Why “The Martian” is the perfect film (and book) during safe-distancing and quarantine…

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought many parts of the world, including my own (sunny southern California), to a virtual standstill.  My wife and I are both home right now in self-quarantine, and many conventions we’d planned to attend, such as WonderCon and others that I’d planned to cover for this site, have been indefinitely postponed or…

ALIEN (1979) is still a ‘perfect organism’ after 40 years…

Spring of 1979. A new, post-Star Wars, R-rated science fiction movie was in theatrical release, and it is to my great regret that, as then-12 year old kid, I didn’t see it in those days. Don’t get me wrong; I really really wanted to see it. I eagerly read every article about Ridley Scott’s scary…

ALIEN Covenant: In space, no one can hear you rip off your old ideas…

Just saw ALIEN Covenant this afternoon, and from the title of this blog entry you can probably surmise that I was less-than-dazzled by the latest offering from Sir Ridley Scott.  Being a huge fan of Scott’s brilliant 1979 original “ALIEN,” his visually immersive “Blade Runner” (1982) and his spirited epic “The Martian” (2015) I was…

Where did the once-brilliant ALIEN franchise go so wrong?

With the imminent release of “ALIEN: Covenant” (coming in May) I wanted to discuss the ALIEN franchise in general.  But I became more intrigued by this question: at what point did this once brilliant franchise go so wrong? The first two films are unabashed classics.  As ALIENS director James Cameron has said, ‘the first movie…