******DEATH STAR-SIZED SPOILERS!****** As a “Star Wars” fan for the past 49 years or so, I’ve read innumerable accounts of the making of this movie–which drew me in like a tractor beam at age ten, back in that summer of 1977. To that end, there are several books I consider must-reads about the life and…
Month: April 2026
Retro-Musings: “Earth vs. the Flying Saucers” blew audiences away 70 years ago…
******SAUCER-SHAPED SPOILERS!****** Inspired by a report of “flying saucers” as described by pilot Kenneth Nelson in June 1947, and followed by the infamous Roswell incident in New Mexico that same year, UFOs (UAPs now) were all the rage in mid-century America. That trend was amplified in the 1950s with prominent sci-fi films such as producer…
Retro-Musings: Robert Altman’s “Countdown” (1967) puts James Caan and Robert Duvall in a race to the moon…
******SPACE RACE SPOILERS!****** I’m still feeling a bit of moon fever after the success of the recent Artemis 2 flight, so this column will examine a relatively obscure moonshot movie from the late 1960s called “Countdown.” Directed by the late iconic filmmaker Robert Altman (“M*A*S*H,” “Nashville,” “The Player”) and produced by actor Willam Conrad (“Ironside”),…
The Artemis 2 flight is the moonshot we really needed right now…
The world is a dumpster fire at the moment. Fuel prices are continually rising due to increasing global instability. Climate change is clearly and undeniably manifesting, as a sweeping far-right movement in key countries is stripping civil liberties from its citizens. Meanwhile, an unstable US president has alienated key allies as he engages Iran in…
The trans-themed sci-fi “Robo Waitress Assassins” debuts as a live script reading…
******CYBERNETIC SPOILERS!****** Recently, at WonderCon 2026 I saw a panel for a trans-themed sci-fi short film called “Long Away,” which sees a young trans woman named Victoria (Griffin Kelly) from the year 2050 using a janky, rented time-travel wristwatch to return to the year 2025 in order to (briefly) meet the comic books-loving dad (Justin…
50 years ago, “The Man Who Fell to Earth” (1976) landed on our planet…
******COSMIC SPOILERS!****** A couple of weeks ago, I was shopping a nearby Barnes & Noble when I came across a reissue paperback of Walter Tevis‘ 1963 sci-fi novel (and partial autobiography) “The Man Who Fell to Earth.” I’d seen British filmmaker Nicholas Roeg’s 1976 film of it several times (most recently for this retrospective), but…