Since this year started, I’ve become accustomed with waking up to bad news; whether it’s political (a daily occurrence here in the US), or some other terrible yet inevitable thing. This morning was no exception. The very first thing I learned when I grabbed my phone and headed to the kitchen to make breakfast was…
Author: A Middle Aged Geek
I am a happily married, progressive-minded, middle-aged science fiction geek. My interests included photography, reading, movies, Halloween, and all kinds of nerdy-niche things. After months of prodding from my wife (and my friends), I decided to 'throw down' with a blog of all of my nerdiest of nerdly thoughts and musings... here's hoping you enjoy!
A scaled-down WonderCon 2025 in Anaheim still delivers the goods…
A Different Emphasis for 2025 Unlike the WonderCons of recent years, this year’s annual pop culture fest in Anaheim, California (right across the street from Disneyland) had surprisingly fewer A-list actors and big studio representation. Marvel, Disney, Warner Bros and Paramount had nothing earth-shattering to unveil at this year’s con. With the huge, 7,500-seat Arena…
Star Wars comes to Riverside, California with “The Inland Empire Strikes Back”…
“The Inland Empire Strikes Back!” Saturday, March 22nd, 2025, Riverside, California. Riverside, California is where I first saw “Star Wars” (years before it was subtitled “A New Hope”) at a long-defunct mall theater back in August of 1977, at age 10, and it changed my life (not to mention the very art of cinema) forever….
Retro-Musings: “Duel” (1971) was Steven Spielberg’s road-rage fueled precursor to “JAWS”…
******TANKER-FUELED SPOILERS!****** When I was a little kid growing up in the 1970s, most made-for-TV movies (with a few notable exceptions) were usually talky police procedurals, murder mysteries, courtroom dramas or thrillers. 1970s television wasn’t the typical venue for balls-to-the-wall, high-octane action flicks. However, the medium of television is where future cinematic legend Steven Spielberg…
Three Irwin Allen sci-fi TV shows from the 1960s to be rebooted into a shared universe…
******SOME SPOILERS****** The late writer/producer/director Irwin Allen (1916-1991) was the engine behind a slew of wildly imaginative, pulp-adventure sci-fi shows from the 1960s, as well as the director/producer of several iconic 1970s ‘disaster’ movies (in terms of genre, not box office success), including “The Poseidon Adventure” (1972), “The Towering Inferno” (1974) and “The Swarm” (1978)….
Musings on “Nosferatu” (1922/1979/2024); three versions of a “Dracula” variant…
******BLOOD-SUCKING SPOILERS!****** In 1974, at the tender age of around seven or eight, I was a real monster nerd. I remember having the Aurora model kits of the classic Universal Horror monsters, such as Frankenstein’s Monster, the Creature from the Black Lagoon (my favorite monster design) and the Wolf-Man (whom I spent much time in…
The Wrap of Khan: The long-rumored “Star Trek: Khan” audio drama-podcast finishes production…
In addition to the recent news of William Shatner’s possible return to the role of Kirk (Screenrant.com), which I can’t say I’m terribly excited about, there was other Star Trek news this past week that genuinely piqued my interest and anticipation. CBS has just announced that production has wrapped on the long-rumored audio drama-podcast called…
The ‘sci-fi connection’ of the incomparable Gene Hackman (1930-2025)…
Waking up to bad news is like a cold, angry slap in the face, as movie fans like myself were reminded this morning, February 27th, with the loss of two-time Oscar winner and one-of-a-kind actor Gene Hackman, who passed away at age 95; along with his wife Betsy Arakawa, 63, and even his dog in…
Retro-Musings: 1975’s “The Dead Don’t Die” is an obscure, horror-noir TV-movie from the author of “Psycho”…
******UNDEAD SPOILERS!****** In January of 1975, an entertaining little thriller called “The Dead Don’t Die” aired on the ABC network, which was written by Robert Bloch (author of the 1959 novel “Psycho,” from which Hitchcock’s 1960 film was based) and directed by Curtis Harrington (“Whoever Slew Auntie Roo?”). Not to be confused with a more…
Trekking down memory lane with the “Star Trek” Fotonovels & Photostories…
In the dark ages, before streaming… This might come as a tremendous shock to younger readers, but once upon a time, when we Gen Xers were kids (sometime after the Yucatan impact killed the other dinosaurs), we weren’t able to simply stream nearly any movie or TV show we wanted on our phones, tablets or…
20 years later, “Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith” (2005) remains a deeply flawed, yet uncannily prescient movie…
******STARSHIP-SIZED SPOILERS!****** I want to begin by saying this will not be a conventional review (the kind normally found on this site), but rather a look at how “Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith” impacted me after a recent anniversary rewatch. I first saw the film on opening weekend in 2005 on an…
Star Trek TOS: “The Savage Curtain”; Abraham Lincoln beams up for a slightly goofy, yet memorable episode…
******STARSHIP-SIZED SPOILERS!****** Here in the United States at the time of this writing, I’m not exactly in the ‘President’s Day’ spirit this month. However, this site is about sci-fi/fantasy/horror and nostalgia, not modern politics. Way back in March of 1969, Star Trek aired “The Savage Curtain,” an episode cowritten by no less than creator/ex-showrunner Gene…