Recent Articles
The Beginning is only the End.
So, I’ve been watching the new Picard series (thanks Amazon Prime) and more or less enjoying it – good FX, a decent if slow-burn story, and, of course, lashings of Jean-Luc. My main complaint is that to re-spin the show for modern sensibilities, they’ve jettisoned a few of the core concepts from the original series. […]
Coronavirus: it’s just the flu, right – so why has China shut down their country?
I re-posted the informative ‘What we know now about Coronavirus‘ summary article from SFcrowsnest on my Facebook page, recently, and subsequently got snowed by comments along the lines of “Pah, it’s just like the flu/cold, right? Nobody worries about that.” Which rather begs the questions, then why has China more or less shut down their […]
Of endings and arcs …
As an author, what makes a good, indifferent, or terrible story is always a subject of interest to me. It’s something I’ve been pondering having watched the – possibly – final Star Wars movie of the first nine… Rise of Skywalker. I think one of the main failures for me, story-wise, is that the last […]
Ve’ll be back?
I just returned from seeing Terminator Dark Fate at the cinema with one of the junior members of the clan who has never seen any of the previous films in the series. I don’t think it’s as bad as a lot of critics have been saying, but then it did use the old ‘but this […]
More questions than answers.
One of the more interesting things about being an established author is that you often get hit up by friends-of-friends wanting to mine your mind for tips and tricks on becoming a pro writer (because, hey, it’s so easy). It’s such a wide-N-deep topic that it would take days to just begin to scratch the […]
Never rub another supervillain’s rhubarb.
So, two words of advice from me, this week. First, never rub another supervillain’s rhubarb; and second, The Joker movie, is, upon reflection, probably not the best choice for Date Night with your partner. When we departed the cinema, her indoors stared wistfully at a poster for an upcoming movie – Zombieland Double Tap – […]
The Man Who Watched Netflix and then Amazon Prime.
Just started watching the movie ‘The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then BigFoot‘ which has finally ended up on Netflix (currently sitting high in their trending films charts, too). In plot terms, the film does pretty much what it says on the tin, indeed following an old codger who killed Hitler and then goes on […]
To The Stars?
I caught the movie ‘Ad Astra’ this weekend at the newly refurbished Leicester Square Odeon Luxe … upgraded sound systems and every seat an expensive LZ-Boy-style armchair with electronic footrests and reclining spine system. In the movie, U.S. Space Command scientist and astronaut Clifford McBride (played by Tommy Lee Jones) heads off on a deep […]
I is real. But is you?
I was walking back home on Friday from the supermarket with heavy bags, my mind wandering, when I managed to get myself worked up into an existential lather about the slipshod output of various recent streaming films and series. Studios go to all the trouble of paying actors, building sets, laying on post-production and SFX, […]
Got game?
Well, I finally managed to reach the end of the ‘Another Life’ science fiction series streaming on Netflix. It picked up a little towards the end, I think. The beast was weighted on the way, though by a lot of wheel-spinning, as well as a strange backstory that made little sense and ended up making […]
