Sci-Fi & Fantasy

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Magazine Archive

‘Fahrenheit 451’: HBO Reboots the Fiery Ray Bradbury Classic for a Digital World

May 18, 2018 Lori Acken

Depending on your perspective, making a contemporary film adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s book-burning classic Fahrenheit 451 in the era of Snapchat and Twitter, “fake news,” handheld devices and monster flat screens is either brilliance or insanity. No one understands that better than filmmaker Ramin Bahrani, who helms this month’s HBO modernization of the cautionary tale. “I knew that once I got into it, there would be no way that I wouldn’t upset somebody who loved Bradbury’s work,” said Bahrani at a recent press event. “So, I tried to stay true to the themes. Even if I changed certain characters or […]

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Documentary

‘James Cameron’s Story of Science Fiction’: Cinema’s Sci-Fi Master Plays Favorites on AMC

April 30, 2018 Lori Acken

From the moment Arnold Schwarzenegger’s part human, part cyborg killing machine strode onto movie screens in 1984’s The Terminator, movie buffs counted cowriter/director James Cameron among the go-to guys for cinematic sci-fi thrills. This month, AMC turns over its Visionaries docuseries franchise to the Hollywood multihyphenate for an exploration of the beloved genre’s roots, evolution and massive popularity via interviews with Schwarzenegger, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Greg Nicotero, Ridley Scott, Christopher Nolan, Will Smith, Sigourney Weaver and others. “We tried to pick a few milestone pieces of popular culture — often movies or TV shows — and then go back […]

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Interview

‘Hard Sun’: Hulu and BBC One Put an Intriguingly Personal Spin on the Apocalyptic Thriller

March 14, 2018 Lori Acken

It’s the stuff of countless films and TV shows: What would you do and who would you become if you knew exactly how long you had to live and what would spell your demise? For Hard Sun’s Brit detectives Elaine Renko (Agyness Deyn, Clash of the Titans) and Charlie Hicks (Jim Sturgess, Cloud Atlas), wary new partners harboring a host of personal secrets, the investigation into a young man’s murder uncovers a MI5 plot to hide humanity’s impending demise, upending the pair’s private and professional worlds as they try to mitigate the revelation while dealing their own emotions. Though Renko […]

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Interview

Into The Badlands: What’s Up With Your Favorites As AMC’s Martial Arts Spectacle Returns

March 5, 2017 Lori Acken

Expect a six-month time jump when AMC’s eye-popping martial arts fantasy Into the Badlands debuts its second season this month. “We like the idea of letting people settle into their new places and allowing the world to recover a little bit from the events of the end of Season 1,” explains Alfred Gough, who created the show with his longtime producing partner Miles Millar. “We see our characters scattered across the Badlands and into other areas as well and we also introduce new characters. For us, this season was all about expanding the world.” Gough and Millar reveal where you’ll […]

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Drama

Emerald City on NBC Takes Us Off To See The Wizard Again

January 5, 2017 Jeff Pfeiffer

As you can probably tell from its title, NBC’s new drama series Emerald City uses elements of L. Frank Baum’s classic The Wonderful Wizard of Oz as its launching point into telling the fantastical story of a young woman’s journey into a mysterious world. Given the number of Oz retellings that there have been over the decades, you might be wondering if another adaptation is worth taking the trip over the rainbow. But in its lush and colorful presentation, its gritty realism even as it creates another world, and its development of character archetypes we thought we had already known […]