Hard to believe 2022 is coming to a close. I was born in 1974, and our twin girls were born in 2014, so I’ve been mentally tracking their childhood experiences and comparing them to mine, 40 years ago. Not sure if this pic is from 1982, but it’s definitely from the early 1980s. (I’m the older brother at right.) They don’t make haircuts or shirts like that anymore! Or, for that matter, steamships—we are aboard the S.S. Naushon, which, until 1988, was the last commercially oper

Top Gun: Maverick has landed on Paramount+ (where it’s predictably a big hit), so having heard how great it is the past six months, I wanted to check it out. Yeah...it’s great. Congrats to everybody involved. It’s like the perfect blockbuster. It should absolutely be studied by anybody trying to write a screenplay: the simplicity, the foreshadowing, the absolute clarity of who characters are and what they want—and, above all, THE EMOTIONAL IMPACT. It’s not to my taste—this is

Empire has published an interview with James Cameron—maybe you’ve heard, his Avatar sequel is now in theaters—but with a twist: the questions were submitted by famous actors, directors and writers. Among other things, Cameron confirmed the famous story (famous inside the business, anyway) that at a meeting with Fox executives to pitch Aliens, he wrote the word ALIEN, added an S, and then turned the S into a dollar sign: “And yes, it’s true. I was in a meeting with the studio

It’s the end of the year, so it’s the time for the retrospectives on the state of the film business—such as it is. Here’s a good one from Kim Masters in The Hollywood Reporter. And from Richard Brody at The New Yorker (behind a paywall). Long story short: studios gutted their own theatrical business by trying to boost their streaming services—they couldn’t afford to be left behind by Netflix, Amazon, et al. They willingly devalued their own product by giving it away for free.

I watched Confess, Fletch on Showtime last night. Like the rest of the world, I missed it upon release earlier this year. It was very well reviewed, but given one of those hybrid theatrical–V.O.D. releases that only confuses everybody. So was this is a hidden gem, or a swing-and-a-miss? It certainly seems like a movie out of its time—a throwback to a kind of mainstream studio comedy that is no longer made. I found an interview with writer/director Greg Mottola on the tribulat

YouTube user Dominic Sewell is apparently analyzing every cue in The Empire Strikes Back—after doing the entirety of The Phantom Menace. Here’s the end of the Battle of Hoth (what we used to call, “Rebels at Bay”): I wish I understood it better!

Merry Christmas, everyone! Hope you have a great day. It’s also the first time that I can remember when the last night of Hanukkah has coincided with Christmas. So that will be fun! Enjoy!

The cable channel Heroes & Icons—aka “every old show from the CBS library, around the clock”—has rolled around to the top of Star Trek: The Next Generation’s third season in its nightly broadcast. This is my all-time favorite stretch of ST:TNG, because I remember watching it first-run (I was 15) and marveling at how the show went from “appointment viewing, but annoying and inconsistent” to “a triumph” right before my eyes. I wrote about this a year ago in detail, but my blog

Charles Cornell is a YouTuber who does music education videos involving a lot of pop and geek culture. Here’s one, “The Chord That SAVED Star Wars”—which is a bit of a misleading title, as he’s referring to a G-minor chord at the end of Rogue One where the pitch of Darth Vader’s lightsaber actually changes the harmony...which is pretty neat: I wonder if that was intentional? Here’s one on the deceptively complicated Transformers animated theme (although I think some of what i

I watched After Yang on Showtime last night. I had come across it in channel listings and thought—like most people, I suppose—what an odd title. And looking it up, like most people, I was surprised to learn it was a sci-fi film. It’s a beautiful, intimate “people picture” about a family whose robot, Yang, malfunctions (dies), and the father (Colin Farrell) sets out to repair him. From the premise, you might think this is some kind of Cherry 2000 sci-fi adventure. But it’s rea

Last month, The Line of Best Fit ran a piece in their “Nine Songs” series on Howard Shore. Naturally, I set aside the link to take time to listen to them myself. Howard’s recommendation is something I take seriously! But I still haven’t done so. What do you think of his list?

I have a soft spot for Logan’s Run—the last big pre-Star Wars sci-fi film. Somehow I came across this YouTube video of multiple angles, behind-the-scenes (combined in split screen) of the scene near the end of the film where Logan, Jessica and the Old Man return to the City by way of its water intake—filmed at the Fort Worth Water Gardens in Texas: There’s much more Logan’s Run and 1970s sci-fi at this YouTube channel, Great Hall 75. Enjoy!

Here’s a recent article from BFI about the early days of digital cinema and how its promise has, or hasn’t, played out. Really good piece! I love digital cameras. I’ve never worked with film and don’t really see the need. In fact my entire career (such as it is) has benefited from digital technology. I started the FSM newsletter, then magazine when desktop publishing was making such things possible. I can’t imagine having to do it with typewriters and paste-up. Then when we w

First of all—what a great World Cup final! Congrats to Argentina. I rewatched 2010. Good film! I always enjoyed it. Terrific cast. Not the thought-provoking classic like 2001: A Space Odyssey, but a solid, big-budget “hard sci-fi” outing, beautifully mounted. I remember the film dated quickly because of its depiction of the Cold War. Strangely, with the tension today between the U.S. and Russia, that seems to be relevant again. But now I see the ending, with the second sun cr

I am enjoying watching the World Cup, as I usually do. I look forward to the final match tomorrow. The passing is so sophisticated, and I am always in awe of the ball handling and athleticism. And I played it enough as a kid (more below) to understand, broadly, the strategies and gameplay. I always wonder why soccer (football) is not more popular in America. I know there’s a professional league here, but I never pay attention to it. There are two things about the game that st

My friend (and FSM art director) Joe Sikoryak has been blogging and drawing his memoirs, which I’ve enjoyed following: www.joesikoryak.com. His column last weekend was a great summary of something that I write about from time to time: how different it used to be following “geek culture.” What used to take us seemingly years of sleuthing can now be accomplished in a few keystrokes at Google or imdb...to say nothing of how hard it used to be to connect with likeminded fans. I’m

NOTE: I wrote this article a year ago, but for various reasons it was not published at the intended site. So I’m running it here before it falls even more out of date! I read Marvel Comics as a kid. Specifically, from 1985 to 1989—for me, age 11 to 15. It was the twilight of comic books being sold at drugstores and supermarkets (how I discovered them) and the dawn of their transformation into collectibles that imploded the industry: high prices and fancy printing made the pub

One of the fun things (of many) of producing the FSM CD series was getting an education on films and composers who deserve much more attention than they get. That happened with Eye of the Devil (aka “13”), an obscure 1966 British horror film and one of the only scores by composer Gary McFarland. He was a terrific jazz artist who died young from a methadone poisoning under awful and mysterious circumstances. Eye of the Devil was a sort of infamous unreleased soundtrack album (

Farewell to another great composer: Angelo Badalamenti, at 85. Here’s the New York Times obituary. His Twin Peaks theme was an instant classic. I am reminded of the old game show—“I can name that tune in two notes!” That’s how distinctive it is. He’s best known for his collaborations with David Lynch, and even though there are some pretty obvious ways to describe their style—haunting, sad, scary, a bit soapy—the whole point is that they sort of defy language. This is worth wa

A quick shout-out for my friend Taylor White at Creature Features who recently recorded a director’s commentary with Kevin Lima for Enchanted (2007): It’s something that you synch up to the movie. I had never seen Enchanted but recently watched it and found it delightful. I’m honestly not a big Disney animation fan, it was just never something that spoke to me. If anything I found it precious and insufferable (though I always admired the craft). But I really loved this movie