I’ve been working a lot on my computer lately, and what I’ve been reading away from it has tended to be so very heavy and demanding that I’ve preferred to spend my spare time viewing TV series to which I have gained access. The two I’ve watched lately have been the BBC series Peep Show (which is not what it sound like) and the American series Arrested Development.

This sounds like it should be a post from Marmot’s Stupid Foreigner Tricks section, but in fact it’s about movies. I’ve been on a Robin Williams kick. Not the soft, mushy, albeit pretty-good films of yesteryear, but things with a distinctly different angle — bent, dark, or just plain weird. The two films I’ve seen lately are titled The Big White and The Final Cut. The Big White is a kind of Alaskan Fargo, though calling it that is doing it a disservice. It’s more like an Alaskan portrait of insanities: the insanity of the insurance claims adjuster pursuing the …

After having thought a little over the Jodi Foster film Flightplan, which I saw last night with Lime, I am of two minds. Spoilers follow.

Just after watching the intro to the movie Slipstream, the 2005 film of that name, after all that cool blabbing about time, the following line struck me as so absolutely, painfully wrong: You’ve heard of the World Wide Web? Well, you’re the fly that just got stuck in it. Sorry, but I think by now anyone who hasn’t heard of the World Wide Web probably also isn’t watching time travel bank-heist movies. The line ought to be, “You know the World Wide Web?” or, “This is the World Wide Web,” or something a little less 1993. It was at that …

Well, there I was just a few days ago lamenting the fact that Spielberg chose to “adapt” Wells’ The War of the Worlds to the 21st century, and that he’d not done a period piece. And then I found a link on White Screen of Despair to a period production of the film (take your pick of trailer here). Uh, it’s even more unfortunate than the Spielberg version, sad to say. But on the bright side, one of the many books I brought back with me during my travels was a hardcover edition of Kevin J. Anderson’s 1996 anthology War …

I’m not going to go into deep commentary, but will touch upon a few movies I’ve seen lately: The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to The Galaxy: 4 stars out of 5. Not as bad as the worst reviews claimed, but nowhere near as good as the books or the bits of the radio plays that I’ve heard before. The War of the Worlds: 3 stars out of 5. Sorry, but if it were set in a Victorian or Edwardian milieu, this movie would have been wonderful. Set in the present, it was just… anachronistic. Aliens that can travel across intergalactic space, set …

A friend of mine sent me this link as the last word on Star Wars Episode III. Despite so many of my fellow SF-geek friends liking it, well, or at least liking it well-enough, I sat in the theater, yes, watching it, knowing it would be utter trash, and thinking to myself, “Why didn’t they spend the money making ____ instead?” I know why, of course: they knew Star Wars III (which is in all reality Star Wars VI) would make piles more money, even if it was trash. Never mind that The Forever War would make a much better …

What the hell is it with people who complain about spoilers online? First off, I’ve never felt that knowing some detail or other before reading a book or seeing a movie has ever “spoiled” it for me. Bad directing, that’s spoiled movies for me. Plenty of movies. Bad acting? Sure! Bad writing? Oh, too many, believe me. But knowing ahead of time, that somehow usually doesn’t bother me. It certainly doesn’t “spoil” the experience of the film. Maybe it’s because the majority of films are so predictable anyway. I’m developing a sense that most films are made the way newspaper …