******FESARIUS-SIZED SPOILERS!****** As a kid watching Star Trek out of broadcast order in reruns during the 1970s and 1980s, I could always tell earlier episodes by their ‘growing pains’; uniforms without black collars, different paint/layout scheme for the ship’s interiors, Spock’s makeup tweaks, various terminology differences (“United Earth Space Probe Agency,” “Vulcanian” ), etc. First…
Month: November 2025
Retro-Musings: “The Thief of Bagdad” (1940) works its magic, 85 years later …
******DJINN-SIZED SPOILERS!****** Even the most ardent movie lovers like myself have ‘blind spots’; major classics and blockbuster movies we’re familiar with through cultural osmosis, yet we’ve never actually seen. Despite my mad love of cinema, I’ve had an embarrassing number of overlooked classics in my lifetime. For example, I’d never seen “It’s a Wonderful Life”…
Guillermo Del Toro’s “Frankenstein” (2025) is stitched together from both faithful and divergent pieces…
******207 YEAR-OLD SPOILERS!****** After impressing critics and audiences with his first independent feature film “Cronos” (1993), future Oscar winning writer-director Guillermo Del Toro quickly rose through the ranks, making his Hollywood debut with “Mimic” (1997) before going on to more mainstream projects such as “Hellboy” (2004). He would return to less commercial films, such as…
The first two episodes of AppleTV’s “Pluribus” give rise to a world of shiny, happy, eerie people…
*****SMILEY-FACED SPOILERS!***** The trailer for AppleTV’s new sci-fi series “Pluribus” (Latin for many) had me hooked for several reasons; creator/producer/director Vince Gilligan (“The X-Files,” “Breaking Bad,” “Better Call Saul”), lead actress Rhea Seehorn (“Better Call Saul”) and a not-unfamiliar sci-fi idea of a shared human consciousness. The plans to create a unique RNA molecule has…
The “Star Trek: Khan” audio-drama podcast is truly ‘Paradise Lost’…
******PLANET-SIZED SPOILERS!****** “Star Trek: Khan” was conceived as a live-action Paramount+ miniseries that would be written by writer/producer/director Nicholas Meyer (“Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan” “Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country”) which would chronicle the exile of Star Trek antagonist Khan Noonian Singh and his genetically-engineered ‘augment’ loyalists on the doomed planet of…
Making dreams tangible: Drew Struzan, 1947-2025…
Drew Struzan I meant to do this column earlier, but October kept me very busy, and I needed a little extra time and a less frazzled mindset to look back on the career of the late Drew Struzan; the pop artist whose work helped define movie posters for the last fifty years. His work has…