*****HIGH-OCTANE SPOILERS!***** The “Mad Max” films have long been an uneven mix, with George Miller’s 1979 original being a late-but-imaginative entry into 1970s high-octane exploitation films (his nihilistic answer to “Two Lane Blacktop” or “Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry”). Beginning with 1981’s “Mad Max 2” aka “The Road Warrior” (as we knew it in the States),…
Month: May 2024
Astronaut-artist Ed Dwight Jr., 90, finally gets his space shot, 63 years later…
The Right Stuff Denied Last weekend, something truly amazing happened. An event which did get some press, but not enough. Granted, in an age when when devastating wars, an intense US election season cycle, and other ongoing issues are dominating the news, a 90-year old African-American man taking a suborbital tourist spaceflight seems like a nice…
The Inland Empire Strikes Back! Animated Star Wars was a big draw at Comic Con Revolution 2024…
Return of the Jedi SoCal’s Comic Con Revolution, a sci-fi/fantasy/comic books convention based in the Inland Empire city of Ontario, California, first sprang into existence back in 2017 as a tiny convention with scant attendance. But over the past seven years, I’ve watched this little convention grow in size and stature, while still offering a…
“Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” (2024) fills the prehensile shoes of its predecessors…
*****SIMIAN SPOILERS!***** I’ve been a fan of the “Planet of the Apes” franchise for as long as I can remember. In fact, the original “Planet of the Apes” movies (1968-1973) were my first real sci-fi movie addictions before “Star Wars” came along. And while I wasn’t terribly thrilled with Tim Burton’s 2001’s reboot (save for…
Roger Corman (1926-2024); the B-movie filmmaker and mentor who changed movies forever…
I woke up this morning to the sad news that longtime producer/director/mentor Roger Corman had passed away at age 98, and everything I’d planned to write later on today immediately went on the back burner. While it is very hard to sum up such an incredible life and career, here goes… Corman began his career…
Retro-Musings: Remembering the 1979 “Buck Rogers in the 25th Century” feature film…
******DRACONIA-SIZED SPOILERS!****** I did a column on 1979’s “Buck Rogers in the 25th Century” TV series (1979-1981) five years ago for the series’ 40th anniversary, which included a quick synopsis of the film. The TV version of the movie, retitled “Awakening” for the series, included several scenes shot specifically for the TV version that were…
The Force Awaits: The anticipation of seeing “Star Wars”…
*****POSSIBLE STAR DESTROYER-SIZE SPOILERS***** Anticipation Back in the late 1970s, I saw “Star Wars” multiple times theatrically. This was back in those dark, primitive days before we watched movies on our phones and tablets three months or less after their theatrical runs. In those days, we then-young, future-oldsters learned the often difficult art of… But,…
Between HAL 9000 and Skynet, there was “Colossus: The Forbin Project” (1970)…
******MAINFRAME-SIZED SPOILERS!****** Two years after the homicidal HAL 9000 made its debut in “2001: A Space Odyssey” and 14 years before Skynet is mentioned in “The Terminator,” there was a lesser known but equally dangerous supercomputer-based artificial intelligence known as “Colossus: The Forbin Project” (1970). Based on the book “Colossus” by Dennis Feltham Jones (1918-1981),…