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 …

Tonight Lime and I stopped in at the DVD-room and watched a movie. I urged her for us to start in on the mammoth Lord of the Rings Extended Edition series, but she didn’t feel like it and ended up asking the woman who words there for a recommendation. The woman, who recommended the excellent Save The Green Planet to us a while back (read about that here), told us that SAW was an excellent film. So we took her word for it, though I had some misgivings. “Isn’t this a serial killer movie?” “No,” the girl replied to the …