If I could save ten more movies

OK, so the aliens came and chose me at random to select ten movies to save for their archives before they wipe us out. The aliens have now seen the ten movies, and they liked them a lot, so they have come back, and now they have asked for ten more. I see a glimpse of hope for humanity, if they keep liking the movies (will they ask for some other kind of art?) I feed them we may postpone or even cancel our doomsday by alien's rays of death. So here I go with what would be my next ten movies.

Bakemono no ko (2015, Mamoru Hosoda)

IMDB 7.7, Rotten Tomatoes 90%

First of all, probably you have not seen this one, and that's OK, but you should, because if you have seen it and you don't like it, you are a unequivocally a bad person and you should know and should not have offspring. That's it. This movie is beautiful, from the animation, to the style, the story and the soundtrack. I guess you could replace this one with some Miyazaki movie like Princess Mononoke or Spirited Away (which I love), but the forgiveness message of this movie is so beautiful that this one made it here for me over Miyazaki's works.

Use the sword in your heart.

Aliens (1986, James Cameron)

IMDB 8.4, Rotten Tomatoes 98%

The first Alien movie is also great, and very different from this one (horror vs action, both in the science-fiction frame), but this one has so many epic lines, so much good stuff, and the aesthetics or visual effects have not aged one bit in three decades, that for me, this one is over the first one. This movie is the essence and the spirit of the fight for survival at the core of human beings. Bring on the Xenomorphs!

Private Hudson: Hey Vasquez, have you ever been mistaken for a man?
Private Vasquez: No. Have you?

The Dark Knight (2008, Christopher Nolan)

IMDB 9.0, Rotten Tomatoes 94%

Superheroes are a thing, have been for a long time. And I am a Marvel person, but I need to admit that the best superhero movie ever made is from DC universe, but they got it all wrong when naming the movie: the title should be "The Joker". This movie is about him, and leaving the performance of an actor like Christian Bale in the shadows is no small feat additionally. Only that scene of the joker coming out of the hospital with the nurse dress and the blowing it up... masterful.

Introduce a little anarchy. Upset the established order, and everything becomes chaos. I'm an agent of chaos. Oh, and you know the thing about chaos? It's fair!

Return of the Jedi (1983, Richard Marquand)

IMDB 8.4, Rotten Tomatoes 80%

And I mean Star Wars in general. Although for me the best one is not The Empire Strikes Back but this one, but can I say, I am a sucker for grand finales. If you have not seen Star Wars, you really don't understand the XX century pop culture. So do yourself a favor and go see it.

Luke: I'll not leave you here. I've got to save you.
Anakin: You already have, Luke.

Avatar (2009, James Cameron)

IMDB 7.8, Rotten Tomatoes 83%

Put together Pocahontas, Dancing with Wolves and Aliens, add the most stunning visual effects in the history of cinema and you have Avatar. James Cameron is creating one of the most engaging universes of the XXI century with this saga, and additionally the background message of what we are doing with our planet is so necessary... that this movie had to be on this list.

I see you.

Zootopia (2016, Jared Bush, Byron Howard and Rich Moore)

IMDB 8.1, Rotten Tomatoes 98%

The characters in this movie are incredibly well defined, depicted and complex. The animation work is beautiful. And the story is the best cry out that we have for the world of racism, sexism and egoism that we live in. It is emotional, funny and clever. It touches a part of us that we all should care about. Plus the sloths. THE SLOTHS.

Life isn't some cartoon musical where you sing a little song and all your insipid dreams magically come true. So let it go.

Avengers (2012, Joss Whedon)

IMDB 8.1, Rotten Tomatoes 92%

The Joker... I mean, The Dark Knight could not be in this list with MCU absent. So here are The Avengers to represent the MCU, the biggest cinematographic universe ever made, with a story so rich and fun and characters so complex and fleshed out than it rivals to the comics from were they draw inspiration. What Marvel is doing with all this has no precedent in the history of cinema.

Steve Rogers: Big man in a suit of armour. Take that off, what are you?
Tony Stark: Genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist.

Cloud Atlas (2012, Tom Tykwer, Lana and Lilly Wachowski)

IMDB 7.5, Rotten Tomatoes 66%

This movie will give you several of the biggest brain fucks you have ever had in your life in just one evening, in the best possible way. I am not one of those Lars Von Trier/Terrence Malick morons that go about saying things like "if you didn't like it, it's because you did not understand it", but in this case, if you didn't like it, it's because you did not understand it. I guess that makes me a Wachowski moron, which I am happy to be.

Our lives are not our own. From womb to tomb, we are bound to others. Past and present. And by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future.

Terminator 2 (1991, James Cameron)

IMDB 8.5, Rotten Tomatoes 93%

One of the best movies ever, one of the best science-fiction plots wrapped in the best possible action container, the best Schwarzenegger movie, and the best Cameron movie. Also the best depiction so far (and it is from 1991) of the Asimov's concept of 'travel back in time to save the future'. Anything to add? I thought so.

Watching John with the machine, it was suddenly so clear. The terminator, would never stop. It would never leave him, and it would never hurt him, never shout at him, or get drunk and hit him, or say it was too busy to spend time with him. It would always be there. And it would die, to protect him. Of all the would-be fathers who came and went over the years, this thing, this machine, was the only one who measured up.

The Crow (1994, Alex Proyas)

IMDB 7.6, Rotten Tomatoes 82%

The devil is in the detail, and there are so many great details in this one. One of the best examples that the best best love stories don't need to be told in a cheesy way, and can even make for an amazing action movie with a great dark atmosphere.

People once believed that when someone dies, a crow carries their soul to the land of the dead. But sometimes, something so bad happens that a terrible sadness is carried with it and the soul can't rest. Then sometimes, just sometimes, the crow can bring that soul back to put the wrong things right.

Earth, 2223

[Space-time rift opens]
Alien Leader: Salutations, citizens of Earth.
Human Leader: Sup.
AL: We have been observing you for more than 2,000 of your years, and looking at the advances you have made, we are considering finally inviting you into the Coalition of Advanced Civilizations (CAC).
HL: Sounds amazing.
AL: But first we would like to ask you some questions, as there are some aspects of your culture we do not fully understand.
HL: Shoot.
AL: What is lying?
HL: Not telling the truth.
AL: What is the truth?
HL: Emm... something you know for a fact. For example, two plus two equals four is true, and two plus two equals five is false, or a lie.
AL: Why would you do something like that?
HL: Because when your competitors are better than you, you can only best them by using deception.
AL: But, you are a cooperative species, are you not?
HL: Yes.
AL: Are you lying now?
HL: No.
AL: How a species that is using a concept as counterproductive an infuriating as lying have attained terraformation? We do not understand.
HL: Terraformation?
AL: Yes, the technology to change a planet according to the needs of their people. You used CO2 to increase the temperature in the polar caps to raise sea level so you could reduce the land mass by a 97.6% and raised the temperature by 12C in 100 years, removing 80% of the species in the planet, we presumed, in order to reduce competition for resources and gain more habitable space for your aquatic species.
HL: Ha! we have done no such thing. And we are not aquatic. We just screwed our planet because we did not care or we were blind.
AL: Impossible. We have never made a misjudgment of this magnitude. You must be lying now, are you not?
HL: No.
AL: It is impossible to know when you do. This concept makes no sense whatsoever, how do you tell the truth from the lies when you interact with your own?
HL: We really don't. That's why we screwed in the first place.
AL: I think we have made a mistake.
HL: You bet.
AL: Farewell.
[Space-time rift closes]

GATTACA

And I say GATTACA, not Gattaca, for when writing a DNA sequence you do not capitalize as if it was the name of someone, all letters go either upper or lower case. Or maybe TGTAATC in the complementary strand of DNA. Who knows, since this sequence happens hundreds of thousands of times in a single human genome. And to be clear, it does not have a specific function that we know of.

But speaking about the movie GATTACA, we are one step closer to stop being just random humans (meaning genetically random humans whose genetics have been selected across countless rounds of random mutation and natural selection, from long before we were humans, to a time were our many-great grandfathers were tiny bacteria). Some Chinese scientists have made the first modification using the CRISPR/cas9 method in (non-viable polyploid) human embryos.

The cautionary tale in their publication is that we still have to overcome many technical difficulties, but it will be doable in the near future. Applications besides Hollywood making movies? editing the genome of an embryo so it will not have some (or all) genetic diseases, and making kids look more like Scarlett or Brad according to the parents wishes (and budget).

Ethical implications? you name them. There is a current of scientists that pose we should not go down that path (and for several good reasons, as detailed in the article), but still we will do it. Why? Because when we CAN do something, we do it. It is that simple for humans. For anything imaginable (and I mean anything), if (or when) it becomes doable, you'll always find some human clever/stupid/brave/committed/maniac enough to do it. There's is no stopping this kind of things.

So people better stop saying "do not do it" and start regulating it, and preparing for the outcomes. After all, every single new discovery in the history of humanity can be used for good or for bad. Hence, just enforce the proper environment (laws, conscience, education) to avoid as largely as possible the bad outcome of it.

But then again, what is good and what is bad?

The Coming Kickstarter

A friend of mine has been writing a novel for a while now, a sci-fi story about some endings and some other beginnings, about the story of the red-eyed Io. From the synopsis of his book in Wattpad:

The world had changed since The Coming. It is now an arid desolate place where technology and society failed. A world where each rain drop and even each breath taken could kill, slowly. Each day is a struggle for survival against the Aspects roaming the barren lands feeding on themselves and on people. Mankind has been evicted from the top of the food chain for centuries and is constantly on the brink of extinction. For Io, this world is all she had ever known. For the red-eyed hunter the survival of the Den is all that matters. However; when she abandons the Den pursued by her legacy, the Den’s power-hungry elder and her own mind, she takes the path to exile and to the truth. But when she finally faces her fate she may have to realise that the Aspects are not her only worries. There are events in motion that she can’t possibly know. If she manages to stay alive for a while, she may find an ally and get the chance to learn that The Coming was only the beginning...

He has already written a good deal, and I am still going through it, but liking it a lot so far. So if you want to give it a try, and you want to help him finish his first book, just pop in his kickstarter project and support him

The One That Was Lost

The fifth chapter of The Void Between Minds, The One That Was Lost, is up for reading in Wattpad. It goes on with what's happening within the Labyrinth to Skar and his new mysterious friend. And below my second character banner from the second story arc: Skar (It is gimped from some drawing I found in the internets, but no longer I remember who was the author, so if you recognise it, please let me know).

Enjoy!

Darkest Despair

The 4th chapter of my book The Void Between Minds, Darkest Despair, is up for reading on Wattpad. It resumes with the events after Qitzocatl's visit to the All-Father. From the chapter:

“There is the brightest hope, but it can only be felt when inside the heart of the blackest despair”

And the first character banner I have made, of course, for Qitzocatl

The Void Between Minds

Qitzocatl began to nervously groom the coal black feathers on the back of his head when he left behind the great corridor leading to the All-Father chambers. His left wing was stiff and aching, and that could only mean a storm was coming. Few Korakoi knew what was atop the highest nest in Corvus, Vortex Summus. Thinking of it, it was no wonder anybody in Corvus, or the entirety of Korakoa for that matter, knew of Vortex Summus since it was always shrouded in clouds and mist and thunder and only the tall and slender column that supported the metallic cone shaped nest could be seen by the citizens of Corvus. Thousands of such columns rose from the snowy stones, through the redpine forest, towards the clouds, but only Vortex Summus was ever in disguise. It was only appropriate that the house of the All-Father, a figure cloaked in legend and mist, creator of all life, had such setting atop the ceiling of the world. But Qitzocatl knew better.

That is how the story I want to tell begins. That is my first paragraph of an epic and personal science fiction. And I invite you all in. They are all free on Wattpad. In case you do not know it, Wattpad is a free web with android and iOS apps in which to publish and read stories of any kind, for free, you only need to set up account and you are good to go. The first three chapters of my first fiction book, The Void Between Minds, are already in there, and I am hoping to upload one chapter per week or so (although it will probably be slower than that due to the real world scenario unpredictability). 

And if you happen to be a publisher or an editor and you like it, just let me know!

Enjoy!