Quote from: captainspud on January 08, 2008, 12:18:50 PMCan someone please list the rankings? I hate clicking through these things.

Yes, I'm asking you to facilitate my laziness.

I'm not quite as lazy, but I did get bored after the first few pages. So,

>>> urls=['http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20037541,00.html']
>>> urls.extend(map(lambda i: 'http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20037541_%d,00.html'%i,range(2,26)))
>>> import urllib2
>>> pages=[]
>>> for u in urls:
... source = urllib2.urlopen(u)
... pages.append(source.read())
... source.close()
...
>>> import re
>>> rawtitlelines = map(lambda p: re.findall(r'<p>\s*<b>[0-9]{1,2}\..*?</p>',p,re.DOTALL)[0],pages)
>>> titlelines=map(lambda rt:re.sub('\r\n','',rt),rawtitlelines)
>>> titlelines=map(lambda rt:re.sub('<p>','',rt),titlelines)
>>> titlelines=map(lambda rt:re.sub('</p>','',rt),titlelines)
>>> titlelines=map(lambda rt:re.sub('<br />','',rt),titlelines)
>>> titlelines=map(lambda rt:re.sub('<b>','[b]',rt),titlelines)
>>> titlelines=map(lambda rt:re.sub('</b>','[/b]',rt),titlelines)
>>> titlelines=map(lambda rt:re.sub('<i>','[i]',rt),titlelines)
>>> titlelines=map(lambda rt:re.sub('</i>','[/i]',rt),titlelines)
>>> titlelines=map(lambda rt:re.sub('<a href=".*?">(.*)</a>',r'\1',rt),titlelines)
>>> titlelines=map(lambda rt:re.sub(r'\)',') ',rt),titlelines)
>>> for tl in titlelines: print tl
...

Cut and paste the result:

25. V: THE MINISERIES (1983) Created by Kenneth Johnson
24. GALAXYQUEST (1999) Directed by Dean Parisot
23. DOCTOR WHO (1963-Present) Developed by Sydney Newman
22. QUANTUMLEAP (1989-1993) Created by Donald P. Bellisario
21. FUTURAMA (1999-2003) Created by Matt Groening and David X. Cohen
20. STAR WARS:CLONE WARS (2003-2005) Directed by Genndy Tartakovsky
19. STARSHIPTROOPERS (1997) Directed by Paul Verhoeven
18. HEROES (2006-Present) Created by Tim Kring
17. ETERNAL SUNSHINE OFTHE SPOTLESS MIND (2004) Directed by Michel Gondry
16. TOTALRECALL (1990) Directed by Paul Verhoeven
15. FIREFLY/SERENITY (2002/2005) Created by Joss Whedon
14. CHILDRENOF MEN (2006) Directed by Alfonso Cuarón
13. THE TERMINATOR/TERMINATOR 2 (1984 /1991) Directed by James Cameron
12. BACK TO THEFUTURE (1985) Directed by Robert Zemeckis
11. LOST (2004-Present) Created by J.J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof
10. THE THING (1982) Directed by John Carpenter
9. ALIENS (1986) Directed by James Cameron
8. STAR TREK: THE NEXTGENERATION (1987-1994) Created by Gene Roddenberry and Rick Berman
7. E.T. (1982) Directed by Steven Spielberg
6. BRAZIL (1985) Directed by Terry Gilliam
5. STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN (1982) Directed by Nicholas Meyer
4. THE X-FILES (1993-2002) Created by Chris Carter
3. BLADERUNNER (1982) Directed by Ridley Scott
2. BATTLESTARGALACTICA (2003-Present) Developed by Ronald D. Moore
1. THE MATRIX (1999) Directed by the Wachowski brothers

I could quibble a bit about the order, and a lot about the omissions, but with the exception of Starship Troopers there's some great entertainment on that list.

The inclusion of Starship Troopers invalidated the list for me. It was a bad enough movie by itself... comparing it to the source material (Heinlein's novel) makes it virtually irredeemable (which leads me to think that the person/s who came up with the list probably never read the novel). I would have easily replaced it with 2006's A Scanner Darkly. 

EDIT: just noticed that the list is dated 2005. I still would've replaced Starship Troopers with something. Anything. Maybe the Aeon Flux shorts that used to run on MTV's Liquid Television.

I think that the list actually does a decent job of balancing the lowest-common denominator sci-fi (Total Recall, Starship Troopers which, despite my tendency to angle toward the movie-snob stuff, I really enjoyed) with the more artsy-fartsy sci-fi (Brazil, Eternal Sunshine) and the gray area in between.  This would be a hard list for anyone to create because science fiction is a really a broad, diverse genre of film with a multitude of tastes to cater to. 

One glaring omission for me: where is "Dark City"?  It's easily a much better movie than a number of those listed (arguably including its decendent, "The Matrix").

EC

Quote from: zuludelta on January 09, 2008, 08:44:19 AM
The inclusion of Starship Troopers invalidated the list for me. It was a bad enough movie by itself... comparing it to the source material (Heinlein's novel) makes it virtually irredeemable (which leads me to think that the person/s who came up with the list probably never read the novel). I would have easily replaced it with 2006's A Scanner Darkly. 

EDIT: just noticed that the list is dated 2005. I still would've replaced Starship Troopers with something. Anything. Maybe the Aeon Flux shorts that used to run on MTV's Liquid Television.

Amen about the novel ZD, it was a really fantastic book, and it seemed like the people who made that movie just read the back of it without ever cracking the cover.

Not a bad list, all in all, I suppose.  I do have some similar reservations to those already expressed by others here but seeing as this list features both Brazil and Bladerunner so very highly, its a fine list in my book!

Quote from: BentonGrey on January 09, 2008, 09:37:09 AM

Quote from: zuludelta on January 09, 2008, 08:44:19 AM
The inclusion of Starship Troopers invalidated the list for me. It was a bad enough movie by itself... comparing it to the source material (Heinlein's novel) makes it virtually irredeemable (which leads me to think that the person/s who came up with the list probably never read the novel). I would have easily replaced it with 2006's A Scanner Darkly. 

EDIT: just noticed that the list is dated 2005. I still would've replaced Starship Troopers with something. Anything. Maybe the Aeon Flux shorts that used to run on MTV's Liquid Television.

Amen about the novel ZD, it was a really fantastic book, and it seemed like the people who made that movie just read the back of it without ever cracking the cover.

Hey, it could have been worse.....they could have included Battlefield: Earth!   :lol:

Quote from: BentonGrey on January 09, 2008, 09:37:09 AM

Quote from: zuludelta on January 09, 2008, 08:44:19 AM
The inclusion of Starship Troopers invalidated the list for me. It was a bad enough movie by itself... comparing it to the source material (Heinlein's novel) makes it virtually irredeemable (which leads me to think that the person/s who came up with the list probably never read the novel). I would have easily replaced it with 2006's A Scanner Darkly. 

EDIT: just noticed that the list is dated 2005. I still would've replaced Starship Troopers with something. Anything. Maybe the Aeon Flux shorts that used to run on MTV's Liquid Television.

Amen about the novel ZD, it was a really fantastic book, and it seemed like the people who made that movie just read the back of it without ever cracking the cover.

I don't know, the book is great, but Heinlein is just so earnest about his fascist utopia, and I think the movie actually undercuts that quite nicely.  It's still a bad movie, but there's a good idea sneaked in there somewhere.

Quote from: Talavar on January 09, 2008, 03:34:32 PM

Quote from: BentonGrey on January 09, 2008, 09:37:09 AM

Quote from: zuludelta on January 09, 2008, 08:44:19 AM
The inclusion of Starship Troopers invalidated the list for me. It was a bad enough movie by itself... comparing it to the source material (Heinlein's novel) makes it virtually irredeemable (which leads me to think that the person/s who came up with the list probably never read the novel). I would have easily replaced it with 2006's A Scanner Darkly. 

EDIT: just noticed that the list is dated 2005. I still would've replaced Starship Troopers with something. Anything. Maybe the Aeon Flux shorts that used to run on MTV's Liquid Television.

Amen about the novel ZD, it was a really fantastic book, and it seemed like the people who made that movie just read the back of it without ever cracking the cover.

I don't know, the book is great, but Heinlein is just so earnest about his fascist utopia, and I think the movie actually undercuts that quite nicely.  It's still a bad movie, but there's a good idea sneaked in there somewhere.

Well, Heinlein is much less focused on the actual political structure as he is with the army itself Talavar.  However, far be it for me to defend him, he's so preachy about so many terrible things...anyway, I found "Troopers" to be thankfully devoid of much of his usual baggage.  Also, I have to say that you're giving the people responsible for the movie far too much credit if you think they had any responsibility at all for anything worthwhile that may or may not have come out of it.

QuoteI don't know, the book is great, but Heinlein is just so earnest  about his fascist utopia, and I think the movie actually undercuts that quite nicely.

Fascist Utopia?  Honestly, I don't see that in the book.  I see the system of government in the book more as an expression of his frustration at the inherent problems of Democracy. (like people voting themselves government handouts)

And, as Benton said, the novel is really about what it is to be a soldier.

Granted, it's been a long time since I read the book, but I recall voting rights being restricted to those with miltary service, military service presented as a panacea for most of the social problems present in our society now (or at least in the 50s), and that a great deal of the novel isn't actually about military service, but about training for military service - a large portion of which is the author presenting a highly militaristic philosophy that he completely justifies by how nice he makes life in his future-earth operating under these beliefs.  Now granted, by fascist I don't mean Nazism; some people assume the two are always synonymous, and since the world of Starship Troopers is highly multi-ethnic it can't be fascist.  Other brands of fascism haven't always focused on issues of ethnicity, so the world of the book still qualifies, in my opinion.

Heinlein himself often expressed frustration over people reading the book too shallowly.  This had a lot to do with it being his first real foray into adult fiction after being very well established as a "juvenile" author.  As catwho mentions, the political theme of the book is that to be eligible for citizenship adults have to commit to a period of public service.  Any public service.  He chose military service because it was easier to write a story about being in the army than it was picking up trash in a park, but he frequently commented that to read it as a fascist Utopian manifesto was to entirely miss the point.  Ironically, his very next book was Stranger in a Strange Land - which he was equally frustrated to see people pick up as a "hippie" manifesto.

Folks interested in his thoughts on his own writing should pick up Grumblings from Beyond the Grave, his posthumously published memoir.

On a much more progressive note, Starship Troopers is the first significant work of Science Fiction to feature an ethnic minority as protagonist.

edit: emphasis added to address Talavar's point - I was  :ph34r:'d

So...back to the list.  If it was really about popular culture then I think Robocop and Knight Rider should have been near the top.   Robocop spawned two sequels, a cartoon, a live action TV series, video games, a toy line, an even a dance--can you get any more "pop" than that from a sci-fi movie?

Knight Rider was just plan cool and ahead of it's time.  Everyone wanted a Trans-am, it had a toy line, children's books, lunch boxes, and even launched it's stars singing career.   

These are real pop-culture classics of the last 25 years that come from sci-fi. 

QuoteKnight Rider should have been near the top

I'm with you for Robocop...But Knight Rider??
Seriously??

Its magnum PI with a talking car (which ironically enough spawned the same sort of pop culture around THAT show -- My Borother had the lunchbox to prove it!!) In my mind Knight Rider was scifi in simple gimmick only. It was really just an 80 detective show. I think Hasselhoff the persona was its true contribution to pop culture. Nothing of its scifi elements were really that influential or unique except as punchlines to trivial pursuit questions.

QuoteEveryone wanted a Trans-am

I think Smokey and the bandit did more for trans-ams (and CB radios) than Knight Rider ever did.
Breaker 10-4 good buddy, I'm 10-10 on the side!  :wacko:

Quote from: Talavar on January 09, 2008, 03:34:32 PM
I don't know, the book is great, but Heinlein is just so earnest about his fascist utopia, and I think the movie actually undercuts that quite nicely.  It's still a bad movie, but there's a good idea sneaked in there somewhere.

I don't know if any of the "undercutting" was intentional on the filmmaker's part. The visuals and themes in the film were so drastically different from those in the book that I tend to think that any actual references to the source material are largely incidental. I mean, how could you make a Starship Troopers movie without the powered armor (possibly Heinlein's greatest contribution to popular science-fiction)? Of course, it did give us a view of Denise Richards' sweater treasures, so it's got that going for it  :lol: 

Quote from: Talavar on January 09, 2008, 05:43:04 PM
Granted, it's been a long time since I read the book, but I recall voting rights being restricted to those with miltary service, military service presented as a panacea for most of the social problems present in our society now (or at least in the 50s), and that a great deal of the novel isn't actually about military service, but about training for military service - a large portion of which is the author presenting a highly militaristic philosophy that he completely justifies by how nice he makes life in his future-earth operating under these beliefs.  Now granted, by fascist I don't mean Nazism; some people assume the two are always synonymous, and since the world of Starship Troopers is highly multi-ethnic it can't be fascist.  Other brands of fascism haven't always focused on issues of ethnicity, so the world of the book still qualifies, in my opinion.

I'll agree with you that Starship Troopers presents a horribly simplified and restrictive world-view. Heinlein doesn't present military service as a cure-all for society's ills, though, at least not that plainly. In fact, he presents a world that runs perfectly well without much government involvement. It pretty much portrays that a population freed of political responsibility (which he argues that most people aren't equipped to handle anyway) and fully committed to the pursuit of science, the arts, and economics would thrive well enough by itself and be a self-regulating system. The (military) government, in the world of Heinlein's novel, is simply that population's heavily armed collective fist serving its best interests with regards to self-preservation (it is also often overlooked that military service in the novel is purely voluntary). Horribly simplistic, but in no way fascistic except under the most broad of definitions.

Quote from: Uncle Yuan on January 09, 2008, 05:44:18 PMthe political theme of the book is that to be eligible for citizenship adults have to commit to a period of public service.  Any public service.  He chose military service because it was easier to write a story about being in the army than it was picking up trash in a park, but he frequently commented that to read it as a fascist Utopian manifesto was to entirely miss the point.

I don't know... it's been a while since I read the book but I distinctly recall Heinlein emphasizing in the novel that voluntary field military service is the only public service worthy of a franchise (the right to vote), Heinlein's argument being that it is only when one risks death to protect the interests of the greater population that one finally earns the right to say what is in the interest of the greater population (this is why even the most unskilled of military servicemen, the ones who voluntarily submit themselves for experimentation, earn the right to vote after they leave the military).

In my mind, the novel's greatest contributions are the ones that it doesn't get enough credit for: (a) it was the first popular post-World War II novel that emphasized the importance of the surgical infantry strike, despite the proliferation of nuclear weapons in the 1950s. While everybody in the military and in fiction was proclaiming that foot soldiers were now obsolete in the face of weapons that could obliterate entire countries, Heinlein foresaw how small infantry units were to become the only practical military resource in a conflict where using such powerful weapons would be as big a threat to oneself as the enemy (a doctrine that would later evolve into formal small unit tactics in Western military science and would also be put to effective use by smaller nations against larger, more advanced, forces); and (b) it cannot be overemphasized how much the book's imagery influenced popular science-fiction for decades to come. The book, brief as it was, provided the staples of insectoid aliens (not the first, but probably the most popular depiction up until then), powered exoskeletons (many Japanese artists from the 1960s all the way to the 1990s, including Masamune Shirow, have pointed to the novel as an early influence for mecha and robot design, and not to mention it influenced the visual look for Warhammer 40,000), orbiting drop ships, jet packs, even his description in the book of the in-helmet HUD overlay is so uncannily accurate of the heads-up displays currently being used today.

 

I base my argument on what Heinlein said about the book, rather than the book itself.  He was very emphatic that the chosen profession of the main character and the main character's political views (of any of his books) should never be taken for a surrogate of his own.

Quote from: Uncle Yuan on January 10, 2008, 05:02:11 AM
I base my argument on what Heinlein said about the book, rather than the book itself.  He was very emphatic that the chosen profession of the main character and the main character's political views (of any of his books) should never be taken for a surrogate of his own.

Well, I never did categorically state that the Starship Troopers characters' views were Heinlein's own, I was just saying that in the book itself, military service at the risk of harm to oneself or even death, was considered to be the only service that would make one worthy of a political franchise, contrary to any retrospective views of the work, even by the author himself.   

I tend not to take the politics (whether it's supposed to be his own or not) in his early work (pre-Stranger In A Strange Land) too seriously, anyway. Much of it was written in a time of relative naivete (for lack of a better term), so a lot of it is simplistic, and doesn't account for the practical nuances of life in "the real world" (much like Ayn Rand's ridiculously reductionist Objectivism, which itself stemmed from the same time period as Heinlein's early work). Now whether that lack of sophistication in his early work is because Heinlein didn't think his readers at the time would be ready for his more libertarian ideas or if he truly believed in the somewhat Nietzsche-an/Darwinian bent of the socio-politics proffered in his early work, well, only Heinlein truly knows.

I'm a huge Heinlein fan (as you can probably tell by now), and to me, one of the best features of his body of work (besides his unparalleled grasp of the art of storytelling) is that you can really trace the development of 20th century Western thought in his books. He starts off writing juvenile fiction, where his protagonists usually deal with absolutes, black-and-white situations, this approach shaped by two World Wars and peaking in Starship Troopers, perhaps the ultimate in absolutism in his work. He then goes on a libertarian bent in Stranger In A Strange Land, a reflection of the 1960s sexual revolution and the growing interest in viewing spirituality via an alternative perspective besides the Judeo-Christian tradition. 1967's Farnham's Freehold combined apprehensions of the Cold War with the Civil Rights Movement while The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress and its introduction of the concept of "rational anarchy" was an indictment of the neo-colonialism and imperialism being practiced by both the United States and the USSR. Finally, Job: A Comedy of Errors (my personal favourite) and The Cat Who Walks Through Walls was a post-modern Heinlein poking fun at everything from organized religion, the "new" physics, and even his own work. More than any science-fiction writer, I think he was able to make make SF socially and politically relevant while being entertaining and informative at the same time, something that's been missing in most of today's current SF.