Famed, Oscar-nominated British actor Sir John Hurt passed away only last week (just a few days after his 77th birthday). He was one of my favorite character actors over the last few decades, and he became a favorite of mine almost without me realizing it, by stealthily disappearing into each new role. I won’t go…
Month: January 2017
2017 feels a bit too much like “1984”…
I swore I was going to try to keep this blog apolitical, but I saw this on Wil Wheaton’s Tumblr feed this morning and it NEEDS to be repeated everywhere and anywhere: There is also an article from “The New Yorker” that deserves to be read as well: Orwell’s 1984 and Trump’s America, by Adam…
Visions of Futures Past…
We’re a few years shy of two decades into the 21st century, and I’m a graying, spectacled, middle-aged geek who’s now living in the “future”of his childhood. And so far it’s not quite the future I imagined in my youth. Parts of it still amaze me, but the bulk of it is very underwhelming and more…
“What an Excellent Day for an Exorcism”: the legacy of the late William Peter Blatty, 1928-2017
A gifted writer/director passed away last week; one who subtly changed my life, or at the very least, raised my cinematic fear threshold to an absurdly high level at a very young age. That man was William Peter Blatty, former comedy screenwriter (1964’s “A Shot in the Dark”) who took a chance by writing a…
IMATS LA: I’m not makeup–er, making this up…
A few years ago back in 2014, my wife introduced me to a convention I’d never heard of, let alone attended; it was IMATS (International Makeup Artists Trade Show), Los Angeles (though it was actually held in Pasadena). It was pretty much as advertised; cosmetics, beauty/glam makeups, special effects makeups, etc. A place…
“Hidden Figures” is well-intentioned and long overdue, if a bit simplistic
Saw “Hidden Figures” last weekend; the movie finally delivers the long overdue true story of the human ‘computers’ who helped crunch seriously heavy numbers in the earliest days of the US space program (50 years overdue, in fact). Most of these women were African-American, and many went on to have long careers within NASA…
A Tale of Two Martians
In addition to science fiction, I’m also a lifelong fan of actual space science as well. Certainly “Star Wars” and “Star Trek” whetted my youthful appetite for space opera and space fantasy, but it was seeing a relatively obscure 1964 movie on late-night television when I was a kid that helped in developing a future…
The Blade Runner Sequel: “a benefit or a hazard”?
Have to preface this entry by saying that I am a Blade Runner fan(atic). Saw the original on home video in the ’80s, and like many others, it grew on me, slowly but surely. Much later on, I read the Philip K. Dick source novel as well (“Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”). I…