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2 articles from 2009

2 December 2009 6:57 AM, PST | The Auteurs | See recent The Auteurs news »

Greetings, people of Earth. I mean, Manny Farber fans. Over at my blog Some Came Running, I've been looking at Farber's picks and positions on his best films of 1951 (the title of his piece for The Nation reprinted in Farber on Film puts the phrase best films in quotation marks), and doing my own humble sort-of updates, as it were. As The Auteurs is conducting a really lovely and imaginative retrospective on Farber's work, I asked my overseers if I could bring one such consideration over here, and I'm honored to be included in the series. For write-ups on the prior six pictures, go here and work backwards.

We start with Farber: "Science-fiction again, this time with ideals; a bouyant, imaginative filtering around in Washington, D.C., upon the arrival of a high-minded interplanetary federalist from Mars, or somewhere; matter-of-fact statements about white-collar shabby gentility in boarding houses, offices, and »

18 August 2009 8:02 PM, PDT | Cinematical | See recent Cinematical news »

There's something a bit familiar about the premise of District 9 -- namely, the part where the human makes friends with the alien. Now, District 9 is a terrific movie, and director Neill Blomkamp delivered a lot of action, violence, pathos and kick-ass special effects on a relatively small budget.

But aliens? We've been friends with aliens before. In fact, this week marks the 25th anniversary DVD/Blu-ray release of The Last Starfighter, a low-budget fan favorite that sought to cash in on the popularity of both Star Wars and video games by sending an unsuspecting teen hero on a mission to save a distant galaxy. His recruiter-slash-buddy was Centauri, an intergalactic con man (played by Robert Preston, riffing on his Music Man persona in his last role).

Some of our other favorite aliens-as-friends movies:

1. The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) -- Poor old Klaatu (Michael Rennie). He's just a »

- Dawn Taylor

2 articles from 2009