Notes On Some Dramatic Presentations
I’d hoped to put up the fourth of my series of posts on the fiction of C.S. Lewis last week; I didn’t, and this isn’t that post either. I ended up spending more time running around over the holidays than I’d expected, so while I’m hoping to get the Lewis post up next Sunday, for the moment I want to do something different. Having seen a number of discussions about Hugo voting emerge over the previous days, I’d like to put forward some suggestions for the Dramatic Presentation categories.
Regular Black Gate readers may remember that this past summer I covered the 2015 Fantasia International Film Festival in my home city of Montréal. I got to see a number of wonderful science-fiction and fantasy films from around the world. And I thought it might be worth looking back at those movies, partly to help people looking for works to nominate on their Hugo ballots, and partly to draw a bit more attention to some excellent work. So here are some films of possible relevance to Hugo voters, with quick summaries and links to my reviews. (I reviewed several movies in each post, so some of the different links go to the same places.)
In this post I’m going to stick to movies that are pretty clearly science-fiction, fantasy, and horror. I’ll divide my lists according to the Hugo rules: films ninety minutes long or more are eligible for Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form, and those less than ninety are eligible for Short Form. I’m going to list movies in alphabetical order, with brief descriptions and the occasional critical observation. I’ll err on the side of completeness, listing even marginally genre movies. Although Worldcon membership skews American (or so the Hugo Awards web site states, under “Country & Language of Publication”) I’ll include films that have no American release listed, as presumably some readers aren’t American, and I have no idea what’ll be coming on Netflix or other venues in the next month or two. Note that I’m not necessarily recommending all the following films, and certainly not suggesting that Hugo ballots should be put together just from these lists. I’m only trying to highlight movies people might not otherwise have heard of, but might want to investigate now or later. If you want to look through all my reviews of the 2015 festival, you can find links at the bottom of the post linked here.
