THE 33RD ANNUAL BOSTON SCIENCE FICTION FILM FESTIVAL

Film fare for the dedicated geek

By ANTHONY VECCHI

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"The Future is Passé!" is the theme for Boston's "other marathon," the 33rd Annual Sci-Fi Film Festival. This year's lineup is taking a look at older films that depicted a world of the future complete with nefarious robots and underground-dwelling mole people. The future, which is now our present, is seemingly not as grim (or as cool—Where is my holographic girlfriend?) as the past wished it to be.

For 2008, the festival has managed to score the first reprint of A Boy and His Dog from director L.Q. Jones himself. It's a grand acquisition indeed, as it has taken the event's coordinators four years of supplication to acquire. These 24 hours are not entirely reserved for serious intellectual matters, however. Festivities also include such works as A Sound of Thunder, featuring an all too easily riffed-upon Ed Burns holding perhaps one of the lamest, most oversized dustbuster-style laser guns you'll ever see. Having a little cheese with that fine movie wine keeps the audience from slipping into a complete state of torpor and gives their restless tongues a chance to skewer the lame follies of B-movie actors. Plus, what self-respecting wit would want to miss out on a live-action audience participation version of Mystery Science Theatre 3000?

Other events scheduled to break up the monotony in-between films include a contest for the best tin-foil hat to ward off martian mind control and the ever-popular alien-mating-call competition: with males and females letting out guttural wails and all other types of ululations and crooning noises in an attempt to make each other swoon. They say love can happen anywhere, and I'm sure that goes the same for science fiction festivals.

33RD ANNUAL BOSTON SCI-FI FILM FESTIVAL

SUN. 2.17–MON. 2.18

SOMERVILLE THEATRE

55 DAVIS SQ.

SOMERVILLE

617.625.5700

NOON–NOON

$52

BOSTONSCI-FI.COM