“Britt looks like the top as he bends Kato over and as he barks orders at his employee, but as every physical confrontation in the film demonstrates, Kato is the stronger man in both mind and body.”
Activist & Political · Essays · SF & Fantasy
“Facing fear and not concoctions of fear serving the needs of our own resident guardians of wealth and power is a far different enterprise than joining the enthusiasts of self-empowerments’ call “to just wish it.”
Genres · SF & Fantasy · TV & Streaming
“The arrival of Kirk on the scene precipitates a kind of crisis in the equilibrium of this pair of older, controlling-male and young subordinate-woman. What happens is that the woman is somehow awakened by the arrival of the Enterprise crew — awakened sexually, but also in a much broader sense.”
These kids are aping anime, creating a dead look about their pupils, removing all glimmer of intelligence from their face as if trying to pass as a zombie in a post-Romero school environment, where any glimmer of humanity is met with devouring and slobber.
Consider the following plotline: A young man travels to another world where he infiltrates the indigenous people and adopts their ways. He is befriended by a beautiful young woman who[…]
Riding on the back of nine minutes of unseen footage, the special edition of James Cameron’s pioneering 3-D masterpiece Avatar returns to theaters today (Friday August 27). But billions of[…]
A MATRIX OF CONNECTIONS For a long time, I avoided watching The Thirteenth Floor (above) due to the name Roland Emmerich in the credits. Emmerich was responsible in one way[…]
SF & Fantasy · Thrillers & Action
“Most of the major speaking roles are indeed pwned by people without color, to put it indelicately. But the rest are thankfully brought to life by a rainbow coalition of talent.”
Counterculture · Essays · SF & Fantasy
“What entertains us may be shaping us.”
Interviews · SF & Fantasy · Writers & Critics
In which the author talks about being a lifelong SF movie freak and updating his seminal SF compendium Keep Watching the Skies! for the new millennium
Talk about wish fulfillment for kids – the Airbender mythos has it nailed. As a child dreams of gaining superpowers, he may wish for them all: i.e, the numerous abilities of[…]
Another masterpiece by the late Frank Frazetta (1928-2010), and a classic example of how Hollywood studio thinking — a misguided attempt to reach the widest demographic possible — destroyed the potential[…]
Directors · Reviews · SF & Fantasy
Can a film’s designer be its effective auteur? He can, if his name is William Cameron Menzies. Menzies is best known for directing and designing two classics of the science[…]
Animation · Essays · SF & Fantasy
“We are but older children, dear, Who fret to find our bedtime near.” — Lewis Carroll, “Child of the Pure Unclouded Brow”
“Superheroes live best in their own world — a preadolescent world. While an interesting experiment, it’s probably not a good idea to shoehorn too much ‘reality’ into the fantasy realm of the superhero. Ever since Stan Lee introduced anxiety into superheroes — no, earlier, since Harvey Kurtzman first trained a satiric eye on them in Mad — the question, ‘What would superheroes be like in the real world?’ has bedeviled succeeding generations of comics creators . . . Once a depiction veers toward realism, each new detail releases a torrent of questions that exposes the absurdity at the heart of genre. The more ‘realistic’ superheroes become, the less believable they are. ~ David Mazzucchelli, comic book artist and illustrator of Batman: Year One
Memoir · SF & Fantasy · Writers & Critics
“I’ll eat you up. I love you so.”
Could any film hit closer to our cultural amygdalae than Repo Men? Millions of people have seen the “American Dream” crumble before them during the Great Recession and can’t help[…]
No one with eyes and a brain could seriously dispute Nicholas Ray’s role as the primary auteur of Bigger Than Life. All you need to do is watch Ray’s Rebel[…]
The Avatar hype continues. There was a front-page piece in the L.A. Times today, whining – for lack of a better word – about how “unlike the great majority of[…]
Horror · Reviews · SF & Fantasy
“Hillcoat and his crew have taken the book’s hints and modeled their scavenging pair on contemporary images of homeless people, who already, as Hillcoat aptly puts it, are ‘living that apocalyptic world of day-to-day survival on the streets with no money and no food.'”
