Star Trek: Ice Journey (1974)

The Enterprise traveled into more adventure in November, 1974 with issue 27 of Gold Key’s Star Trek comic. Ice Journey was written by John Warner and featured art by Alberto Giolitti, and featured another cover painting by George Wilson. The comic’s opening splash page shows Kirk and Spock in strange environmental suits on an ice…

Stargate: Atlantis (2006) – Inferno, and Allies

The penultimate episode of season two finds Sheppard (Joe Flanigan) and his team discovering that some new possible allies not only have ancient tech, they may have an ancient warship. Inferno was written by Carl Binder and debuted on 3 March, 2006. While McKay (David Hewlett) helps Norina (Brandy Ledford) with the planetary defense shield,…

Ancillary Justice (2013) – Ann Leckie

Ann Leckie delivers an interesting space opera read that uses the feminine pronoun she throughout, as a part of its language, not as a descriptor of the people themselves, who are predominantly genderless. It’s a great touch, and really plays nicely with the casting of characters in the mind’s eye. We are introduced to Breq,…

Star Trek: The Next Generation – Survivors (1989) – Jean Lorrah

The fourth novel in The Next Generation series from Pocket Books is set between the events Arsenal of Freedom and Skin of Evil and gives Tasha Yar more story time than she received in her only season on the show. It also fills out some of her backstory, and while nothing contradicts the established canon,…

TIFF ’23: The Dead Don’t Hurt

Viggo Mortensen wrote and directed this Western drama that is filled with recognizable Western tropes but Moternsen neither completely rejects them nor subverts them, he simply uses them to fill out his story about an immigrant couple that finds themselves living and loving on the edge of a corrupt Nevada town in the 1860s. The…

Dead Birds (2004) – Alex Turner

Henry Thomas, Patrick Fugit, Michael Shannon, and Mark Boone Junior all team up for a different kind of horror film. The group play a collection of Confederate soldiers who have just pulled off a bank robbery and are holing up at an abandoned plantation to wait things out. Unfortunately, they aren’t exactly alone on the…

Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017) – Jon Watts

Tom Holland’s appearance as Spider-Man in the MCU entry Captain America: Civil War introduced the new webhead to millions of immediate fans. Combining a youthful exuberance, and actual nerd cred, Holland’s Peter Parker rings true to the comics, even as this incarnation introduces unique spins on familiar characters like Aunt May played this time around…

Lincoln (2012) – Steven Spielberg

Daniel Day-Lewis takes the titular role in Spielberg’s masterful film about the iconic president and his struggle to pass the 13th Amendment in support of his Emancipation Proclamation, even as the Civil War continues to tear the country apart. Filled with themes and ideas that are still sad, and frighteningly relevant, this looks at a…