We're almost there, and hopefully you've already bought most of the presents you plan to give over this holiday season. Realistically, though, who's actually done shopping already? If you're looking for that last-second piece of perfection for...
This Thursday, November 17, I will be a guest speaker in a roundtable discussion at Georgia Tech's "The Shape of Things to Come" sci-fi symposium. The symposium is a free-to-attend, one-day event and is focused on the scholarly discussion of...
You can’t blame the makers of modern-day visceral thrillers and action films for turning to special effects in order to outdo those that came before them. As filmmaking technology advances, it is the natural course for a type of entertainment...
It feels like it's been years since I began writing it, but in reality it has been just slightly more than one. Sci-Fi Movie Freak, my book about science fiction cinema (and my first ever book to...
The Thing is essentially both a prequel and a remake of the 1982 film of the same title, directed by John Carpenter. When you make a movie like this -- especially one based off such a geek-loved film as Carpenter's -- you have to be...
So often we speak of marketing departments ruining movies. They see a fad, want to profit from it, and churn out a derivative film to snag some of the money waiting to be spent on said fad. Other times they take a genuinely good story, alter it...
Germs may be the most prevalent nasty things that we, for the most part, don’t think about. That is, of course, because they are invisible. But what if something were to force you to consider the germs on everything you touched? Throw your...
“Found footage” horror fiction works best when focused on the unexplainable, presenting its subject matter as if we can do no better than to view it objectively and ponder it as ultimately unanswerable. With this in mind, it seems that the...
It’s the classic sci-fi theme of an overambitious individual trying to fix the world while keeping himself oblivious to the possible negative outcomes of his attempt to do so. This time it’s attached to the Planet of the Apes...
Captain America is undoubtedly one of Marvel Comics’ most recognizable creations, an epitomized patriotic created to sate our disdain for Nazis during World War II. Director Joe Johnston’s Captain America: The First Avenger is a...
