Sun and Sci-fi

I worked in the garden today, which was bliss. Whisky was a loyal desk buddy, the guinea pig trio mowed the grass and Omar ate her weight in watercress.

In the evening, I headed to the BFI with Fred, Si, Lindz and Mike to catch two films at the Sci-fi London Film Festival. The first film was hilarious and I highly recommend it for sci-fi fun: Dark Star. It's worth it especially for the alien and the bomb. The film had next-to-no budget - it shows, but it's far funnier for it. The director and co-writer was John Carpenter, who went on to write the Halloween films. The other co-writer was Dan O'Bannon, who wrote Alien. This was also the first first to show hyperdrive (the stars whizzing past the ship), which was an effect used in Star Wars three years later. There was a live soundtrack to the film, too, but I wonder what the original sounded like - I must investigate.

During the interval, we spotted Terry Gilliam and Michael Palin (or rather, I saw Terry Gilliam, but completely missed Michael Palin, who was standing right behind me).

The second film was a world premiere, but that's not as exciting as it sounds. The Search for Simon is a film made by Sci-fi London in quite a quick timescale (the film-maker was still editing the film at 2pm this afternoon). We came out in agreement that it needed a huge edit. There were a few good moments, but some scenes were too long or unnecessary.

Still, a good sci-fi evening, and nice to be at the BFI for the festival rather than the Odeon, even if we weren't allowed to eat our Wine Gums.