Matt Dillon

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Proxima–Eva Green prepares for space launch as astronaut in new sci-fi drama

Filed under: Con Culture, Movies, Sci-Fi Café — Leave a comment

December 22, 2019

In her 16 years in the business, Eva Green has co-starred in several major genre films and television shows, including Casino Royale, The Golden Compass, Dark Shadows, Penny Dreadful, and a few tales from the mind of Frank Miller: Sin City: A Dame to Kill For and 300: Rise of an Empire. Her next project finds her in a French production where she stars as an astronaut on a mission preparing for mankind’s trip to Mars. Centering on the relationship between her character and her daughter, played by Zélie Boulant, the new movie Proxima saw its first U.S. trailer this week.

The film co-stars Matt Dillon, who has been a recognizable face on the big screen since he appeared with Tatum O’Neal and Kristy McNichol in Little Darlings forty years ago, followed by My Bodyguard with Chris Makepeace and Adam Baldwin, the S.E. Hinton adaptations Tex, The Outsiders, and Rumble Fish, with high points like Drugstore Cowboy, To Die For, and In & Out, and the lead role in TV’s Wayward Pines.

The film appears to be on light on the side of science fiction, with perhaps a European space agency as only the background for a personal drama, but a scene in the trailer shows part of an updated take on the process of mission training, something we’ve seen in earlier iterations of real-life space travel films like The Right Stuff, Apollo 13, and First Man. Directed by Alice Winocour, it has already received numerous international film awards.

Here is the trailer for Proxima:

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Tags: Alice Winocour, Eva Green, Eva Green movies, Matt Dillon, Matt Dillon movies, Proxima, Proxima movie trailer, space program, space travel, Zélie Boulant

First look–The Twilight Zone meets Twin Peaks in Fox’s new series Wayward Pines

Filed under: Fantasy Realms, Retro Fix, Sci-Fi Café, TV — 1 Comment

March 24, 2015

“We gotta get out of this place, if it’s the last thing we ever do.” —The Animals

Claustrophobic? Then maybe the new Fox series Wayward Pines is not for you. But the previews for the new series make us think you might be miss out on something good.

Wrong place, wrong time. We’ve all encountered circumstances we wish we could reverse, but most of us haven’t stumbled into an entire town we wished we could escape from, but couldn’t. In comedy we’ve seen this on television with shows like Northern Exposure and Green Acres. In classic cinema we’ve seen it with George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life. But that’s not the kind of town we’ll be visiting soon in Wayward Pines. The obvious comparison is to that quirky Pacific Northwest town of Twin Peaks–like that cult favorite series, the protagonist is an FBI agent following up on a case in a forested town. The characters in Wayward Pines don’t appear to be as odd as the Log Lady, but we’ll learn this town is much, much darker. In fact it might have more in common with the Midwest town in Children of the Corn, the British village in Wicker Man, or Stephen King’s seaside town of Haven.

Somehow the townspeople of Wayward Pines are trapped. Like a plot pulled from an episode of sci-fi television–think The Twilight Zone’s “Nick of Time” (1960) with William Shatner, The X-Files’s episode “Arcadia” (1999), or the reboot The Twilight Zone episode “Evergreen” (2002) with Amber Tamblyn. In movies no director knows “trapped” like M. Night Shyamalan, as seen in his moody Signs (2002), The Village (2004), and The Happening (2008). So it’s no wonder his next director/executive producer project is Wayward Pines.

After the break, check out the trailer for Wayward Pines:

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Review–Spawn of Dracula pursues the American Dream in “Johnny Alucard”

Filed under: Comics & Books, Fantasy Realms — Leave a comment

October 3, 2013

Review by C.J. Bunce

At long last, Johnny Alucard, Kim Newman’s sequel to 1992’s Anno Dracula, 1995’s The Bloody Red Baron, and 1998’s Dracula Cha Cha Cha is now available. And for fans of Newman’s richly detailed universe, the first Anno Dracula universe tale in 15 years was worth the wait. It’s a ballad of a kid born with nothing, who has a destiny, and that destiny takes him to conquer America. And it all happens in a parallel world where Bram Stoker’s Dracula was a biography of an historical figure, and humans and vampires live side-by-side in a universe similar, yet very different, from our own.

Known for its deeply layered world building occupied by well-known fictional and historical characters with jumbled realities, this latest Anno Dracula entry doesn’t let up. We at borg.com last year named the re-release of Dracula Cha Cha Cha the best read of 2012. Check out our review here. That novel followed Newman’s four protagonists as their stories collided with the death of Dracula in the 1950s. Three women vampires are at the heart of the Anno Dracula universe: Geneviève Dieudonné, a centuries-old French vampire who watched and participated in key historic events in this timeline; Kate Reed–the most accessible of the three–a plucky Irish journalist who carries the reader through many events in Newman’s stories; and Penelope (“Penny”) Churchward, the third wheel who never quite becomes friends with the other “Charles’s Angels”. The Charles is Charles Beauregard, a British spy all three women had relationships with over the years, and who died in Dracula Cha Cha Cha, around the time of the death of Dracula himself.

This latest installment of Newman’s series picks up with the tale of an up-and-coming vampire legend. Born Ion Popescu, Johnny Alucard was “turned” at the age of 13 in 1944. But the story begins in 1976 when he ends up as a gofer under Francis Ford Coppola as he is agonizing over the production of, not Apocalypse Now, but his own Dracula film. Geneviève, Kate, and Penny are back, and they have key roles in Ion’s story as he transforms himself into “Johnny Pop” and ultimately the wealthy Johnny Alucard, elevating himself higher than anyone thought possible.

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