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(1968- ) US filmmaker who has repeatedly straddled sf boundaries with other genres: Horror in The Faculty (1998), which draws on and quotes Robert A Heinlein's The Puppet Masters (1951); 1970s exploitation cinema plus Zombies and Monster Movie tropes in Planet Terror (2007); and espionage-based Technothriller in the Spy Kids franchise (2001 onward), whose third instalment Spy Kids 3D: Game Over (2003) takes place mostly in Virtual Reality, while Spy Kids: All the Time in the World in 4D (2011) deals playfully with a threatened End of Time. Spy Kids 3D and the fantasy The Adventures of Shark Boy and Lava Girl in 3-D (2005) anticipated the 3D boom of the late 2000s; they were among the last films released using anaglyphic (chromatically separated stereoscopic) systems and watched with coloured glasses. The Shark Boy and Lava Girl Adventures written with Chris Roberson [see Checklist] are spinoffs from the latter. Rodriguez produced the franchise reboot Predators (2010), which drew on his fifteen-year-old mothballed draft for a sequel to Predator 2 (1990).
A multi-specializing and genuinely versatile control addict, Rodriguez writes, directs, produces, edits, and regularly serves as his own camera operator, production designer, soundtrack composer, and sound editor. A resourceful exponent of budget-stretching film techniques, he was a pioneer in the routine use of greenscreen techniques to shoot live action quickly and cheaply with a digital world filled in subsequently. A close associate of Quentin Tarantino, who wrote and appeared in his Vampire film From Dusk till Dawn (1996), he regularly revisits vintage fantasy and exploitation genres given a Postmodern ironic spin. [NL]
born San Antonio, Texas: 20 June 1968
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Shark Boy and Lava Girl Adventures
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Entry from The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (2011-current) edited by John Clute and David Langford.
Accessed 00:27 am on 19 September 2024.
<https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/rodriguez_robert>