Word: fi
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...month keep an ear out for COAL, which claims to be the only "ethereal psychedelic western noir lounge act" around, perhaps because no other bands have any idea what the hell that means. And for the gritty, hard-core beach-boy in all of us, there's the Del-fi Records web page, home of original "spy-and-surf noir" bands like the El Camino's and The Deuce Coupes, and the only label with "slurpy, reverb-drenched" compilation albums, "each one a transgenerational compendium of prime slime teen sleaze." "Fun, Fun, Fun" never sounded so devious...
...Ireland in the early '60s. That means neighbors who are either dim or actively disapproving as the Bradys fall further and further into disarray. It also means that Francie's racing imagination is being fed with cultural junk food--cheap religious icons and TV purveying low-end sci-fi and images of the atomic Armageddon that everyone brooded on in those days...
Another priority is a film of Battlefield Earth, the sci-fi novel by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. Travolta is a strong adherent of the controversial "belief system." His friends and relatives say it empowers him with almost fearless self-confidence. He believes it does even more. "I once got so feverish we had to stop production on Grease," remembers director Randal Kleiser. "John decided to cure me using Scientology, and put his finger over my body for an hour. The next day I made a full recovery. Of course, it could have also been that flu shot from...
...scientific team assembled by writers Stephen Hauser and Paul Attanasio, adapting an old Michael Crichton novel, is ragtag and cranky. The chief credential of its psychologist (Dustin Hoffman) is a report on how to handle alien encounters, which he admits cribbing largely from sci-fi tales. The biochemist (Sharon Stone) is a pill popper. The mathematician (Samuel L. Jackson) is a cynic, the astrophysicist (Liev Schreiber) is twittily lusting after a Nobel Prize, and the team leader (Peter Coyote) needs to try a little tenderness. In short, the possibilities for amusing dysfunction are potentially larger than we usually find...
...question of the sphere's origin is left unanswered at the end of the film--along with a lot of other loose ends--but it's really no mystery. It probably came from the Forbidden Planet, a realm first explored in the classic 1956 sci-fi adventure movie. Its inhabitants had mastered the technique of invading people's minds, prying their darkest passions out of them and turning them back on their victims. Obviously Hoffman's character isn't the only figure involved with Sphere who has a good memory for the classic tropes of dystopian sci-fi...