, LINE ON THE LEFT, ONE BOMB EACH
Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979)
Dr. Strangelove or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)

7. DUDE VS DUKE
The Big Lebowski (1998)
Labyrinth (1986)

8. IT’S SUCH A FINE LINE BETWEEN STUPID, AND UH…
Blazing Saddles (1974)
This is Spinal Tap (1984)

9. GREAT HEAVENS! THATS A LASER!
Better Off Dead (1985)
The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)

Time Warp Again

The official trailer for Fox’s The Rocky Horror Picture Show dropped at Comic-Con 2016.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show, a brand-new reimagining of the cult-classic midnight movie 40 years in the making, is set to air October 2016. Sweethearts Janet (Victoria Justice, Victorious) and Brad (Ryan McCartan, Liv & Maddie, Heathers the Musical) stumble upon flirtatious mad scientist Dr Frank-N-Furter’s (Emmy Award-nominated actress Laverne Cox, Orange is the New Black) bizarre abode during his annual Transylvanian science convention. The two-hour event also features Emmy Award nominee Tim Curry, the original Frank-N-Furter.

The two-hour event commemorating the 40th anniversary of the original movie musical will air in October.

It’s directed and choreographed by High School Musical‘s Kenny Ortega, which is better than it sounds, because his many other credits include working with Michael Jackson on what was intended as his comeback, the elements of which are seen in the movie This Is It.

Cult Movie Bracket, Third Round

Cult Movie Bracket Logo SM

By Hampus Eckerman: For each pair, vote for the top cult movie. Vote for what is rememberable, what is fun, what is interesting, what is cult. You will have at least 24 hours to answer, but after that it depends on when I have time to count the votes.

1. HIDING UNDERNEATH
Tremors (1990)
Labyrinth (1986)

2. FEATURING GEORGE HARRISON
Army of Darkness (1992)
Die Hard (1988)

3. BRITISH HUMOUR
Yellow Submarine (1968)
Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979)

4. BIG VS LITTLE
The Big Lebowski (1998)
The Little Shop of Horrors (1960)

5. LEADER BY BOMB OR POND
The Mouse That Roared (1959)
Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)

6. THE HAPPIEST DAYS OF OUR LIVES
Pink Floyd: The Wall (1982)
Groundhog Day (1993)

7. ALIENS GOING HOME
The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)
Repo Man (1984)

8. BUCK UP LITTLE CAMPER
Better Off Dead (1985)
Kung Fu Hustle (2004)

9. WHO BUILT THIS STINKING ROAD?
Return to Oz (1985)
Death Race 2000 (1975)

10. DISTINCT TYPES OF VISIONAIRIES
This is Spinal Tap (1984)
Forbidden Planet (1956)

11. CREATURE MOVIES
Young Frankenstein (1974)
Godzilla (1954)

12. ON A MISSION
The Blues Brothers (1980)
Escape from New York (1981)

13. TAKEN ON A STRANGE JOURNEY
Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959)
Dr. Strangelove or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)

14. USED AS PUPPETS
Time Bandits (1981)
Being John Malkovich (1999)

15. BATTLE OF THE DRAG QUEENS
The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994)
Pink Flamingos (1972)

16. A MATCH FOR YOUR BRAIN
The Princess Bride (1987)
Shaun of the Dead (2004)

17. WHERE DO I EVEN BEGIN TO NAME THIS TITLE!?
Blazing Saddles (1974)
Barbarella (1968)
Serenity (2005)

Cult Movie Bracket, Second Round, Second Bracket

Cult Movie Bracket Logo SMBy Hampus Eckerman: For each pair, vote for the top cult movie. Vote for what is memorable, what is fun, what is interesting, what is cult. You will have at least 24 hours to answer, but after that it depends on when I have time to count the votes.

1. TOO SQUARE
Pink Flamingos (1972)
Cube (1997)

2. WHO WOULD CROSS THE BRIDGE OF DEATH
Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
The Quiet Earth (1985)

3. FUTURE EVENTS SUCH AS THESE WILL AFFECT YOU IN THE FUTURE
Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959)
The Ice Pirates (1984)

4. DENIED THEIR ESSENCE
Ladyhawke (1985)
Dr. Strangelove or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)

5. BEING PLAYED
The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T. (1953)
The Big Lebowski (1998)

6. THE ALL MONSTER BONANZA
Godzilla (1954)
Destroy All Monsters (1968)

7. TO SMOKE OR NOT TO SMOKE
Yellow Submarine (1968)
Reefer Madness (1936)

8. WANTING TO WIN OR TO LOOSE
Six-String Samurai (1998)
The Mouse That Roared (1959)

9. TWUE LOVE WITH COMPLICATIONS
The Princess Bride (1987)
Excalibur (1981)

10. IT IS NOT PRETTY-PRETTY
Barbarella (1968)
Soylent Green (1973)

11. LACK OF RESPECT, WRONG ATTITUDE, FAILURE TO OBEY AUTHORITY
This is Spinal Tap (1984)
A Boy and His Dog (1975)

12. LETS DO THIS ONE AGAIN
Donnie Darko (2001)
Better Off Dead (1985)

13. WITH OR WITHOUT WALLS
Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001)
Pink Floyd: The Wall (1982)

14. CRASH LANDINGS
Serenity (2005)
Amelie (2002)

15. DIFFERENT FIGHTING STYLES
Die Hard (1988)
Kung Fu Hustle (2004)

16. INCOMPREHENSIBLE POWERS
Rank the candidates from 1 to 3 in the order of preference (1 = best)
Dark City (1998)
Akira (1988)
Groundhog Day (1993)

Cult Movie Bracket, Second Round, First Bracket

Cult Movie Bracket Logo SM

By Hampus Eckerman: For each pair, vote for the top cult movie. Vote for what is rememberable, what is fun, what is interesting, what is cult. You will have at least 24 hours to answer, but after that it depends on when I have time to count the votes.

1. WE’VE ALL BEEN USED! AND ABUSED! AND AMUSED!
The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994)
Zardoz (1974)

2. TALL GUY, WEIRD CLOTHES
Young Frankenstein (1974)
Big Trouble in Little China (1986)

3. SAVING THE HUMAN RACE
Escape from New York
Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989)

4. MIDGET KING VS NOME KING
Forbidden Zone (1980)
Return to Oz (1985)

5. MODEST DESIGN

Flash Gordon (1980)
The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)

5. SECOND FIFTH ELEMENT
The Blues Brothers (1980)
The Fifth Element (1997)

6. DRIVING FAST IN A 20 MPH ZONE
Repo Man (1984)
Shaun of the Dead (2004)

7. TREATMENT OF PLANTS
The Little Shop of Horrors (1960)
Silent Running (1972)

8. GOBLIN KING VS GOBLIN ARMY
Labyrinth (1986)
Wizards (1977)

9. MEETING THE PRESIDENT
Death Race 2000 (1975)
The President’s Analyst (1967)

10. WHAT IS INSIDE CARES FOR YOU
Being John Malkovich (1999)
Mystery Men (1999)

11. GENTLEMEN, PLEASE REST YOUR SPHINCTERS
Blazing Saddles (1974)
Bubba Ho-Tep (2002)

12. MEDIEVAL DEAD
Army of Darkness (1992)
Conan the Barbarian (1982)

13. DON’T YOU OPPRESS THEM
Metropolis (1927)
Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979)

14. WE GOTTA KILL IT!
Tremors (1990)
Adventures in Babysitting (1987)

15. BROOM STICK VS ROCKET SHIPS
Forbidden Planet (1956)
Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989)

16. BOMBS, NINE O’CLOCK, DAY TWO!
Time Bandits (1981)
Dark Star (1974)