It’s time once again for TCM’s annual remembrance of film folk we’ve lost over the past year. I’ve taken to posting this every year, though there’s always the question of whether to wait until the new year or no (they generally release a first edition right around Yule and often tweak it early in January). In any case, there’s plenty of faces you’ll recognize. Like last year, here’s an annotated with links in case you…
I’m still not sure what movies I’ll be able to see in theaters in the last two weeks of the year, but as for selections next summer, DC is clearly bringing a Gunn to a superhero knife fight: Come on. You thought “oh yeah, this is Gunn” the moment you saw Supes whistle… because you knew Krypto was going to appear. So yeah, it looks promising enough to check out in theaters… something I can’t…
Looking at my film history posts, I evidently only remember to talk about the National Film Registry when I’m working on my biennial Favorite Films post. However, the Library of Congress designates 25 films every year deemed “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant.” Over 900 films are on the registry now, even if you go through the whole list, you’ll think of more that could be added (and which you can nominate). So it’s always nice…
I’ve been trying to read more, including audiobooks while I’m on the road, so naturally I’m looking for some science fiction, including space opera… all the better to inform my own operatic tales. Thankfully, Tim O’Brien has a list of 55 space operas from the past not-quite century done for Barnes & Noble, who admittedly has a vested interest in getting you hooked on series. I have read many, but far from all, of the…
Last weekend, in between calculated periods of doing nothing and Thanksgiving leftovers, I started work on my biennial Favorite Films sort. I’m a lifelong movie buff and have watched literally thousands of movies. Not all of them are good. Some of the good films are, nonetheless, not my favorite films. Behold the “Cine-Venn” diagram! The entire stack of films I sort through every few years numbers around 500 films or so. There’s usually something of a lag…
Ray Bradbury once said he wasn’t trying to predict the future with some of his tales of a dystopian or apocalyptic future, he wanted scare people. Basically, warning society “If you don’t watch out, this is what could happen.” Well, apparently we didn’t get the memo, per Yuval Noah Harari, author of the excellent Sapiens. In his latest book, Nexus, he traces ‘information networks’ from pre-history to today… and he’s not entirely rosy about humans…
A new short film, using CGI technology that would make Forrest Gump blush, is making the rounds amongst the various Trek groups I frequent. It’s called 765874 – Unification. It packs in more references to more iterations of Star Trek than you might expect, involves a lot of old Trek hands, and is very emotional for a lot of Trekkers. Take 11 minutes on the biggest screen you can find and see what you think.
I grew up reading scores of science fiction short stories from the Golden Age and “New Wave” of science fiction… and then went on to various fantasy and science fiction novels of the day, many of which were published by Del Rey Books, still active today as an imprint of the mammoth publisher, Penguin Random House. What I didn’t know was the role one Judy-Lynn del Rey played in the creation of Del Rey Books…
I’ve posted about celebrated author Kurt Vonnegut a couple times this year, most recently relating to Banned Books Week, so perhaps the Internet algorithms were primed to show me this but, per Charlie Hall for Polygon, he dabbled in game design before his writing career took off and created an abstract wargame called GHQ. The article itself delves a bit more into the game, including images of the original rules and notes. You can also…
Now’s the time of year where many of us muse about what we’d do when entering a darkened room, basement, or forest, especially if there’s creepy background music playing. But what to do about the very real world, very freaky possibility of being in a vehicle that’s sinking into a body of water. Whether it’s been caused by a man wearing the face of Captain Kirk or not, if you find yourself in this situation,…