It’s summer vacation, time for camps, bike rides, beaches, family trips, seemingly endless days spread out before the young to enjoy, to forget the long reach of scholastic achievement, teachers, and books. So how can you make learning fun, and ensure that the entire family is entertained? Combine education with entertainment, with movies, and pop…
Tag: science fiction
Space: 1999 (1975) – Breakaway, and Force of Life
After Star Trek, but before Star Wars, Gerry Anderson, who was responsible for such series as UFO, Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet and Fireball XL5 took viewers around the world on an exploration of space, all on our planet’s own moon – which was jolted out of orbit by a nuclear explosion! Playing a little more cerebral…
The Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger (1982) – Stephen King
Stephen King’s fantastic epic adventure gets underway with this stellar, yet surprising short entry into what will be a massive tome, The Gunslinger. Starting with the iconic line. “the man in black fled across the desert and the gunslinger followed” one can’t help but be swept up in the epic western style fantasy. The Man…
Annihilation (2018): Blu-Ray Review
Releasing from Paramount Pictures to blu-ray and DVD today is Annihilation a slow burn of a science fiction film from director Alex Garland. Based, subjectively, on the trilogy of novels by Jeff VanderMeer, it’s a gorgeous looking film A strange, possibly extra-terrestrial incursion in a swamp in Florida has claimed an untold number of teams…
Alien Vault: The Definitive Story Behind the Film (2011) – Ian Nathan
I remember the summer that Alien opened, 1979, two years after Star Wars rocked the world. The Force stayed with me all through my childhood, and through to this very day. But Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, Star Trek, and a little magazine called Starlog, got me very interested in genre film and television. I wasn’t…
Persepolis Rising (2017) – James S.A. Corey
The seventh volume in the brilliant, and highly enjoyable science fiction series, The Expanse, finally finds its way to the Book Shelf this week, and it was so worth the wait. I love this series so much, and this book, Persepolis Rising does two things that haven’t really happened in the series before: there’s a…
Doctor Who (Matt Smith) – The Day of the Doctor, and The Time of The Doctor
The Day of the Doctor, the big 50th Anniversary episode of the iconic science fiction series was written by Steven Moffat and aired fifty years to the day after the premiere episode of The Unearthly Child, 23 November, 2013. The Doctor (Smith) and Clara (Jenna Coleman) are summoned by UNIT and their commander, Kate Stewart…
War of the Worlds: The Complete Series
Back in the late 1980s, I was first discovering classic science fiction film and was completely taken in by George Pal’s original War of the Worlds film from 1953. I was in my late teens, and as soon as I heard that there was a new series coming along picking up decades after the original…
The Magnificent Seven (1960) – John Sturges
That music, that cast… It’s no wonder that Sturges’ Americanisation of Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai is one of my all time favourite westerns, and the first recommendation from the Great Movies – 100 Years of Film book following my screening of The Wild Bunch. Elmer Bernstein’s rousing and memorable score supports Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, Eli…
Authority (2014) – Jeff VanderMeer
The second book in the Southern Reach Trilogy finds its way to the Book Shelf this week as I dive further into the strange realm of Area X first introduced in the book Annihilation, which also serves as the title of the upcoming film adaptation. This sequel, released within months of the first book takes…
The Mind Reels 