This week I dove into Matt Ruff’s brilliantly entertaining Lovecraft Country, which takes all the things you love about a good Lovecraft story; otherworldly horror, science fiction mixed with horror, and some other familiar horror tropes, the creepy doll, the haunted house, and deliver it without Lovecraft’s far too prominent racism. As much as I…
Author: TD Rideout
Star Trek: Enterprise (2003) – The Shipment, and Twilight
Captain’s log: date unknown Chris Black and Brent V. Friedman pen this episode of the Xindi arc that first debuted on 29 October, 2003. Archer (Scott Bakula) discovers a mining operation that seems to be compiling resources and components for the Xindi weapon that is being prepared for Earth. He, Reed (Dominc Keating) and Hayes…
Ocean’s Eleven (2001) – Steven Soderbergh
George Clooney, Brad Pitt and Matt Damon headline in the next film that I watched as I work my way through Ten Bad Dates With De Niro. The list this title comes from is Remakes That Are Better Than The Original. And on this count, I agree. As much as I love the Rat Pack’s…
Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus (2009) – Jack Perez
How bad? So bad. The next title in DK Canada’s highly enjoyable Monsters in the Movies is so horribly bad it doesn’t even come close to the so bad it’s good concept. This is just a horrible horrible horrible example of shoddy filmmaking, terrible computer graphics, and not even wooden acting, closer to soggy cardboard…
Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2014) – The Unknown, Conspiracy, and Fugitive
“The truth about yourself is the hardest to accept.” A brand new story arc opens the sixth season of The Clone Wars. With an original airdate of 7 March, 2014, the season opened with The Unknown, written by Katie Lucas. When a clone trooper, Tup (Dee Bradley Baker) inadvertently kills a jedi master while suffering…
A View To A Kill (1985) – John Glen
Since there was a James Bond novel on the book shelf this week, it means I get to revisit a Bond cinematic adventure that I haven’t previously covered for the blog, and that brings me to 1985’s A View To A Kill. This is a bit of a mixed bag for me, and will always…
Star Trek: Enterprise (2003) – Impulse, and Exile
Captain’s log: date unknown Johnathan Fernandez pen the teleplay for this episode from a story he developed with Terry Matalas. It first debuted on 8 October, 2003. The Enterprise discovers another anomaly in the Delphic Expanse, when they respond to a distress call from a lost Vulcan ship. When they arrive they find the crew…
Chuck (2007) – Versus the Alma Mater, and Versus the Truth
Chuck (Zachary Levi) has some issues with his past this week when Anne Cofell Saunders pens Chuck Versus the Alma Mater. It first debuted on 5 November, 2007. When one of his former professors Fleming (Scott Alan Smith) – a bit of a nod to James Bond’s creator – from Stanford is kidnapped, Chuck must…
Star Trek: A Flag Full of Stars (1991) – Brad Ferguson
The Human Adventure continues as I dive into the next Star Trek novel released by Pocket Books. This one falls into the sub collection known as The Lost Years, filling in the time between The Original Series and The Motion Picture. The first book was simply known as The Lost Years, written by J.M Dillard,…
From Russia With Love (1957) – Ian Fleming
This week I dove into Ian Fleming’s fifth James Bond novel, and the one that was most closely adapted for the big screen, though SPECTRE is slipped into the film version, whereas in this tale it is simply east versus west as SMERSH, the Russian spy organisation comes up with a plan to humiliate the…
