****14,000 YEARS OF SPOILERS!!**** About ten years ago, I stumbled across a movie I’d heard about, but had (for some reason) resisted watching, until one day curiosity got the better of me and I bought the DVD of “The Man From Earth” (2007). This film was the last screenplay by sci-fi legend Jerome Bixby (“Twilight…
Month: January 2021
Retro-Musings: “The 7 Faces of Dr. Lao” (1964) is circus enough for everyone…
*****CIRCUS OF SPOILERS!!***** Based on “The Circus of Dr. Lao” (1935) by Charles G. Finney, “The 7 Faces of Dr. Lao” (1964) is a children’s fantasy directed by the prolific fantasy producer/director George Pal (“The War of the Worlds“, “The Time Machine” ). The film’s screenplay was adapted by Charles Beaumont, who wrote many episodes…
Trouble in paradise: “Star Trek: Insurrection” (1998)…
*****STARSHIP-SIZED SPOILERS!!****** “It was the best of times…” December of 1998 was not only a great time to be a Star Trek fan (two Star Trek series on the air, several movies, tons of popular toys/collectibles, etc), it was also a great time for me personally, as well. I was engaged to “she who is…
Marvel/DisneyPlus’ “WandaVision” is a bizarre homage to classic sitcoms…
*****REALITY-WARPING SPOILERS AHEAD!!***** Nick At Nite meets David Lynch. When we last saw them at the end of 2019’s “Avengers: Endgame” the living artificial intelligence mandroid “Vision” (Paul Bettany) and Sokovian ‘Scarlet Witch’ Wanda Maximoff were very much in love, but Vision had to sacrifice the “Infinity Stone” embedded in his head to help save…
“The Rocketeer”: Disney’s underrated retro-rocketing adventure, 30 years later…
*****SOARING SPOILERS AHEAD!!***** In the summer of 1991, I went to the famed El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood; a gloriously gilded movie palace hailing from a different era (originally built in 1926), beautifully restored and refurbished. This old glamour of the venue was a perfect way to see “The Rocketeer”; a retro-styled, period piece-adventure set…
Star Trek: Discovery, S3.13: “That Hope Is You, Part 2” ends season three with optimism and change…
****STARBASE-SIZED SPOILERS AHEAD!!**** Forgive the lateness of this column, but unfortunately the horrific events of yesterday’s attempted armed coup at the heart of the United States’ government was very upsetting. It took me a bit longer to lose myself again in a fantasy universe after witnessing such an unsettling reality unfold. However, Star Trek is…
Netflix’s “The Midnight Sky” (2020) offers bleak escapism but with seeds of hope…
*****JOVIAN MOON-SIZED SPOILERS AHEAD!!***** Netflix’s new sci-fi drama “The Midnight Sky” is a bleak tale of a sickly researcher struggling to warn a returning manned spacecraft away from returning to a dying Earth. While that may not sound like a great night of home-viewing during the deadly COVID-19 pandemic, the film makes for accessible message-heavy…
Doctor Who: “Revolution of the Daleks” reunites the TARDIS fam…
****BIGGER SPOILERS ON THE INSIDE!!**** Picking up after the event’s of last year’s canon-reshaping story “The Timeless Children”, “Revolution of the Daleks” was written by current producer/showrunner Chris Chibnall and directed by Wayne Yip. In solving one minor headscratcher from the old series (the pre-canonical incarnations of the Doctor, briefly glimpsed in 1976’s “The Brain…