Tag: Scientific Romances

George Pal\’s THE TIME MACHINE (1960)

[R]ight now, I\’m having a lovely, relaxing Saturday evening, sitting back, chilling, and watching one of my favourite sci-fi cinema classics on Film4. The amazing 1960 George Pal movie adaptation of the landmark H. G. Wells 1895 novella (or short novel) THE TIME MACHINE is one that I haven\’t watched in quite some time, and it\’s really nice to see it on the telly again.

This was the very first sci-fi film that had a big impact on me, when I first saw it at about the age of five or six years old on local Irish television (RTE). I remember standing, totally transfixed, in my grannie\’s living room, staring at the TV in total amazement for two hours as the film unfolded (some achievement, I can tell you, as I never stood still for a moment when I was a young kid). At that tender age, I\’d never seen anything quite like it, and this film was to become a life-long influence, playing a massive part in turning me into the sci-fi/science fiction geek that I am today.

For at least the first half of my life (I\’m almost 54 now), THE TIME MACHINE remained my absolute favourite film ever, until I eventually became fed up with it after watching it over and over again ceaselessly on video during the 1980\’s. This one film kick-started my obsession with sci-fi cinema in general, which I\’ve adored from that very early stage of my life. It also led directly to me picking up the original H. G. Wells novel from the local library a couple of years later, a point in my life which also marks the beginning of my life-long love for reading science fiction literature. This old film has a lot to answer for! 🙂

Sure, a lot of my love for this 1960 film is probably sheer nostalgia on my part, and younger viewers might consider it slightly dated and slow now compared to more modern films, with their wondrous CGI special effects and non-stop action and explosions. But I believe that the SFX in THE TIME MACHINE still hold up remarkably well today – you have to remember that this film is over fifty years old, and it DID win an Oscar for the visual effects back in the day. So it was definitely THE big sci-fi blockbuster movie with the great effects, at least back in 1960, and still looks good today, in my opinion. I wonder how many of the current fancy movies will still hold up in fifty years time.

The 2002 Simon Wells-directed reimagining of this film has grown on me over the years, despite my dismissing it as an inferior remake when it was first released. But while I do like the 2002 version now, the 1960 version still retains that spot in my heart as my favourite movie version of this classic 1895 scientific romance. Highly recommended, especially for older viewers who don\’t suffer from having only the attention span of a goldfish or who are unable to sit through a film without non-stop action and snazzy modern SFX.

The film is getting near the climax now, with the hero rescuing the female \”love interest\” from a terrible fate underground as \”Saturday Evening Lunch\”. I\’m off to watch the ending!

Sci-Fi Cinema Classic – THE TIME MACHINE (1960)

Right now, I\’m having a lovely, relaxing Saturday evening, sitting back, chilling, and watching one of my favourite sci-fi cinema classics on Film4. The amazing 1960 George Pal movie adaptation of the landmark H. G. Wells 1895 novella (or short novel) THE TIME MACHINE is one that I haven\’t watched in quite some time, and it\’s really nice to see it on the telly again.

This was the very first sci-fi film that had a big impact on me, when I first saw it at about the age of five or six years old on local Irish television (RTE). I remember standing, totally transfixed, in my grannie\’s living room, staring at the TV in total amazement for two hours as the film unfolded (some achievement, I can tell you, as I never stood still for a moment when I was a young kid). At that tender age, I\’d never seen anything quite like it, and this film was to become a life-long influence, playing a massive part in turning me into the sci-fi/science fiction geek that I am today.

For at least the first half of my life (I\’m almost 54 now), THE TIME MACHINE remained my absolute favourite film ever, until I eventually became fed up with it after watching it over and over again ceaselessly on video during the 1980\’s. This one film kick-started my obsession with sci-fi cinema in general, which I\’ve adored from that very early stage of my life. It also led directly to me picking up the original H. G. Wells novel from the local library a couple of years later, a point in my life which also marks the beginning of my life-long love for reading science fiction literature. This old film has a lot to answer for! 🙂

Sure, a lot of my love for this 1960 film is probably sheer nostalgia on my part, and younger viewers might consider it slightly dated and slow now compared to more modern films, with their wondrous CGI special effects and non-stop action and explosions. But I believe that the SFX in THE TIME MACHINE still hold up remarkably well today – you have to remember that this film is over fifty years old, and it DID win an Oscar for the visual effects back in the day. So it was definitely THE big sci-fi blockbuster movie with the great effects, at least back in 1960, and still looks good today, in my opinion. I wonder how many of the current fancy movies will still hold up in fifty years time.

The 2002 Simon Wells-directed reimagining of this film has grown on me over the years, despite my dismissing it as an inferior remake when it was first released. But while I do like the 2002 version now, the 1960 version still retains that spot in my heart as my favourite movie version of this classic 1895 scientific romance. Highly recommended, especially for older viewers who don\’t suffer from having only the attention span of a goldfish or who are unable to sit through a film without non-stop action and snazzy modern SFX.

The film is getting near the climax now, with the hero rescuing the female \”love interest\” from a terrible fate underground as \”Saturday Evening Lunch\”. I\’m off to watch the ending!

Welcome to SF Universe!

[I]\’d like to welcome anyone who is reading this to SF Universe. The SF Universe blog is, as the name would suggest, a geek blog, and very heavily oriented towards all things science fiction, although there are also many other things that I\’m interested in. Here are some of the things which will be featuring in the blog:

SF in books, the Real Deal, proper science fiction in literary form, from the Scientific Romances of the Nineteenth Century to the most modern SF novels and short fiction.

Sci-fi on television, otherwise known as telefantasy. The best in television sci-fi series from the end of the 1940s (Captain Video and His Video Rangers) to the newest TV sci-fi of the Twenty-First Century.

Sci-fi at the cinema, the best SF, fantasy and horror films on the Big Screen and DVD, spanning more than a century from the very first sci-fi film (Georges Méliès\’ Le Voyage dans la Lune) in 1902 to the present.

Comics and Graphic Novels, another big interest of mine. Sci-fi comics, superhero comics, manga and more, original comics, hardback/trade paperback collections and OGNs (original graphic novels), I\’ll be discussing all of those in upcoming posts.

Science, particularly Palaeontology, Geology, Evolution, Biology, and Bioengineering, Physics, Astronomy, Astrophysics, Space Exploration and Cosmology. I\’ve always been fascinated by science, particularly those branches mentioned here.

History of all kinds, both modern and ancient. It doesn\’t matter to me how far we go back, as I\’ve never paid any attention to the history/prehistory division. It\’s all \”the past\” to me. I\’ll also lump anything to do with Archaeology and Anthropology in this section, as they are closely related topics. Take things right back to the beginnings of civilization and beyond, right back to the earliest developments of the human race, our first appearance as a species on Planet Earth.

Computers, desktop publishing, computer graphics, computer animation, the internet, blogging and web design, all of these are (relatively, compared to those above, all of which I\’ve followed since childhood) more recent interests of mine, computers since the mid-1980\’s and the internet since 1995. But they still manage to eat up about 90% of my leisure time these days.

The bulk of the posts will obviously be on the subjects of SF literature, sci-fi television and cinema, and comics, but there\’ll be occasional posts on the other topics mentioned above as well. All the above, and much more, are fair game for various posts and articles, and most of these topics have categories of their own. Indeed virtually anything that tickles my fancy is ripe for discussion, and anything that doesn’t fit into the regular categories can be found under General.