Superheroes! Steampunk! High-stakes adventure! Cool characters fighting implacable enemies for the fate of the world while they’re battling their own demons! If you like any or all of those things in your reading, Archangel: Ascensionhas it all. I was very … Continue reading
(Picture from here.) I saw the film Sully last night (Starring Tom Hanks. Directed by Clint Eastwood.) and found it both compelling and irritating. The directing was quite good and Tom Hanks’ performance was quite good. The film is about Chesley … Continue reading
(Picture from here.) The Arrival opened last Friday (November 11, 2016) and the SF book club saw it together. It is a good film (mostly) and it is actual science fiction. There are no hidden references to deities, the Force … Continue reading
Happy spring equinox! Anyone up for a cheap trip to Greece? While putting the finishing touches on my novel The Ariadne Connection, I had a powerful yearning to revisit the Greek islands that inspired the story. (Anyone familiar with me … Continue reading
Glamour! When I look at the romantic comedy films of the 30s, it strikes me how many of the American-made films are set in a kind of fantasy Europe. Ernst Lubitsch’s Trouble in Paradise was perhaps the most quintessential, but … Continue reading
“Chance is the fool’s name for fate.” (the secret code phrase from the film) As a kid, I loved staying up to watch old movies on TV, and some of my favorites were the musicals with such performers as Fred … Continue reading
I’ve seen a bunch of the Big! Summer! Movies! this year, and there seems to me to be a disturbing trend: huge special effects, train crashes, shoot outs, aliens, superheroics…and dead bodies. Last year The Avengers showed us a whole … Continue reading
A review of the film “The Hobbit: Part One. Yes, part one — there’s Gold in Them Thar Hills, pilgrim!”
Continue readingWhen the mini-series Cranford was first shown on TV, I avoided it. I couldn’t believe that anyone could get a screenplay out of that quiet not-really-a-novel without distorting it horribly. After all, it was … Continue reading
What if Avatar is the most original movie that came out recently, and will come out this year? I could be right, and that could be the most epic fail of all. Even if the critics are this retarded, eventually audiences are going to say, “Wait a minute – didn’t I see that before, and wasn’t it better – the first time?”
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