San Diego Comic Con: The Special Edition. After two years and four months, San Diego Comic Con has finally returned as an in-person event–but not quite at full blast. In the thick of the ongoing COVID pandemic, San Diego Comic Con was turned into an online-only event, which meant that panels were held via Zoom…
Star Trek: Discovery, S4.2; “Anomaly” is all about the characters…
*******STARSHIP-SIZED SPOILERS AHEAD!!******** Better Late Than Never… In the wake of last week’s announcement that Netflix would no longer be distributing Star Trek: Discovery in foreign markets (an announcement unfortunately timed right after the Destination London Star Trek convention, and only two days before Season 4’s debut in North America), Paramount+ and PlutoTV have reached…
James Cameron’s “The Abyss: Special Edition” (1989) deserves reappraisal …and a Blu-ray release.
******SUBMERGED SPOILERS AHEAD!!****** Lost in the Abyss. 1989 was unquestionably the Summer of “Batman”. Everywhere you looked there was Batman-product; Batman cereal, a resurgence of comic book sales, toys, collectibles, and the late (great) Prince’s “Batdance” dominated the air waves. There were other big movies that summer; “Ghostbusters 2,” “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade,”…
Star Trek: Discovery’s 4th season opens with a “Kobayashi Maru” scenario…
RE: PARAMOUNT+/NETFLIX DECISION I usually post spoiler warnings in most of these columns, but I’m doing so with a vengeance for this new season of Star Trek: Discovery reviews in light of a recent real-life controversy. Star Trek: Discovery, which is seen in the United States on Paramount+, CTV Sci-Fi channel in Canada, and on…
“Free Guy” (2021) borrows a lot of its code, but it’s nicely spent…
****** SPOILERS AHEAD !****** Ready Player, Too? For full disclosure; anyone who’s read this column long enough might realize that I am not a gamer. My experience with video games goes as far as playing Pac Man, Asteroids, and Beserker at a local arcade in my high school years, and a several month honeymoon with…
From “The Boy With Green Hair” to “Battlestar Galactica”: Dean Stockwell, 1936-2021…
From Child Star to Battlestar. Despite attending many sci-fi/fantasy conventions over the years, I, sadly, never had the chance to meet the late Dean Stockwell, though I’ve been a fan of his work for decades. The former childhood star, who passed away on November 7th from natural causes, had a career dating back to when…
“Jodorowsky’s Dune” (2013) examines the landmark sci-fi film that never was…
The Almost Version of Dune. Frank Herbert’s seminal 1965 novel “Dune” gave rise to many things that influence sci-fi fantasy cinema this day; its terminology (“spice mines”) and trappings have been seen in popular franchises like “Star Wars” and later space operas. Herbert’s book is a dense, complex allegory of western colonialism, with various powerful…
Star Trek: Prodigy S1.3; “Starstruck” finds its space legs…
*****STARSHIP-SIZED SPOILERS!!***** Okay, I swore I wasn’t going to review every single episode of Paramount+’s new series “Star Trek: Prodigy,” but after last week’s double-length pilot (which had an uncanny “Star Wars Rebels” vibe) I was curious to see how/where the series would go after our heroes escaped from the prison mine and took their…
Doctor Who: “The Halloween Apocalypse” kicks off the “Flux” event…
*****TARDIS-SIZED SPOILERS!****** Something Old, Someone New. Fresh off the news that former producer/writer/showrunner Russell T. Davies is returning to the “Doctor Who” franchise, current producer/writer/showrunner Chris Chibnall returns for a six-episode event called “The Flux,” which began on Halloween night with Episode 1, titled (appropriately enough) “The Halloween Apocalypse.” This was our first look at…
“Star Trek: Prodigy” is a Star Wars-like Star Trek aiming for ‘the next generation’ of fans…
Another Animated Trek. ParamountPlus has just released its 45 minute, double-length pilot (“Lost and Found”) of its newest youth-targeted animated series “Star Trek: Prodigy”, which once again sees Star Trek lore as inspiring to a new group of characters (and younger audiences). Of course, this is not the first time Star Trek has gone animated,…
“Dune: Part One” (2021) is as good an adaptation as we’ll ever get…
*****SPICE-LADEN SPOILERS AHEAD!!***** Dune It Again. The path of Frank Herbert’s seminal 1965 science fiction novel to the screen has been almost as harsh and dangerous as conditions on the desert world of Arrakis. Over the last five decades we’ve seen (and almost seen) a surreal, aborted Alejandro Jodorowksy adaptation (circa 1975), a colorful 1984…
Preparing to meet thy “Dune”; how and why I’m seeing it at home, too…
Dune It Yourself. The highly anticipated “Dune” adaptation from director Denis Villeneuve (“Blade Runner 2049,” “Arrival”) is out in theaters today, and it is also being streamed until November 21st on HBOMax (no extra fees or codes needed beyond an existing HBOMax subscription). With the highly transmissible Delta variant of the coronavirus still wreaking havoc…
Musings of a Middle-Aged Geek 