San Diego Comic Con: The Special Edition. After two years and four months, San Diego Comic Con has finally returned as an in-person event–but not quite at full blast. In the thick of the ongoing COVID pandemic, San Diego Comic Con was turned into an online-only event, which meant that panels were held via Zoom…
Month: November 2021
Star Trek: Discovery, S4.2; “Anomaly” is all about the characters…
*******STARSHIP-SIZED SPOILERS AHEAD!!******** Better Late Than Never… In the wake of last week’s announcement that Netflix would no longer be distributing Star Trek: Discovery in foreign markets (an announcement unfortunately timed right after the Destination London Star Trek convention, and only two days before Season 4’s debut in North America), Paramount+ and PlutoTV have reached…
James Cameron’s “The Abyss: Special Edition” (1989) deserves reappraisal …and a Blu-ray release.
******SUBMERGED SPOILERS AHEAD!!****** Lost in the Abyss. 1989 was unquestionably the Summer of “Batman”. Everywhere you looked there was Batman-product; Batman cereal, a resurgence of comic book sales, toys, collectibles, and the late (great) Prince’s “Batdance” dominated the air waves. There were other big movies that summer; “Ghostbusters 2,” “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade,”…
Star Trek: Discovery’s 4th season opens with a “Kobayashi Maru” scenario…
RE: PARAMOUNT+/NETFLIX DECISION I usually post spoiler warnings in most of these columns, but I’m doing so with a vengeance for this new season of Star Trek: Discovery reviews in light of a recent real-life controversy. Star Trek: Discovery, which is seen in the United States on Paramount+, CTV Sci-Fi channel in Canada, and on…
“Free Guy” (2021) borrows a lot of its code, but it’s nicely spent…
****** SPOILERS AHEAD !****** Ready Player, Too? For full disclosure; anyone who’s read this column long enough might realize that I am not a gamer. My experience with video games goes as far as playing Pac Man, Asteroids, and Beserker at a local arcade in my high school years, and a several month honeymoon with…
From “The Boy With Green Hair” to “Battlestar Galactica”: Dean Stockwell, 1936-2021…
From Child Star to Battlestar. Despite attending many sci-fi/fantasy conventions over the years, I, sadly, never had the chance to meet the late Dean Stockwell, though I’ve been a fan of his work for decades. The former childhood star, who passed away on November 7th from natural causes, had a career dating back to when…
“Jodorowsky’s Dune” (2013) examines the landmark sci-fi film that never was…
The Almost Version of Dune. Frank Herbert’s seminal 1965 novel “Dune” gave rise to many things that influence sci-fi fantasy cinema this day; its terminology (“spice mines”) and trappings have been seen in popular franchises like “Star Wars” and later space operas. Herbert’s book is a dense, complex allegory of western colonialism, with various powerful…
Star Trek: Prodigy S1.3; “Starstruck” finds its space legs…
*****STARSHIP-SIZED SPOILERS!!***** Okay, I swore I wasn’t going to review every single episode of Paramount+’s new series “Star Trek: Prodigy,” but after last week’s double-length pilot (which had an uncanny “Star Wars Rebels” vibe) I was curious to see how/where the series would go after our heroes escaped from the prison mine and took their…
Doctor Who: “The Halloween Apocalypse” kicks off the “Flux” event…
*****TARDIS-SIZED SPOILERS!****** Something Old, Someone New. Fresh off the news that former producer/writer/showrunner Russell T. Davies is returning to the “Doctor Who” franchise, current producer/writer/showrunner Chris Chibnall returns for a six-episode event called “The Flux,” which began on Halloween night with Episode 1, titled (appropriately enough) “The Halloween Apocalypse.” This was our first look at…