#war-of-the-worlds

#war-of-the-worlds

While John Carpenter's 1982 remake was initially dismissed as an empty, nihilistic gorefest, The Thing (née Another World) has since been reevaluated as one of the greatest science-fiction films of the '80s, and certainly one of the most influential.

My first thought was, 'Oh god, I don't know how we're going to make this into a movie.' I was so scared. I didn't want to let Andy down. But I realized how challenging it was. This is a far more ambitious book than The Martian. It's a much bigger canvas, it's a much more mature subject, the detailed emotional storyline that's at the core of this is so intimate against this celestial backdrop.

BBC Threads, directed by Mick Jackson, follows two families in Sheffield as they try to survive a direct hit from a nuclear bomb. It pulls no punches as its characters fall one by one, before ultimately only focusing on pregnant Ruth (Karen Meagher) as she tries to survive and carve out a life for her and her child. Meticulously researched, it presents a bleak picture of what civilization would look like after nuclear winter, including the ozone layer weakening, resulting in blindness and skin cancer, and the degradation of the English language itself.

A study found that reading banned books predicted civic engagement more strongly than personality traits. Reading banned books showed zero correlation with grades, violent crime, or nonviolent crime in adolescents. Reactance theory explains why censorship backfires: Restricted freedoms activate curiosity and thinking.