Your weekly dose of Stargate Universe recap is a little late this week. There was some unpleasantness on Friday night involving Christmas intoxicants. I won’t elaborate. Late Friday night has ceased to exist in my buffer. But, thanks to the miracle that is the internet, I have just finished viewing the best episode of SGU thus far, an episode called “Justice”.
Archive for Sci-Fi Reviews
Life on the Border – Oak and Ash and a Few Electric Guitars
I’m a fan of revisiting quality books from days gone by. Sometimes I do it just because I loved the story so much that I want to reconnect with the characters again and other times I revisit to see if the story holds up. This week I was reminded of the Borderland Series by Terri Windling, a friend of mine had stumbled upon Life on the Border and wouldn’t stop talking about it. This of course prompted me to go dig it out and read it again.
Surrogates (2009) Movie Review
Bruce Willis’ “Surrogates” may have had a good idea going in, but the result is … middling. To be sure, as with any big-budget sci-fi film, it’s enjoyable enough on a base level, but this isn’t a movie that people will be using to salute Bruce Willis when the “Die Hard” star signs off to visit that Big Hollywood Sky. It’s a vanilla effort, disappointingly so given all the talent (not to mention money) involved. Jonathan Mostow is a good director with a knack for action, but his work here feels restrained and muted. I’m not sure how much of the idea survived from the script by Michael Ferris and John D. Bracato, or from the original source material, a comic book by Robert Venditti and Brett Weldele, but what’s left is average at best, not-even-trying at worst.
Beggars in Spain … Permanent Insomnia Anyone ?
So I was going to review another movie this week but a friend of mine suggested doing something new and different, he suggested I try reviewing something that didn’t have pictures. I gave it a momentary thought and said ‘Sure! I don’t need art to be able to read’ so he went into his bathroom and came out with Beggars in Spain. I smiled and said ‘cool’ and he said ‘good luck genius ’. Hey now, I’m no ‘pure read’ slacker! I can read with the best of them- I’ve got the William Gibson library, the Neal Stephenson criticals and ALL the Rudy Rucker’s and I know the answer to Do Androids Dream of Electric sheep? So don’t go taunting me with a Nancy Kress novel. No sir, I will read this book and lay to waste all reviewers that have come before me.
Stargate Universe Recap 1.09: Life
What would you actually do all day if you were marooned on a million year old starship, bound for who the hell knows and stuck with a motley band of cranky (or homicidal) crew? The ninth episode of SGU attempts to realistically explain this and also how to tastefully (maybe too tastefully) handle the sticky problem of space lesbians.
V Recap: 1.03 A Bright New Day
It’s a brave new world in America, as Anna and the Visitors prepare to establish official diplomatic ties with the Government, thanks in part to a willing media led by the very bias reporting of Chad Decker (Scott Wolf). Meanwhile, the Resistance of Two – aka FBI Agent Erica Evans (Elizabeth Mitchell) and Father Jack (Joel Gretsch) — continue their quest to find strength in numbers. Step one: find everyone who was at the warehouse that fateful night, including the AWOL Georgie (David Richmond-Peck). For his part, former V sleeper soldier turned human sympathizer Ryan (Morris Chestnut) goes in search of the remaining members of the V Fifth Column, a group of V rebels now scattered to the wind. As we learn toward the end of tonight’s episode, “A Bright New Day”, you just never know when those spunky Fifth Columns will show up next. While last week’s episode was a paranoid, tightly-wound continuation of the pilot, “A Brave New Day” opens up and takes a giant leap in story.
The Prisoner Mini-Series – Ep. 1 and 2 (2009) TV Review
Ever since it was announced that “Lost” was going to the great DVR in the sky, viewers have been seeking a successor to the science fiction/mystery/drama/paranormal series. So far, “V”, “Flash Forward”, and thanks to the bizarre antics of judge Bruno Tonioli, “Dancing With The Stars”, have all arrived to try to give viewers their weekly fix of the strange and unexplainable. Now AMC throws their hat in the ring, with a brooding re-imagining of “The Prisoner”, and it just may be one of the season’s best yet.
Stargate Universe Recap 1.08: Time
Despite the inconsistent beginning to Stargate Universe, I’m beginning to think, after last nights planetary bombardment of wicked called “Time”, that we may really have a Sci-Fi show that wants to be something good. “Time” had some of the classic elements of a really memorable episode for any Sci-Fi show. Let’s review.
The Cave – Bundle up & get your swim fins – we’re goin in!
Oh, so I had an idea, I’ll rent one of the worst movies I can find.
Nobody ever says that on the way to get a movie right? It’ll be an EXPERIMENT!
V Recap: 1.02 There is No Normal Anymore
So what do you do after you’ve killed your partner of seven years and discovered that he was actually a space alien in disguise? For FBI agent Erica Evans (Elizabeth Mitchell), it means lying through her teeth when her boss and the FBI wonder what’s happened to agent Dale Maddox (Alan Tudyk, who gets two brief cameos in tonight’s episode). There’s good news and bad news for our FBI heroine: the bad news is that Erica, as a good liar as she is, has a very insightful boss (Roark Critchlow) who sees holes in her story, but the good news is that the Visitors know how to cover their tracks. By the time the FBI shows up at the warehouse where the fledging human resistance and Visitor commandos threw down at the end of the pilot, there are no traces of a fight or bodies. Erica is safe … for now. Meanwhile, Father Jack (Joel Gretsch) struggles about what to do in the aftermath of the warehouse debacle, especially when the FBI come calling.
Pandorum (2009) Movie Review
Christian Alvart’s “Pandorum” is a creature feature horror film set in space. In that respect, the movie doesn’t really depend on its sci-fi elements in the least, and its premise could have been easily transplanted to any isolated location that requires a large group of people to be locked away from civilization. The grungy, dark spaceship interiors and its many winding, bulky corridors could easily have been swapped for an underground research base, for example. But hey, who’s complaining? It’s been a long time since sci-fi has looked this dark, gritty, and grungy. And of course, deadly.
The Fourth Kind (2009) Movie Review
It’s been written that cannibals refuse to eat divorced women because they are too bitter. They’d be wise to adopt the same attitude towards anyone who sat through “The Fourth Kind”, it’s hard to feel anything else when exiting this failed experiment in scifi cinema verite. What makes the film such a catastrophic failure is that is has so much potential, that writer/director Olantunde Osunsami never seems capable of coming close to fulfilling. “The Fourth Kind” could have been an amazing faux documentary on alien home invasions in the remotest part of America, but instead all we’re offered is a rather boring film that’s occasionally spiked with something mildly interesting.
Stargate Universe Recap 1.07: Earth
On Earth, life is even more complicated for the crew and passengers of the Destiny than their uncertain existence on the ship. That’s the lesson for this week. Man eating dust devils, no water or air and sun surfing, those are easy. It’s relationships that are hard.
Roswell, Texas – Saddle up Boys!
Well, there it is, Roswell, Texas - the book I have coveted for the past two years but somehow just never got around to reading. Now I know why, because this multi layered volume of ‘twisted Texas tawdriness’ pretty much soaked up every insomniac moment I had and then some. Daylight came and went for a solid week and yet I remained somewhere in the desert lost in the mountains hovering aloft over Roswell waiting to return to my senses – I’m still waiting for that to happen.
Tim Tyler’s ‘Engine’ – Thrust is a Must!
I have this persistent dream, it goes like this: I’m in the comic book shop hunting through the millions and millions of comics that are stacked EVERYWHERE but I just can’t seem to find what I’m looking for….not that I don’t want everything I see but I can’t find something I haven’t seen before. Then in a mild fit of anger I go to the counter and ask for something new, something original something FRESH…..like the stuff I keep seeing all over the Internet, you know like a Digital Comic? As you can guess the dream ends rather violently.
