Gale Anne Hurd serves as the producer on my next stop in the Sci-Fi Chronicles, 1999’s Virus. Once again, the film is packed with a fairly solid cast, Jamie Lee Curtis, Donald Sutherland, William Baldwin, Joanna Pacula, and Marshall Bell, and once again, most of it is poorly executed. Based on the Dark Horse Comic…
Doctor Who (Christopher Eccleston) – The Empty Child and The Doctor Dances
The Empty Child written by Steven Moffat introduces two things to the new series of Doctor Who that helped define it. Airing on 21 May, 2005, it made children in gas masks scary, especially if they ask “Are you my mummy?” and brought in a new character that made a huge impact, Captain Jack Harkness…
Boxcar Bertha (1972) – Martin Scorsese
A recommendation from the Great Movies – 100 Years of Film book for my screening of Bonnie and Clyde is this 1972 Scorsese picture that he made while he was learning at Roger Corman’s studio. A fictionalised account of the Bertha Thompson (Barbara Hershey) the film follows the transient and who became a labour organiser…
Quantum Leap (1992) – A Leap for Lisa and Lee Harvey Oswald
Season 4 comes to a conclusion this week as Sam (Scott Bakula) changes history for the worse, causing him to lose Al (Dean Stockwell)! A Leap for Lisa was written by Donald P. Bellisario and aired on 20 May, 1992. It’s 25 June, 1957 and Sam has leaped into a young naval ensign accused of…
Star Trek: The Original Series (1968) – The Immunity Syndrome and A Private Little War
Captain’s log: stardate 4307.1 Like Balance of Terror, this episode encouraged a lot of daydreams as I navigated my school desk turned navigation console through the unexplored mass of the galaxy. The Immunity Syndrome is mostly confined to the bridge of the Enterprise and ts shuttlecraft as Kirk (William Shatner), Spock (Leonard Nimoy), McCoy (DeForest…
The Patchwork Girl of Oz (1913) – L. Frank Baum
It’s been over a year since I travelled to the land of Oz. So I decided to buckle up for a quick jaunt back to that fairyland that shaped the lives of so many children at the beginning of the 20th century. Baum guides us back to his world as we go on another quest…
The Movie Book (2016) – Danny Leigh, Louis Baxter, John Farndon, Kieran Grant and Damon Wise
I always love to take a look at movie books and see what films made the lists contained within. Then I’ll spend an inordinate amount of time ruminating why others were left out. They also tend to add a pile of movies to my viewing queue, and as I’m coming up on the end of…
The Twilight Zone (1960) – The Chaser, A Passage for Trumpet, and Mr. Bevis
It’s time to venture deeper into Paramount Picture’s The Twilight Zone this week as I take on another trio of episodes from The Complete Series on Blu-Ray. The first episode up this week is The Chaser. It was written by Robert Presnell Jr. and was based on the short story by John Collier. It first…
Fences (2016) – Denzel Washington
Paramount Pictures proudly ushers in the release of Denzel Washington’s Fences today on blu-ray. The Academy Award winner directs, working from August Wilson’s adaptation of his own Pulitzer Prize winning play. Set in 1950s Pittsburgh, Washington pulls double duty, serving not only as director, but in the lead role of Troy Maxson a former ball…
The Relic (1997) – Peter Hyams
This one should have been a sure fire winner, a bestselling book, a family strong cast including Penelope Ann Miller and Tom Sizemore and a fun creature feature story, featuring work by Stan Winston and his team – so what went wrong? The Relic is my next stop in the Sci-Fi Chronicles book, as I…
The Mind Reels 