******KEIJU-SIZED SPOILERS!!****** Good News and Bad News. The Good News. If you are, as I am, still skittish about returning to movie theaters during the current COVID-19 pandemic? You can still catch 2021’s reboot of “The Suicide Squad,” directed by James Gunn (“Guardians of the Galaxy”) on HBOMax, without an extra access code, now through…
Month: August 2021
All Our Yesterdays: My reviews of the “Star Trek” movies…
Now that I’ve reviewed all of the Star Trek movies for this column, the collector-nerd part of me wants them on one convenient, easy-to-find shelf for easier perusal. So this column will act as a one-stop ‘box set’ for my 13 Star Trek movie reviews, from “The Motion Picture” to “Beyond.” With Star Trek celebrating…
“The Immortal” (1969-1971) was a short-lived ‘Fugitive’ with magic blood…
******TYPE-O SPOILERS!!****** “Try Try Try to Understand…He’s a Magic Man.” Ben Richards, as played by Christopher George (1931-1982) is a race car test driver who learns that his blood–after donating some of it to a dying old industrialist named Jordan Braddock (Barry Sullivan)–has unique regenerative properties that will allow him to live virtually forever (barring…
DisneyPlus’ “What If…?” offers a fanfic-styled exploration of Marvel’s multiverse…
Catching Up With Fandom. The notion of taking favorite beloved (licensed) characters and playing around with them a bit isn’t exactly new–in fact, the internet has been doing it almost since its inception, with fan-written fanfic (‘fan fiction’, for the uninitiated). In pre-internet days, fanfic was often printed in mimeographed, self-published fanzines circulated at conventions,…
Retro-Musings: “The UFO Incident” (1975) is an impeccable account of an implausible tale…
The Interrupted Journey. When I was about eight or so, I remember watching a TV-movie that truly creeped me out; it was called “The UFO Incident,” based on a 1966 book called “The Interrupted Journey,” and it told the story of the alleged alien abduction of Betty (Estelle Parsons) and Barney Hill (James Earl Jones)….
Final report on Las Vegas’ “55 Year Mission”…
“But first, some scenes from Part 1…” “The 55 Year Mission” in Las Vegas is a Star Trek convention by any other name. Creation Entertainment, which has traditionally held the license to host “official” Star Trek conventions was forced to rebrand their world-famous Star Trek convention in Las Vegas this year, after losing the official…
“The 55 Year Mission” in Las Vegas is a Star Trek convention by any other name…
Invasion Of The Threll…? The current COVID pandemic cancelled last year’s annual Star Trek Convention at the Rio Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, but just in time for the franchise’s 55 year anniversary, the convention has returned. However, a few things have been changed. Creation Entertainment, which has run the convention for decades, apparently…
Jonathan W. Rinzler (1962-2021), a fine chronicler of great movies…
The Sacred Texts. As a lifelong fan of sci-fi movies, I’ve long collected books, magazines and, more recently, videos all about the making-of sci-fi and other movies. My first magazine I remember collecting was Forry Ackerman’s “Famous Monsters of Filmland,” and I would later graduate to Starlog, Cinemafantastique, Sci-Fi Universe, and others, including several British…
Criterion’s lovingly remastered “War of the Worlds” (1953)…
Preface. For those seeking a more in-depth analysis of this movie (as I normally do in this column), I’ve already done a retrospective of H.G. Wells’ “War of the Worlds” a few years back ( War and Remembrance: “The War of the Worlds”), so I won’t rehash Wells’ book, the various films, or the TV…