Sep 17, 2007

[NWA] Sci-Fi Philippines September 'Thon



Last September 15, 2007, Sci-Fi Philippines held it's big science fiction movie / TV marathon over at Brash Young Cinema. Personally, it was my first 'thon ever and I was pretty excited since we had been trying to flesh out the movie list for weeks now over on the mailing list and the general plans around the day's selection was pretty exciting.

Little did we know that this would be a truly unique 'thon among 'thons - this now turning into an account of the story of the tale of a group of geeks who surmounted all technical odds in the name of science fiction. [insert incidental music here]

I arrived a bit past two and Burt wasn't there yet so we had to await. He arrived closer to 02:30pm and opened up Brash and we all made our way around the room in order to deploy our things - a mix of random consumables and science fiction books that had been brought just to be shared with the group and other reasons. I made my way around to plug in all the fans and get them set up - something I had noted in my previous trips to BYC with Via Astris.

Then *FLASH* - something popped when Burt tried to turn on the TV. It was plugged into the correct socket on the AVR, but given the general condition of the equipment, who knows what voltage was really pumping out of that thing. The 'thon almost ended right there.

The first back-up plan was to try and watch the movies we had scheduled out on Burt's laptop. The screen was pretty small and the sound was horrible - not a good things since we started the 'thon with the The Quatermass Experiment, this being the 2005 remake of the 1953 classic. I say this was a bad thing since it was more of a talkie given it was a British science fiction film, so the lack of decent sound had all of us a bit frustrated, perhaps especially Sister Iris.

Burt started texting away and finally confirmed that the projector at his office was not is use so he sped off to pick it up along with some PC speakers. The rest us tried to endure the film while snacking on chips, the sack of cookies Sister Iris brought and some siopao from Davao courtesy of Dom. Within 20 minutes, Burt was back with loads of gear - it was off to work for the geeks!

We improvised a projector screen using some old Styrofoam sheets leftover from previous events and rigged up a mount for the projector using the mini-cooler Burt had brought along. I twiddled with the keystone settings to compensate for the somewhat extreme angle. Throw in the DVD player Burt brought along instead of the laptop and *PRESTO* - one jury-rigged projector set-up. On with the 'thon!

Since he had started it, we eventually finished The Quatermass Experiment. In order to remove the bad taste in our collective mouths we switched gears and watched the Blink episode from the newest Doctor Who series and it was killer! I'm pretty sure everyone loved it (especially Sister Iris) and it certainly has me wanting to buy the series once it comes out on Asian DVDs, hahaha.

We then watched most of the pilot episode of Odyssey 5 but missed the last few minutes because of a bum CD. That forced a snack run to the nearby Chowking just so we could hurry back and watch the three-part season ender of the newest Doctor Who. It was pretty cool too and I have to admit I'm hooked!

That last Doctor Who piece ate up most of the night, although I'm definitely not complaining. We had time for just one more movie and settled on the somewhat cheesy time travel flick, The Final Countdown. It was mostly a poster movie for the US Navy but it was still fun to watch together with the group since we could all spot the blatant errors in continuity and in the science while commenting that the young Martin Sheen really looked like Emilio Estevez - go figure.

The night ended with most of us heading over to the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf over at Greenbelt 3 past midnight for more great conversation and more than our fair stares given he had someone in costume and I'm sure we were pretty loud considering how the branch seems to suck up all sound.

The photos flashing above pretty much cover the before and after - I was too busy watching to take pictures during the 'thon of course, hahaha! I can hardly wait for the next one - we're planning on watching some of the cheesiest science fiction films known to man. It's going to take a fair number of emails to settle on a final list of movies / shows, and even then we might not get to watch them all.

1 comment:

  1. ..and I had to post a comment to the wrong entry. Sorry!

    ReplyDelete