Posted on 08/27/2004 8:37:15 AM PDT by dennisw
London -- A British newspaper survey of scientists has chosen Blade Runner as the world's best science-fiction film.
The 1982 movie was the favourite when 60 scientists were questioned by The Guardian, including evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins and Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker, the newspaper said Wednesday.
In the film, a retired cop played by Harrison Ford hunts down renegade human replicates in a dark futuristic vision of Los Angeles.
Stephen Minger, a stem-cell biologist at King's College, London, said the movie was the best he had ever seen.
"It was so far ahead of its time and the whole premise of the story -- what is it to be human and who are we, where we come from. It's the age-old questions," he said.
Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey came second, followed by the first two films of George Lucas's Star Wars trilogy: Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back.
The others chosen, in descending order, were Alien, Solaris (1972 version), Terminator, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, The Day the Earth Stood Still, War of the Worlds, The Matrix and Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
Asked to pick their favourite authors, the scientists chose: Isaac Asimov (I, Robot), John Wyndham (Day of the Triffids) and Fred Hoyle (The Black Cloud.) AP
Total Recall, T2 and Alien have my vote
Buckaroo Banzai! D*mn, what's wrong with these people?
;)
Better account of the films mentioned--->>
http://film.guardian.co.uk/sciencefiction/story/0,15012,1291240,00.html
The author later acknowledged this was the case.
I've got the Vangelis original soundtrack for the movie, it's outstanding. All the actors were good in that, even the psycho who played Rachel.
what happened to Dark Star?
*Guilty Pleasure BUMP!*
> ... survey of scientists has chosen Blade Runner
> as the world's best science-fiction film.
The assessment is either a benefit or a hazard.
If it's a benefit, it's not my problem.
Those are all good, but I like "Forbidden Planet" as a mid-fifties trend setter.
Speaking of the fifties, how about "Robot Monster"?
Such a list without 'Forbidden Planet' is meaningless.
Has always been one of my favs, but does have the Lib's whacko environmental agenda of portraying a Los Angelos under constant downpour due to global warming or was it intended to symbolize the Democrats constant whining :)
There's a scene in BB where they are trying to find their way down blind corridors, at YOYODYNE, I think -- no windows --which are only marked by large plastic capital letters -- corrider X, Y, Z, -- when I was in the aerospace business, we had a building where the basement was exactly like that, except ours had white walls, and in the movie they were blue.
BTW, the name YoYoDyne is from a Thomas Pynchon novel, "The Crying of Lot 49". In the novel, it had a division called Galactronics. There are clues in the movie that this is where they got the name Yoyodyne, and clues in a later Thomas Pynchon novel that acknowleged that they had done so.
Do Androids dream of Electric Sheep
"The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once." - B. Banzai
"Forbidden Planet" is so much better than "Close Encounters." And "Revenge of the Jedi" is WAY over-rated. How the heck "Solaris" came in that high is beyond me, might as well put in "Solarbabies."
I loved the way the 'lectroids mispelled everthing... And just about any movie with Chistopher Lloyd is great. He's like a plastic man, moldable to any character.
"What's that Watermelon doing there?" - New Jersey
"Uh, I'll tell ya later." - Reno Nevada
Fahrenheit 9/11 has my vote...Jabba was great in that
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.