Assault on Precinct 13 (1976)
One of John Carpenter’s earliest films, released against a cultural landscape of economic collapse, racial unrest, gang warfare, and mounting fear, Assault on Precinct 13 is the model of a base under siege story.
A father kills a gang member in retaliation for his daughter, then takes refuge in a nearly shuttered police precinct. The only remaining staff are two cops (Austin Stoker, Henry Brandon) and two secretaries (Laurie Zimmer, Nancy Loomis). At the same time, a prison bus pulls in to ask for help with a sick prisoner.
Once the board is set up, the gang cuts the power then surrounds the station. The rest of the movie is an extended zombie movie, without the zombies. The gang members are faceless, merciless, and inhuman. No help is coming, and the resources inside the station are wearing thin. The only hope for anyone is for everyone to work together — cops and convicts, black and white, man and woman.
Alongside the gloomy action blares yet another of John Carpenter’s gloomy, distinctive synth scores.
The movie was remade in 2005 by Jean-François Richet, with a fairly high-profile cast.
The King of Fighters XI
The second chapter of the third story arc in SNK’s long-running fighting game serial. When we last saw our heroes, Ash Crimson had just plunged his fist into Chizuru’s chest and extracted from her the mirror power that in 1997 she used to seal away the Orochi. Now Ash has set his sights on Iori Yagami, and the second of the sacred powers.
After the complete overhaul of KOF2003, the series stopped its yearly update cycle. The next game, KOFXI, didn’t arrive until 2005 — and when it did hit, it was on Sega/Sammy’s Atomiswave hardware. The improved processing power and storage allowed for much higher production values and a larger cast of characters, right around the same time that SNK started to get its act together again creatively.
The game system is much the same as KOF2003 — the same frenetic tag-team action — except more polished and playable, and with a wider and more varied array of characters to choose amongst.
Some of the new characters, in particular Oswald, quickly became fan favorites. Other characters, like Duck King were considered long overdue. Likewise the improvements to several series staples, such as King’s, were gladly accepted. Some character omissions, such as Mai, were met with widespread bewilderment.
The King of Fighters XI is the final game to use the original low-res character sprites, and the only game to run natively on Sega/Sammy’s hardware. KOFXI is also the final game to employ a tag mechanic. With 2009′s KOFXII, the series moves to fully redrawn high-definition sprites running on Taito’s fairly powerful Type X2 board, and returns to the classic three-on-three elimination structure.
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1981)
Douglas Adams’ radio play and book was long considered unfilmable. That didn’t stop BBC Light Entertainment from giving it a go.
What the 1981 TV adaptation lacks in visual flair, it makes up for in visual distinctiveness — such as the classic design to Marvin the Paranoid Android and the iconic Rod Lord-animated, Peter Jones-voiced Guide sequences.
Strictly speaking, the TV series is more of an adaptation of the radio serial than the novels; it uses many of the same cast members (even those who translate rather poorly to screen), and covers roughly the same amount of story (which is to say, the content of the first two books). Also look for a Peter Davison cameo in an original scene written by Adams for this adaptation.
The Shining (1980)
Writer Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) agrees to watch over the remote Overlook hotel during the winter season, when the roads are snowed over and the house is left abandoned. Jack is a little unstable to start with, and being trapped alone with his family in an abandoned mansion hardly helps his condition. What probably helps even less is that the mansion is built on a focal point of psychic energy, leaving its inhabitants — particularly the unstable or the gifted — prone to visions, premonitions, and suggestion.
Jack’s son (Danny Lloyd) quickly becomes troubled, and his wife (Shelley Duvall) insists that the boy needs help. All that Jack wants is to finish his novel. Yet how can he work, with this constant interruption? Clearly something must be done.
Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 movie is broadly renowned both as a landmark piece of cinema and as a dubious adaptation of Stephen King’s 1977 novel.
Futurama
Simpsons creator Matt Groening’s “other” show has attracted less success yet possibly more fervent ardor than its sibling.
On New Year’s Eve 1999, pizza deliveryman Fry (voice of Billy West) trips into a cryogenic freezing chamber. The next thing he knows, it’s the year 3000 and everything is exactly the way he remembers it — if you ignore all the robots and flying cars and demented humanoid lobsters. Otherwise, New York is still New York and Fry is still a loser. At least in the future he’s a loser with friends. Sure they’re all mutants, aliens, robots, and weirdos — but hey, he’ll take what he can get.
Futurama began with a flourish in 1999, lasted four seasons, then was canned due to bizarre scheduling and low ratings. Also, Fox. Five years and four direct-to-DVD movies later, the show returned to air with new episodes on Comedy Central.
The Thing (1982)
John Carpenter’s 1982 remake is just the most elaborate of the director’s tributes to The Thing from Another World director Howard Hawks. His earlier Assault on Precinct 13 is a more domestic translation of Hawks’ base-under-siege story structure, as is his 1978 breakthrough Halloween.
An arctic research station’s routine is shattered by gunfire and explosions. It seems that members of a nearby Norwegian camp had dug something mysterious out of the ice, and then subsequently all been killed. The only apparent survivor is an Alaskan Malamute, that the research team quickly adopts.
It soon becomes clear that the team has invited in more than it was prepared for. One by one the station’s personnel begin to change, into hideous collages of human and alien features. When the alien can hide within anyone, the question becomes, who is still human and who is infected?
Though groundbreaking in its practical effects work, The Thing was at first greeted with chilly reception. Critics, still giddy from Spielberg’s recent E.T., found the movie’s depiction of extraterrestrial life dingy, depressing, and distressingly pessimistic. Roger Ebert commented that he could barely tell the male characters apart, behind all the hair and testosterone. Time has been rather more kind to the film, with IMDb users rating it the 176th best film ever made, somewhere between The Graduate and The 400 Blows.
Dracula X Chronicles
It is 1792, and Richter Belmont is about to get married — never a good omen for the latest in a cursed line of vampire hunters. An evil sorcerer named Shaft spirits away Richter’s bride Annette, in hopes to revive Count Dracula a few years before his scheduled awakening. In response, Richter — and later, Annette’s young sister Maria — stomp off to whip Transylvania back into shape.
As the immediate precursor to fan favorite Symphony of the Night, Rondo of Blood was long considered the legendary, “lost” Castlevania game. Its design serves as sort of a bridge between the earlier action games and the later, Metroid-influenced design.
Almost 14 years to the day after its original release, Rondo was finally published outside of Japan — on the somewhat poorly-supported Sony PSP, remade with new graphics and sound and remixed level design. Not exactly what fans had been looking forward to, but it’s something. Also the original game, and its sequel Symphony of the Night, are included as bonuses — although that means trudging through the frostily-received remake to unlock them.
Star Trek: First Contact
The eighth Star Trek movie, and the second to feature the Next Generation cast, is one of the most well-received in the franchise.
To prevent the cybernetic Borg from changing Earth’s history, the crew of the Enterprise-E follows a Borg cube back to the 21st century, to a point just days before humanity’s first faster-than-light flight. The story then splits between setting the legendary Zefram Cochrane (James Cromwell) back on track with his flight, and battling the Borg on-board the Enterprise itself.
Contact
In Robert Zemeckis’ 1997 adaptation of Carl Sagan’s novel, Jodie Foster plays Ellie Arroway, a SETI scientist convinced that, decades after the first television transmissions escaped into space, an extraterrestrial force has received them and chosen to respond to us. In turn, Arroway is put in charge of the worldwide efforts to decode these transmissions and thereby strike up first contact with an alien intelligence. The results of her efforts force Arroway to question the line between knowledge and faith.
The film version of Contact is the culmination of nearly 20 years of development hell. The script is based on a treatment by Sagan and his wife, produced before Sagan’s death. That treatment was based on Sagan’s novel, which in turn was adapted from an earlier failed film treatment. Although far simpler than the novel, Zemeckis’ film hews fairly close to Sagan’s story — including Sagan’s own choice of leads, Jodie Foster.
Star Trek: The Animated Series
Star Trek’s five-year mission was cut short in 1969, at the three-year mark. After a few years of successful syndication, Filmation stepped in to propose finishing up the series via animation. The studio’s original ideas were kind of terrible, so Roddenberry nixed them and demanded that the show be done his way — namely, as straight as possible.
As a result, 1973 saw the Enterprise return to duty with its full original cast (save Walter Koenig) and many of the same writers as the original show. Such was the sophistication of the writing that The Animated Series is the first incarnation of Star Trek to win an Emmy. Freed from the budgets of a live-action show (albeit laden with Filmation’s limited animation), the show could also explore new environments and strange alien races impractical to visualize before.
When Star Trek: The Next Generation debuted in 1987, and spin-off licensing became a major issue, Roddenberry was quick to dismiss The Animated Series and ban all reference to it. In the years since, the show has slowly worked its way back into the official canon.
Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey
For the truly righteous, death is not the end. In this 1991 sequel to Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, our heroes are swiftly killed and replaced by android duplicates from the future. Most people would consider this a bad day, but Bill and Ted kind of lack that sense of the bigger picture. When faced with Death (courtesy of Ingmar Bergman), it’s not long before they twist him to their own bidding — and that’s just the start of the mockery they make of the eternal rest.
The Black Adder
Over the course of 432 years, Britain was graced with a noble line of conniving twits, all in some way known as Blackadder (Mr. Bean’s Rowan Atkinson). If there’s a throne, he’s after it. If there’s a war to be fought, he’s escaping it. With each successive series we move another three or five generations forward, to stumble head-first into another awkward period of history.
As with many British shows, The Black Adder (conceived by Akinson and Four Weddings and a Funeral screenwriter Richard Curtis) had an eccentric run: 24 episodes (plus three specials) over six years. Every six episodes, the title changes — from The Black Adder to Blackadder II, Blackadder the Third, and Blackadder Goes Forth.
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