These are the days of high adventure!
- One of the most under appreciated and at the same time one of the most innovative genre's of movie magic is the fantasy genre. Sometimes called the "Sword & Sorcery" genre, the fantasy genre of movies is a wide ranging area of interest. From The Secret of Nimh to Red Sonja.
- Some of my favourite fantasy films include Conan the Barbarian, The Princess Bride and Willow. I will include these and other favourites soon in my Fantasy Reviews.
- The world of fantasy is ever expanding and here is the definitive list! Compiled by the Internet Movie Database, this list represents just about every movie that fits under the umbrella genre of fantasy! View the list here, you'll be glad you did.
- Please feel free to submit your fantasy site to me for a chance to win the "88keyz's Fantasy Award". You can submit your site to me at the email address shwatkin@hotmail.com, please include the subject line "88keyz Award". All submitted sites will be reviewed within 7 days and a response given. Good luck to all entrants and if you don't win then please feel free to submit your site again in the future.
- The Internet Movie Database recently changed its format again and when it did so it added some interesting new ranking features for the movies in its database. You can now view the rankings of films by male or female vote, by genre or by decade. To check this out for yourself please visit the IMDb Vote Charts. And for you fans of sword & sorcery of particular interest should be the IMDb's ranking of The Top 50 Fantasy Films of all time by fan vote. Check it out and vote now and often for the films that really deserve to be on this most definitive of lists.
- The Origin of Sci-Fi by Forrest J. Ackerman: Some of you younger generation may not realize that "sci-fi" hasn't ALWAYS been a part of the American language. That we haven't always been on the Moon, that we haven't always had television and taperecorders. You probably remember the advent of faxes, VCRs and computers but-- I'm amazed when, during one of my open houses chez Ackermansion, some fan casually mentions "sci-fi" and I ask them, "Do you know who coined that term?" Neither they nor any other fans present do. "In 1954, that word was first heard in this world," and I go on to explain: I was riding around in my car with the radio on and some mention was made of "hi-fi." Since "science fiction" had been on the tip of my tongue since Hugo Gernsback introduced it in 1929 (in his sf mag "Science Wonder Stories"), I looked in the rearview mirror, stuck out my tongue and there, tattooed on the end of it was . . . SCI-FI! I thought fans who had embraced the portmanteau word "scientifiction" and its abbreviation "stf" (pronounced "stef") would be the first to latch onto sci-fi. Indeed many automatically did. (The preceding story was taken from Forrest J Ackerman's Wide Webbed World.) This is a story that I learned about just recently and I decided to reprint it here because every fan of horror all over the world deserves to know the real roots of SCI-FI.
- The 20th century has come to a close and I would would like to say that on the whole things went pretty well. Just think of all the things that have been invented since the turn of the century. Everything from the airplane to the Digital Video Disc. Just about every item we use in our homes and our lives today was invented in the past 100 years. To think that in all the history of mankind almost all of the worlds most important inventions were made within the last 4 generations. So as we enter a knew era where none of us know exactly what the future holds I find it fitting that fantasy can play such a huge role in the future. Where does fantasy stop and reality start. 100 years ago it was a fantasy to think that one day man would walk in the moon and travel through the sky like a bird, today it is reality, maybe tomorrow the boundaries will disappear.
- Is it just me or do cartoons suck these days? I remember when I was a kid growing up in the early 80's that come Saturday morning my parents had to use a tow trick to drag me away from the television. I spent all week looking forward to the continuing adventures of my favourite heroes like Masters of the Universe, The Transformers, G.I. Joe and Dungeons & Dragons. And thats just scratching the surface of the great shows that were on when I was younger! In a 5-6 year period, from about 1981 on, the Saturday morning children's show was almost perfected as a form of entertainment. Those cartoons are cult classics now with fans, that used to watch the shows, paying outrageous prices for dupes that someone taped off of TV when the shows first aired. Can you imagine ever paying a premium price for old second run episodes of Pokémon or Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. I've started to collect as many of these old 80's cartoons as possible in whatever form that I can find them, because should I have children someday I cringe at the thought of subjecting them to the utterly mindless crap that passes for children's entertainment nowadays. I want my kids to know that cartoons used to be fun, exciting, enjoyable and educational. All of which the cartoons of today lack, sadly. Hey, not only that, but watching those old cartoons is as enjoyable as it ever was and it helps take me back to a time in my life when there was nothing to worry about except whether or not the hero beat the villian. So do yourself a favour and see if you can't track down some of those old classics that enchanted you as a child, you'll knock years off of your age in minutes and enjoy doing it.
- As a child without a doubt my favourite cartoon, as well as toy, was He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. But it hasn't been until the last few years that the wealth of info that exists about this fantastic show has been available for the general public to read. And the reason for this info becoming available is the growth of internet and the ease with which information on just about any topic can be found. In the 1960's the FCC ruled that it was unethical for any company to produce a children's show based on a toy line. This decision was reached because they thought that the children's show would just end up being a half-hour commercial for the toy line. And this law stayed in effect until late 1982 when the FCC recinded the rule and opened the doors for children's programming based on toys. The first to jump on this idea was Mattel, and they had the perfect toy, their wildly popular Masters of the Universe series seemed a natural. So they contracted a writer to create a series bible for their new animated series He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. When this bible was completed it was presented to Filmation (the company contracted by Mattel to produce the series) to be used as a guideline for the first season of the series. And now you can read the story of how the bible came to be and also read the bible itself.
- July 14, 2000, a day that many a fantasy and comic book fan have been waiting for for quite a long time has come and gone and it was worth every minute of the wait. X-Men is the first in a series of Marvel Comics characters that are in development for the big screen. Other projects to look for in the future from Marvel Productions include Spider-Man, Daredevil and The Incredible Hulk. Spider-Man, after years of legal battles over the rights, has finally received the green light and has none other than Sam Raimi, of Evil Dead & Darkman fame, attached to direct. So for fans of fantasy the future is looking brighter all the time.