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,…
Month: October 2021
“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…
“Halloween Kills” (2021) offers brutal tricks, but few treats…
******PUMPKIN SPICE SPOILERS!!****** After more than a year’s delay due to the COVID-19 pandemic, “Halloween Kills” is finally getting a release. Like the Godzilla franchise, Halloween’s continuity has been rebooted multiple times since the classic 1978 original. Halloweens 2, 4, 5 and 6 were (more or less) a straight line series of diminishing quality that…
William Shatner, 90, takes a brief, real-life Star Trek…
These are the voyages of New Shepard… This past week, something amazing happened; something that I have complex feelings about, and that I feel obligated to mention here. William Shatner, Star Trek’s “Captain Kirk” himself, at 90 years old, took a suborbital hop roughly 100 kilometers (62 miles) above the Earth and back in an…
More Musings for Halloween: “Blacula” (1972) and “Scream Blacula Scream” (1973)…
Blaxploitation Horror. In the 1970s, some independent movie studios (the kind that cranked out B-movies for drive-ins) finally got the potentially lucrative message that representation matters. A new wave of low-budget action movies (“Shaft,” “Coffy,” “Superfly,” “Hell Up in Harlem”) were made which cast their stories with people of color in most of the major…
Musings for Halloween: “The Changeling” (1980)…
*****SPOOKY SPOILERS AHEAD!***** Many years ago, I remember seeing a trailer for a then-new horror movie coming out which featured George C. Scott (“Patton” “A Christmas Carol”) living in an apparently haunted house. The one thing that made me nearly wet my seat was the sight of an antique wheelchair, shrouded in cobwebs and sans…
“Lego Star Wars Terrifying Tales” is a horror anthology spoof from a galaxy far, far away…
*****STAR DESTROYER-SIZED SPOILERS!!***** Like Michael Corleone in “The Godfather III,” just when I thought I was done with new Star Wars content for awhile, DisneyPlus “pulls me back in!” However, Disney’s latest offering falls somewhat in line with a subject near and dear to my heart–Halloween. Star Wars isn’t exactly the sort of franchise you’d…