These otherworldly photos by Ryan McGinley are stunning. The use of color and landscape in conjunction with his subjects — beautiful.
[Moonmilk]

-Star Wars: A New Hope
-Close Encounters of the Third Kind
-Capricorn One
-Alien
-Stalker
-Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back
-Outland
-Road Warrior
-E.T.
-Blade Runner
-Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan
-Liquid Sky
-2010
-The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension
-The Hidden
-Robocop
-Spaceballs
-Terminator II
-Twelve Monkeys
-Starship Troopers
-Gattaca
-The Matrix
-The Iron Giant
-Children of Men

On a side-note, do a google search for “robocop” and “unicorn” if you want to amuse yourself for the day.

Over at Underwire they compile a list of favorite Sci-fi films from the various staff at Wired’s blog and Wired Magazine. The following list is for everything pre-Star Wars (1977), while tomorrow will summarize their favorites from that point onwards. Loving the unadulterated resurgence of people showing their love for Sci-fi. Much ado no doubt to District 9, because who are we kidding — T4 and Transformers 2 didn’t do S#@*! for the genre. Oh and in case you’re too lazy to click around or suffer from debilitating carpal tunnel… here you go:

-A Trip to the Moon
-The Thing From Another World
-The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T
-Them!
-Invasion of the Body Snatchers
-The Fabulous World of Jules Verne
-The Creation of the Humanoids
-Dr. Strangelove or: How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
-Fahrenheit 451
-Fantastic Voyage
-2001: A space Odyssey
-Planet of the Apes
-Solaris
-Silent Running
-Soylent Green
-Day of the Dolphin
-Zardoz
-A Boy and His Dog
-Logan’s Run
-Lassie Come Home

There were three criteria that had to be met for these films to be listed: they had to be smart and thoughtful, and they had to cost less than a hundred million dollars. And they had to be damned good. A couple of the films here get pretty close to that hundred million dollar blockbuster number, but that’s made up for by the films that cost a pittance.

[CHUD]

Illustration by Jan Kallwejt via Wired.com

Wired’s Mark Horowitz created an “Unofficial Guide to LA” via Thomas Pynchon’s past experiences. Horowitz announces that Pynchon,

the paranoid poet of the information age, is LA’s greatest writer. To be sure, Los Angeles—whose aerial view he likened to a printed circuit board—has always been central to the elusive writer’s weird weltanschauung, his hallucinogenic stir-fry of Cold War hysteria, high tech anxiety, and low-brow pop-culture references. But did you know he actually lived there in the ’60s and early ’70s, while writing Gravity’s Rainbow, the Moby-Dick of rocket-science novels?

Using a Zeemap, user-submitted annotations can be marked down all throughout the greater Los Angeles area. Already, they far surpass the 14 spots mentioned at the publication of this article. How very appropriate.

With the dust settling on another Comic-con, speaking in terms of film-related happenings, this was perhaps one of the biggest years for the show. Attendees watched 24-minutes of footage from James Cameron’s Avatar, but the real news seems to be how District 9, the first feature film from Neill Blomkamp, has stolen the show. While NDA’s prohibit any of the critics from specifically reviewing the film at this current time, you can still get a sense of their reactions.

“District 9″ is political and hilarious and gory as hell, sad and savage and visually dazzling. It is, in short, exactly what great science-fiction should be… it is a film of ideas, first and foremost, and since Blomkamp grew up in South Africa, I’m sure you can guess what sort of real-world ideas the movie might engage. The thing is… if you want to tune out all the social commentary, you’re left with a truly incredible sf movie. But because Neil’s own experience is so much a part of this film and the world he’s created, the result is sort of devastating.

[HitFix]

Instead I’ll wrap this up by saying that District 9 is part of a new golden age for smaller scifi cinema (believe it or not the film cost 30 million dollars. I think the CGI here looked miles better than the cartoony CG I saw from Avatar). It’s a golden age where thoughtful, smart, well-made films tackle intriguing science fiction concepts that go beyond laser guns and explosions.

[Chud]

Last night Comic-Con was put on pause while we attended a screening of the Peter Jackson-produced District 9. We were prepared for massive amounts of CGI, but we were definitely not prepared for the huge amounts of awesome that were dumped into our eyes and brains. Honestly, I haven’t been this moved by a film or a performance in quite some time.

[SciFiSquad]

See the latest trailer for the film at www.D-9.com.