I watched a whole pile of stuff today, virtually that is, Amazon Prime streamed everything. First up was the 1995 SF comedy Out There, with Billy Campbell and Wendy Schaal. He's a photographer for a local paper with Bobcat Goldthwait for a boss, she's a veterinarian who's seeking her missing father. Imagine her surprise when some pictures of Daddy show up in the National Moon. Billy found an old Brownie camera at a garage sale and after developing the film he discovered aliens kidnapping a couple of hunters. He tries to interest the government but they don't believe it's real. The editor of the National Moon tricks Billy into selling him the pictures. Those pictures bring Wendy and Billy together, they embark on a mission to find out what happened in the past. Along the way they meet Rod Steiger, Jill St John, Paul Dooley, Julie Brown, Billy Bob Thornton, Carel Strucken, PJ Soles, David Rasche, Bill Cobbs, Tom Kenny, June Lockhart, Cindy Morgan and Abraham Benrubi. Keep an eye out for director Sam Irvin, Jennifer Connelly, Tino Insana and Robert Picardo in uncredited cameos.
It's an active film, plenty of running about and weird things happening. Billy and Wendy hunt for clues to what happened to her father, one of the hunters in the photos, and they find an alien conspiracy that's been infiltrating the human population. It's got a descent script by Thomas Strelich and Alison Nigh. I didn't recognize the writers, so I looked them up on the IMDb, it's the only production that they wrote. Too bad. Sam Irvin has directed 2 other films I've seen, Elvira's Haunted Hills and Oblivion. Both of those are over 15 years ago, I've not seen any of his more recent work. He does an OK job here on the directing, nothing fancy, good solid, slightly above average work. I saw it back in 2001 and said it was OK to fair, that's still about what I think. I gave it a 6, mostly for the fun cast, but it's not a 7. There doesn't seem to be a DVD but I bet there's a bootleg.
Star Raiders: The Adventures Of Saber Raine is a 2017 SF adventure story with Casper Van Dien and Cynthia Rothrock. It's written and directed by Mark Steven Grove. Mark should have had some help with the story and the dialog. Casper is an ex-military space guy who winds up helping some aliens get their prince and princess back. They have been kidnapped by an evil warlord type. The sister joins up with the evil guy and the brother joins up with Casper and Co to fight the baddie. Plenty of wandering around in the desert, and then a forest, before attacking the CGI castle. There's nothing special about the movie, I didn't feel I needed to watch it once I was done.
Oasis was the pilot for a British SF TV series that was based on a book by Michel Faber called The Book Of Strange New Things. I've not read it. The story was adapted by Matt Charman and directed by Kevin Macdonald. It's about a priest that goes to a planet to teach Christianity to some aliens that live there. In the TV pilot they only get the priest to the planet where, briefly at the end of the episode, he meets up with the aliens. It was developed by Amazon Video and aired March 2017. There doesn't seem to be anymore so far. It was OK, kind of interesting, and it might have turned into something. Maybe someday we'll know.
Nobility is another TV show about the crew of a spaceship. It was written and directed by E J De la Pena. The only people in the cast that I knew of were Doug Jones, Christopher Judge and Walter Koenig. The episodes are just under 17 minutes long and Amazon only has 3 of them to view. It's proud to have made the shows for $100,000 and it shows they spent all the money on the cast salaries. The show looks like something fan made. Not an uninteresting story idea but nothing too special. Mysterious aliens seems to be the big thing going on. The cliff hanger on the third episode was kind of annoying. Probably not worth bothering with, if it comes back on. Pretty forgettable.
Not a great day for SF so far. One good enough movie and three things that are going to be forgotten about if my brain has anything to say about it.
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