Natasha Eloi (Part 1)

Natasha Eloi is about as amazing as people come, she’s a self-taught videographer, a journalist, a sci-fi and movie geek, and just a delightfully fun soul whom Sue and I simply clicked with. We met for an evening of chattage at the Duke of Kent, and we sat there for almost three hours, and recorded for almost…

Remembering Tony Scott – Top Gun (1986)

I was a little stunned when I crawled out of bed Monday morning for what I’m hoping to be a spectacular week only to learn that Tony Scott, noted director and brother of Ridley, took his own life. I’m not going to talk about the man himself, I didn’t know him, but I did enjoy…

Metropolis (1927)

This is a film that I had seen snippets of through my entire life. In fact I remember, as a child, sitting in Mother’s Pizza, a now defunct pizza chain, at least in the incarnation that I grew up loving, the decor was all 20s and 30s and they would show clips from Laurel &…

Polaris 26 – July 6-8, 2012

  Great news!!!  The Mind Reels has been granted media accreditation for Polaris 26!  Polaris is Canada’s longest running media fan-run event, and is one that we have both partaken in almost regularly over the past several years.  Polaris has changed a lot in recent years, as well – it’s seen changes in everything from its…

The Black Hole (1979)

I remember having the V.I.N.C.E.N.T. and Maximilian pencil holders when I was a kid, as well as some of the action figures, the soundtrack album, as well as the storybook album, the comics and finally I had a giant puzzle from the CNE one year. And I remember watching this film in the theater, Perkins’…

Heavy Metal (1981)

I remember seeing the covers for these magazines when I was a kid, collecting my first Star Wars comics, and even then at age 8, I was suitably intrigued by the covers. They gave me funny feelings in my tummy with all the babes, and all the cool sci-fi weapons, swords, robots and aliens that…

Film Scores – A Whistler’s Tale

I’m a whistler, and a dreamer… and “Binary Sunset” is one of my favorite thoughtful, hopeful and slightly sad things to whistle, especially when I’m thinking about my future, and watching the horizon. Whistling. I do it all the time, and I carry a huge repertoire in my mind, and on my ipod. In the…

Quantum Leap

“Theorizing that one could time travel within his own lifetime, Dr. Sam Beckett stepped into the Quantum Leap accelerator and vanished… He woke to find himself trapped in the past, facing mirror images that were not his own and driven by an unknown force to change history for the better. His only guide on this journey…

Remembering When… Raiders of the Lost Ark

Star Wars and Indiana Jones were an inextricable part of my youth. As mentioned in my Star Wars post, prior to ’77 there was nothing that stood out amongst the pop culture landscape, there were fun and cool things, but nothing like the mountain that was the experience of Star Wars, and then, a number…

Remembering Ralph McQuarrie

Artist Ralph McQuarrie passed away this weekend. I was raised on his work. Well to clarify, I raised myself on it. I would seek it out. His imagery always fired my imagination, and now he’s gone. His gift to my imagination, however, lives on. I never knew the man, so I can’t speak to that,…