It's sci-fi season once again, what with this opening volley from Twohy (The Arrival) and a deuce of Mars films on the event horizon. Pitch Black, how

Alien + Raiders of the Lost Ark - interesting = Pitch Black

No other movie opening thrills me more than a vast ship in interstellar space. The modern visual rules for these shots were set by Stanley Kubrick's "2001," which used a detailed model moving slowly instead of a cheesy model moving fast. Kubrick had the good sense to know that sound does not travel in space, but "Star Wars," with its deep bass rumbles, demonstrated that it certainly should. And then in the "Alien" and "Star Trek" pictures and in countless others, gigantic space cruisers aimed majestically at the stars, and I felt an inner delight that has its origins in those long-ago days when I devoured pulp space opera by Robert Heinlein and such forgotten masters as Murray Leinster and Eric Frank Russell.