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    Five Sci-Fi Classics, One Summer: How 1982 Shaped Our Present

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    Five Sci-Fi Classics, One Summer: How 1982 Shaped Our Present“Blade Runner,” “E.T.,” “Tron,” “The Wrath of Khan” and “The Thing” all arrived that one season 40 years ago to become indelible and influential.The future is now: The photographer Sinna Nasseri captured images of present-day New York City as it might have been predicted by science fiction films of the 1980s. Above, a replica of the DeLorean from “Back to the Future” was on display in Times Square. Listen to This ArticleTo hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.At the end of Christian Nyby’s 1951 sci-fi chiller “The Thing from Another World” — about an Arctic expedition whose members are stealthily decimated by an accidentally defrosted alien monster — a traumatized journalist takes to the airwaves to deliver an urgent warning. “Watch the skies,” he insists breathlessly, hinting at the possibility of a full-on invasion in the final lines. “Keep looking. Keep watching the skies.”This plea for eagle-eyed vigilance suited the postwar era of Pax Americana, in which economic prosperity was leveraged against a creeping paranoia — of threats coming from above or within. The final lines of movie were prescient about the rise of the American science-fiction film, out of the B-movie trenches in the 1950s and into the firmament of the industry’s A-list several decades later.The peak of this trajectory came in the summer of 1982, in which five authentic genre classics premiered within a one-month span. After its June 4, 1982, opening, “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan,” set an unexpected record by grossing about $14 million on its first weekend. Seven days later, Steven Spielberg’s “E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial” debuted to $11 million but proved to have stubby, little box office legs, eventually grossing more than half a billion dollars worldwide. June 25 brought the competing releases of Ridley Scott’s ambitious tech-noir thriller “Blade Runner” and John Carpenter’s R-rated remake of “The Thing,” visions several shades darker than “E.T.”; both flopped as a prelude to their future cult devotion. On July 9, Disney’s technologically groundbreaking “Tron,” set in a virtual universe of video-game software, completed the quintet.Not all of these movies were created equal artistically, but taken together, they made a compelling case for the increasing thematic flexibility of their genre. The range of tones and styles on display was remarkable, from family-friendly fantasy to gory horror. Whether giving a dated prime-time space opera new panache or recasting 1940s noir in postmodernist monochrome, the filmmakers (and special-effects technicians) of the summer of ’82 created a sublime season of sci-fi that looks, 40 years later, like the primal scene for many Hollywood blockbusters being made — or remade and remodeled — today. How could five such indelible movies arrive at the same time?Whether the summer of ’82 represented the gentrification of cinematic sci-fi or its artistic apex, the genre’s synthesis of spectacle and sociology had been underway for some time. Following the pulp fictions of the ’50s, if there was one movie that represented a great leap forward for cinematic science fiction, it was Stanley Kubrick’s epically scaled, narratively opaque 1968 film “2001: A Space Odyssey,” which not only featured a massive, mysterious monolith but also came to resemble one in the eyes of critics and audiences alike.The film’s grandeur was undeniable, and so was its gravitas: It was an epic punctuated with a question mark. Almost a decade later, “Star Wars” used a similar array of special effects to cultivate more weightless sensations. In lieu of Kubrick’s anxious allegory about humans outsmarted and destroyed by their own technology, George Lucas put escapism on the table — “a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away” — and staged a reassuringly Manichaean battle between good and evil, with very fine aliens on both sides.The same year as “Star Wars,” Spielberg’s “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” rekindled the paranoid alien-invasion vibes of the ’50s with an optimistic twist. The film had originally been titled “Watch the Skies” in homage to Nyby’s classic, but it was an invitation to a more benevolent form of stargazing: Its climactic light show was as patriotic as Fourth of July fireworks, with a distinctly countercultural message worthy of Woodstock: Make love, not war (of the worlds).What united “Star Wars” and “Close Encounters,” beyond their makers’ shared sense of genre history (and mechanics), were their direct appeals to both children and the inner children of grown-ups everywhere. In The New Yorker, the influential and acerbic critic Pauline Kael carped that George Lucas was “in the toy business.” Like the scientist at the end of “The Thing From Another World,” she was raising the alarm about what she saw as a powerful, pernicious influence: the infantilization of the mass audience by special-effects spectacle.Yet even Kael submitted to the shamelessly populist charms of “E.T.,” which she described as being “bathed in warmth.” She wrote that the film, about the intimate friendship between a 10-year-old boy and a benign, petlike thing from another world, “reminds you of the goofiest dreams you had as a kid.”What The Times Said About These Five Movies in 1982Card 1 of 5Blade Runner. More

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      The ‘Halloween’ Franchise and the Problem With Its Sequels

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      The follow-ups took the wrong lessons from the 1978 film. But we keep giving the franchise second chances, in hopes a new one will live up to the original.The astonishing opening-weekend grosses for “Halloween Kills,” the 12th film in the durable “Halloween” franchise, may have surprised some observers — after all, audiences are still hesitant to visit theaters, and reviews for this installment were not kind.And they’re not wrong: it’s truly a mess, a whiplash-inducing attempt to fuse straight horror, sideways comedy and socially relevant themes. But just as you can’t kill Michael Myers, the knife-wielding psychopath at its center, you can’t kill “Halloween,” which has outlasted other horror franchises from the same era like “Friday the 13th” (dormant since 2009) and “A Nightmare on Elm Street” (since 2010).So what is it about this series that has proved so durable? What keeps fans — and I count myself among them — coming back, forever granting the series second chances at greatness, fully aware of the inevitability of disappointment? A look back at the first five films in the series (available in new Blu-ray collector’s editions from Shout Factory but also streaming on major platforms) provides some answers.It’s impossible to overstate the impact of John Carpenter’s 1978 “Halloween,” a film now treated as a sacred text among horror aficionados — and for good reason. The thriller was innovative, quite literally from the first frame: it opens with a lengthy sequence in which we see a brutal murder through the killer’s eyes. It’s easy to understand what the film’s imitators lifted from this: the heavy-breathing point-of-view framing, the gratuitous nudity, the prurient moralizing (the victim is killed after a casual sexual encounter). Few bothered to replicate Carpenter’s technical wizardry — that four-minute introductory shot, clearly inspired by the opening of Orson Welles’ “Touch of Evil,” plays out as an unbroken take — or use it as ingeniously as “Halloween” does: to delay, for as long as possible, the moment of shock when Carpenter finally reveals that the murderer is the 6-year-old Michael Myers, who has slain his own sister.In stark contrast to the slasher movies it spawned, and even to its own sequels, barely a drop of blood is shed in “Halloween.” Carpenter and his co-writer and producer, Debra Hill, spend much of the film’s first hour crafting distinct, memorable characters, particularly Myers’s final would-be victim, the bookworm babysitter Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), and his psychiatrist and antagonist, Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasence).So rather than reveling in guts and gore, the original film’s emphasis is on suspense, terror and mood. Carpenter’s elegant direction makes inventive use of negative space and darkness (particularly when moving Michael’s ghostly white mask in and out of the cinematographer Dean Cundey’s inky night spaces), and of foregrounds and backgrounds, which frequently reveal the killer’s presence to the viewer before he is seen by his potential victims. Carpenter also masterfully manipulates the pace, which rises and falls in waves through the first and second acts, casually accumulating dread and fear, before moving into the relentlessly scary closing scenes.“Halloween” was a commercial sensation, grossing roughly $47 million on a budget of $325,000. That tremendous return on investment prompted a slew of quick, cheap imitations — after all, the logic went, you didn’t need stars or production values, just some attractive young unknowns and a guy with a knife. None of the successors was more transparent, or more successful, than the “Friday the 13th” series. Its makers couldn’t replicate Carpenter’s stylistic flair, so they invested in elaborate, intricate killing scenes and blood by the bucket.“Friday” and its first follow-up had already come and gone by the time “Halloween II” hit theaters, in October 1981, but that series’s influence is keenly felt in this sequel. Though Carpenter and Hill wrote and produced again (with directorial duties handed off to Rick Rosenthal), the violence is much more extreme and the body count is higher, as is the volume of jump scares, a sure sign that the filmmakers didn’t believe their audience had the patience for the slow builds of the initial installment.But “Halloween II” still has moments of visceral terror that rival the first film, and compositions that are breathtaking in their ingenuity. At their best, these films can tap into a primal fear: of being chased, of running for our lives, of realizing too late that we don’t have a way out. It’s why the scene of Laurie seemingly trapped in a closet in the first film has lodged itself so firmly in our collective memories; it’s why the sequel’s basement chase is so similarly effective. Throughout the series, characters and dialogue return to the idea of “the boogeyman,” a relentless force of evil whom you, of course, cannot kill; “Halloween” works on our subconscious, to a great extent, because it is rooted in childhood fears. (The fears of “Friday the 13th” are teenage concerns: getting caught, either having sex or doing drugs or both.)“Halloween III: The Season of the Witch” was closer to science fiction than horror.Universal PicturesThe “Halloween” movies’ willingness to take risks, at least early on, is more pronounced in the next installment. The first sequel ends, perhaps hopefully, with the death of Michael Myers; the next year, Carpenter and Hill produced “Halloween III: Season of the Witch,” an effort to rebrand the series as a horror anthology, telling a completely different story in a completely different style. This tale of an evil plan to murder kids en masse via killer Halloween masks is closer to 1950s science fiction (or, at the very least, ’70s riffs on the genre like the “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” remake) than anything that was happening in horror in the 1980s — and, perhaps as a result, audiences rejected the attempt to rethink “Halloween.”That was, in retrospect, the last time the series tried to break new ground rather than follow current trends. But that’s probably the other explanation for the longevity of “Halloween”: its malleability. When the producer Moustapha Akkad resurrected the series in 1988 with “Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers,” he gave the fans what they wanted — more of the same — though that film, and its quickie follow-up a year later, “Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers,” felt more like “Friday the 13th” sequels than anything Carpenter and Hill had made. Both films have moments of genuine fright and a handful of affecting performances, but they feel like the series reacting to trends rather than setting them, a pattern that continued through the next entries: the winking, “Scream”-influenced “Halloween H20: 20 Years Later” (1998); the extreme horror of Rob Zombie’s 2007 mash-up of remake and origin story; and the gestures of social relevance in the current iterations.These efforts to rethink, rebrand and reboot that original, comparatively simple exercise in suspense have failed and succeeded in roughly equal measure. Yet we’ll plunk down our ticket money, no matter how sour the word of mouth, no matter how dire the reviews, because we’ve grown up with these movies.Part of it is sheer nostalgia, plain and simple: “Halloween” movies remind us of sneaking contraband videotapes into sleepovers and scaring each other silly late at night, after the parents were asleep. The series will probably never scale those heights again, and we know it. But we’ll keep showing up, like die-hard fans of a baseball team that hasn’t nabbed a pennant in years, but can still win a big game every now and then. More

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      Gwen Stefani’s Ska-Pop Flashback, and 10 More New Songs

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best MoviesBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest TheaterBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThe PlaylistGwen Stefani’s Ska-Pop Flashback, and 10 More New SongsHear tracks by Sturgill Simpson, John Carpenter, Elle King and others.Gwen Stefani returns to the familiar sounds of her band, No Doubt, on a new single, “Let Me Reintroduce Myself.”Credit…Kevin Winter/Getty Images For IheartmediaJon Pareles, Jon Caramanica, Giovanni Russonello and Dec. 11, 2020Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new songs and videos. Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes). Like what you hear? Let us know at theplaylist@nytimes.com and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once-a-week blast of our pop music coverage.Gwen Stefani, ‘Let Me Reintroduce Myself’[embedded content]When the brash, sneering No Doubt frontwoman Gwen Stefani emerged in the mid-90s to break up the boys-club monopoly of alternative rock, it would have been hard to predict where she’d be now, at 51. She is arguably even more of a household name than in the “Tragic Kingdom” days, but occupies a space at the deadest center of centrist pop — a fixture on a broadcast TV singing competition that is (somehow) in its 20th season, and an occasional (if sonically ill-suited) duet partner with her country-star fiancé. Her new single, the not-so-subtly-titled “Let Me Reintroduce Myself,” gestures back to Stefani’s middle period of, roughly, “Rock Steady” through “Hollaback Girl,” assuring the skeptical listener that she’s still “the original, original old” Gwen. A few clunky verse lyrics protest a bit too much (“It’s not a comeback, I’m recycling me”), but when her brassy voice rises to match the ska instrumentation of the chorus, there’s a fleeting rush of that old No Doubt magic. LINDSAY ZOLADZTroye Sivan, Kacey Musgraves and Mark Ronson, ‘Easy’The neon-kissed “Easy” was already a highlight off the Australian pop sweetheart Troye Sivan’s recent EP, “In a Dream,” but a new mix by Mark Ronson and guest vocals from Kacey Musgraves kick it into another gear. Ronson’s production expands the song’s spacious atmosphere, accentuating an echoing New Order bass line, starry synth flourishes and cavernous percussion. For all her disco flirtations on “High Horse,” Musgraves has never lent her benevolent croon to a song so straightforwardly poppy before — but she sounds so at home that it’s worth wondering if this hints at a potential post-“Golden Hour” direction. ZOLADZJohn Carpenter, ‘The Dead Walk’The director John Carpenter is a full-fledged musician who has also composed the scores for many of his films. “The Dead Walk” is from an album due in 2021, “Lost Themes III,” of music without movies. It’s a martial, suspenseful, pumping, minor-key synthesizer melody, with a guitar overlay, that has its beat drop out midway through, for blurred piano arpeggios, only to resume with even more ominous intent. JON PARELESGeorge Coleman Quintet, ‘Sandu’In 1971, seven years after his tenure with Miles Davis’s famed quintet, the saxophonist George Coleman was revving up his career as a bandleader in his own right. On this newly discovered live recording, “The George Coleman Quintet in Baltimore,” Coleman — an inveterate weight lifter — drives the band like a personal trainer, while syncing up with the colorful trumpet phrasing of Danny Moore and the brawny Midwestern swing of Larry Ridley’s bass. On “Sandu,” a classic Clifford Brown blues, Moore nods to its author with a few upturned, pretty lines, but he’s working out his own shapes. On Coleman’s solo, his fits of circular breathing seem to call back to the old R&B saxophone hollerers of generations before. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOFunkmaster Flex featuring King Von, ‘Lurkin’The first single from the forthcoming Funkmaster Flex compilation — 1990s back! — is a taut example of the storytelling rap that made the Chicago rapper King Von, who was killed last month, such a compelling talent. JON CARAMANICABenny the Butcher, ‘3:30 in Houston’Benny the Butcher raps “3:30 in Houston” from a wheelchair — the result of getting shot last month in an attempted robbery. At first, he’s laughing a little — after all, he notes, he’s been on the other side of a robbery in his day. But midsong, as he relives the moment of the attack, the mood sours:Rolls-Royce truck basically stood outOnly one mistake, I ain’t have a lookoutQuarter in jewels, shopping at WalmartTake me out the hood but can’t take the hood outSoon, it’s a deadpan revenge tale, including the suggestion that someone’s “pinkie finger’s getting sent to me.” CARAMANICAKing Princess, ‘Pain’“Cheap Queen,” Mikaela Straus’s 2019 full-length debut as King Princess, was a relatively subdued affair, full of mid-tempo tunes that telegraphed laid-back cool. So the in-your-face energy of her latest single “Pain” is certainly a departure, but it works: The kinetic maximalism of the song’s early 90s touchstones — a “Freedom! ’90” keyboard riff; some “Tom’s Diner” do-do-dos — keep the song from wallowing in the muck of its moody subject matter. “I can’t help turning my love into pain,” Straus croons. The playful music video, directed by Quinn Wilson, conjures some cartoonishly masochistic imagery, with that titular word suddenly appearing like the bam and pows in an old “Batman” episode. ZOLADZSturgill Simpson, ‘Oh Sarah’“Oh Sarah” is a desolate Southern soul ballad on Sturgill Simpson’s 2016 album, “A Sailor’s Guide to Earth,” losing itself in the loneliness and transience of the road: “Too old now to learn how to let you in/so I run away just like I always do.” On “Cuttin’ Grass — Vol. 2 (Cowboy Arms Sessions),” his second album of bluegrass remakes from his catalog, it’s far more reassuring, rooted in string-band picking. It’s a vow of enduring love despite the separations: “Don’t worry baby, I’ll come home.” PARELESElle King, ‘Another You’Bitterness seethes and crests as the string section swells in Elle King’s “Another You,” a knife-twisting response to a message from a despised ex. In the verses she details his failings, almost singing through clenched teeth; in the chorus, she belts with vindictive joy about a new romance, proclaiming, “It wasn’t hard to fill your shoes.” PARELESEl Perro del Mar featuring Blood Orange, ‘Alone in Halls’“I’m going through changes,” El Perro del Mar — the Swedish composer and singer Sarah Assbring — sings and speaks, again and again, in “Alone in Halls,” over two organlike chords that feel like inhales and exhales. She’s joined, now and then, by the voice of Blood Orange (Dev Hynes). Aren’t we all going through changes? PARELESMoontype, ‘Ferry’“I wanna take the ferry to Michigan,” Margaret McCarthy sings, buoyed by oceanic guitar distortion on the chorus of “Ferry,” the first single from the Chicago indie-rock trio Moontype’s upcoming debut album. “Ferry” marries the woozy swoon of Beach House with the rising sweep of a Galaxie 500 song, though McCarthy’s voice cuts through the haze with direct emotional lucidity. ZOLADZAdvertisementContinue reading the main story More