Inspired by the talented blogger from FireWatersite, who recently put together a great list of groovy Christmas toys he and others of our generation enjoyed as kids, I remembered my greatest Christmas gift of them all. These days, my wife and I are not all that into gift-giving for each other (to quote Elias Sandoval…
Month: December 2024
Retro-Musings: Disney’s “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” is still shipshape and seaworthy after 70 years…
*****AHOY! GIANT SQUID-SIZED SPOILERS!***** I’ve not read the classic 1870s Jules Verne novel “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” (“Vingt Mille Lieues sous les mers”) in decades, but I remember enough of it to know that the book survives reasonably well in its epic 1954 Disney incarnation, despite some obvious upfront ‘Disneyfictaion.’ The episodic adventures of…
Retro-Musings: “Santa Claus Conquers the Martians”; 60 years of a children’s Christmas anti-classic…
******STOCKINGS STUFFED WITH SPOILERS!****** We of ‘a certain age’ (Gen Xers, Boomers) often look back on certain favorite films from our childhood with nostalgia and forgiveness; dismissing their flaws, leaps of logic and production shortcomings in favor of the warm, fuzzy memories they evoke. Oh, and then there’s “Santa Claus Conquers the Martians” (1964)… I…
Breaking into “Blake’s 7” series 1 on Blu-Ray (finally!)…
******46-YEAR OLD SPOILERS!****** In the late 1970s and early 1980s, I remember reading about a British TV show called “Blake’s 7” in the pages of the late, great “Starlog” magazine (my geek bible in those days). Written by Terry Nation (1930-1997), the novelist/screenwriter who created the Daleks for “Doctor Who,” the space opera “Blake’s 7”…
Superman & Lois; “It Went by So Fast” ends the series with a few well-earned tears…
******SUPER-SPOILERS!****** Why can’t the cinematic DC universe be anywhere near as good as the stuff they show for free on TV (and which is made for much less money)? Neither “The Batman” (2022) nor the two films of Henry Cavill’s Superman (2013/2016) did much for me, while the CW network’s “Supergirl” (2015-2021) and “Superman &…
Disney+’s “Star Wars: Skeleton Crew” blasts off from suburbia and gets lost in space….
******STARSHIP-SIZED SPOILERS!****** The first two episodes of Disney+’s “Star Wars: Skeleton Crew” have debuted, and both were written by Christopher Ford and Jon Watts (“Spider-Man: Homecoming”). I knew going in that this Star Wars series was deliberately skewing towards a much younger demographic, since Disney seems hellbent on representing every age demographic separately these days…