Syfy’s Defiance

The first episode of Syfy’s new makeup and CGI fest Defiance was not as good as I had hoped, but not as bad as I had feared. We start of with a family sitting is green field when they are shocked by an alien invasion.  This scene is taken almost frame for frame from the last season of Fringe.    We then fast forward 33 years to a world that has been terraformed, but not enough to kill off the original population, just enough to add silly looking CGI plants all over the place.  We are told that the invasion reached…

Continue reading

Attack The Block

The story of a council block inhabited by an odd mixture of London poor, that happens to become the center of an alien invasion.    From the producers of Shane of The Dead, Attack The Block is a pretty straight forward take on a monster movie. Unlike CGI fests such as Super 8 and Cloverfield, Attack The Block gives us a story on a human level-and leaves the over the top special effects in the box. Our heroes don’t start off very heroic, they are busy mugging a woman when something falls from the sky and flattens a car.  They find…

Continue reading

Falling Skies

I’ll watch just about any science fiction that doesn’t feature giant robots that turn into cars. Falling Skies from TNT and Steven Spielberg is the story of Earth after the fall of humankind to an alien invasion.  The aliens are called Skidders and most closely resemble one of the twisted toys from the original Toy Story.   They have an upper body with a head and two arms, but then have a lower body composed of several legs.  We learn that the key to killing them is to disable as many legs as possible. Falling Skies is basically a post apocalyptic…

Continue reading