I remember the first time I watched Close Encounters of the Third Kind. It was 1984, it was my 13th birthday, I had read the fotonovel from the school library, was fascinated by the subject matter (I still am), and though I had seen the rubber toys in grocery stores when the film came out,…
Tag: crew
Shadow in the Cloud (2020) – Roseanne Liang
Shadow in the Cloud starring Chloe Grace Moretz is a wonderfully over-the-top nod to female pilots in World War II as well as nods to The Twilight Zone (specifically ‘Nightmare at 20,000 Feet’), John Carpenter (the film’s score feels like Carpenter through and through) and allows Moretz to get her Ripley on. Boarding a B-17…
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds – The High Country (2023) – John Jackson Miller
Simon & Schuster Canada launch their Star Trek: Strange New Worlds book series this week with The High Country by John Jackson Miller. I feel like Miller was inspired by the early-release poster which featured someone mounted on a horse, giving it a western feel, even set against a strange new two-mooned world with alien…
Rendezvous with Rama (1973) – Arthur C. Clarke
I remember the first time I read this novel. My friend Dennis recommended it to me and conveniently enough, he had the entire series at hand, and I blazed through them. That was almost two decades ago, and I honestly don’t recall all the details of the story, but I know I loved the wonder…
Poltergeist II: The Other Side (1986) – Brian Gibson
A number of cast and crew (including composer Jerry Goldsmith and visual effects artist Richard Edlund) return for Poltergeist II: The Other Side and while Julian Beck seems truly terrifying as Kane, the film doesn’t have the Spielberg or Hooper magic that made the first film such a hit. The Freeling family, Diane (JoBeth Williams),…
Star Trek: Picard – Rogue Elements (2021) – John Jackson Miller
The year is 2391, four years after the Romulan star was destroyed, and Simon & Schuster’s next entry in the Star Trek: Picard, is an enjoyable entry that mixes a lot of humor with a very noir detective story that ties back to one of the biggest events of the 23rd century. The longest of…
TAD 2021: Alien On Stage dir. Lucy Harvey & Danielle Kummer
The right idea, at the right time, can be magic. It happened in 1979 when Ridley Scott delivered the first true science fiction horror film. It also happened again in 2013, in Dorset, when a group of amatuer actors, and professional bus drivers decided to bring the film to the stage instead of their usual…
Star Trek: The Ashes of Eden (1995) – William Shatner, with Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens
This week, I take my first step into what became known as the Shatner-verse, a series of Star Trek novels written by Captain Kirk himself, with the aid of Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens. Set some months after the events of The Undiscovered Country but before the opening of Generations, Kirk isn’t doing to well with…
Star Wars: Rebels (2014/2015) – Path of the Jedi, Idiot’s Array, and Vision of Hope
Path of the Jedi first aired on 20 December 2014, and was written by Charles Murray. Following last week’s episode that saw young Ezra (Taylor Gray) dip a little into the Dark Side, Kanan (Freddie Prinze Jr.) takes his young apprentice on a search for a Jedi temple where they can perform a test to…
Heat (1995) – Michael Mann
I continue my time with Ten Bad Dates With De Niro, as I explore a list of Ten Scenes Where Shouty Al Shows Up, and yes, Pacino does yell a lot in this movie, but it is also a masterful epic that, for the first time, saw Al Pacino and Robert De Niro sharing scenes…
The Mind Reels 