Before Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon and Luke Skywalker… I was born about a half-century too late to have been among the first generation to read Edgar Rice Burroughs’ “John Carter of Mars” books, but my own first inklings of them came via Carl Sagan’s landmark 1980 PBS TV series, “COSMOS.” The late pop scientist reminisced…
Month: June 2021
Forever the “Commander”; Joanne Linville (1928-2021)…
You know her face. Long a mainstay of 1950s-1980s television, actress Joanne Linville passed away yesterday at age 93. She was one of those faces you’d recognize if you grew up plastered to the cathode ray tube, as so many of my generation were back in the day. While appearing on many mainstream TV series…
“You must face Darth Vader again”: Returning to “Return of the Jedi”…
“Help me take this mask off.” A few years ago, I wrote a somewhat snarky, old guy-perspective of “Return of the Jedi,” and while I still stand by most of my criticisms of the movie (unoriginal story beats, a second Death Star, etc), I think what I needed now was to see the movie again…
DisneyPlus’ “Loki” takes a time-traveling leap into Marvel’s mischievous prankster…
Caveats and Chaos. A couple of caveats to this column. First, to my regular readers (I’m grateful for each of you) I want to apologize for the slower influx of fresh content lately. My little house in the ‘burbs has been plagued with a solid month of plumbing/electrical issues, and has only returned to something…
A look back at the most Disney film Disney never made: Steven Spielberg’s “Hook” is turning 30…
Critically Pan-ned. *****SPIELBERGIAN SPOILERS AHEAD!!***** In December of 1991, I remember going to see “Hook” about a week or so after it’d opened. I was not the greatest fan of J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan stories, though I was familiar enough with the 1953 Disney animated feature, which I saw as a kid. As a fan…
Is Star Trek’s transporter room a chamber of horrors…?
Trauma of the G-rated “Star Trek: The Motion Picture.” When I was a kid, some million and a half years ago, “Star Trek: The Motion Picture” (1979) made its big screen debut. The film took the low-budget spartan sci-fi TV series and upgraded it into an A-list Hollywood feature…even going so far as to hire…
The novels of Andy Weir: “The Martian,” “Artemis” and “Project Hail Mary”…
New Voice. As a lifelong fan of science fiction, I’m not embarrassed to admit that sometimes the genre can fall a bit short in a couple of areas; humor and actual science. Much of the early literary sci-fi I’ve read in my life came from greats like Ray Bradbury (my all-time favorite author), H.G. Wells,…