Who hasn’t seen Hardware Wars, a ridiculously low budget satire of Star Wars that came out in the late 1970s? It was the first and arguably the most popular Star Wars spoof ever.
What? You haven’t seen it? Well, to quote William Wallace’s uncle from Braveheart, “That’s something we shall have to remedy, isn’t it?”
The golden age of rock and roll was the ’60s and ’70s, with some spillage into the ’50s and ’80s. I declare it, so it must be true! Some of the greatest music of the century sprang into existence during those times.
It just so happens that the longest running television and movie franchise also began during that classic age in 1966. Among the top charting songs for the year were:
“There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling transmission.”
These ominous words broke into the American psyche in 1963 with the first airing of the television program Outer Limits. People could be forgiven if they thought they might have been teleported to 1984 when they heard it, even though every TV program could be described that way. It’s not like there was any interactive TV in those days.
Continue reading Outer Limits: The First Serious Science Fiction Television Show
As a young French composer in his mid-twenties, Joseph Maurice Ravel joined with a number of other artists, musicians, poets, and assorted friends in Paris to form a group called “The Hooligans” ( Les Apaches in French, which makes you wonder about how a certain Native American tribe got its name). This was at the turn of the century—the 19th to 20th century, that is. Imagining the antics of twenty-something creative souls getting together makes the name they chose somehow appropriate. Claude Debussy and Igor Stravinsky were also members at one time or another.
That hooligan spirit must have followed Ravel into his career when he composed his most famous and popular musical piece that he described as having “no form, properly speaking, no development, no or almost no modulation.” He said the music was inspired by the sounds of the machines in the factory his father worked in. His goal was to create a work of music that repeated over and over and over again, to see how long he could get away with it. The answer apparently was something in the neighborhood of fifteen to twenty minutes.
In 1786, Prince Charles Edward Stuart fought the Battle of Culloden to make good his claim to the throne of England and Scotland. His backers were called Jacobites. He failed in that attempt and had to flee the British armies multiple times until he finally ended up fleeing on a boat to the Island of Skye.
If this sounds familiar to fans of the television series Outlander, that’s because this is the same Bonnie Prince Charles and the same Battle of Culloden that Claire passed through the time portal back to the 20th century to avoid, and that she assumed her lover and husband Jamie Fraser had died in.
With George Miller’s announcement of three more Mad Max films on their way, I began to reminisce about the four films that have been released so far. Three of them star Mel Gibson as Max Rockatansky and one stars Tom Hardy as Max…sort of. In reality, there was very little of Mad Max in Mad Max: Fury Road, and Hardy as Max didn’t end up doing a whole lot, considering the movie is named after him.
In reality, the movie was not a Mad Max movie at all. It was a Furiosa movie. Max’s almost cameo appearance was for show, not substance. Let’s examine the four films and compare them. Continue reading Studies Show 3 Out Of 4 Mad Max Movies Actually Contain Mad Max
I make no secret of the fact that I loathe superhero movies. Christopher Reeve’s Superman was fun. Tim Burton’s two Batmans were typically and deliciously offbeat. Christopher Nolan’s Batmans were well done too. The occasional superhero movie was fun escapist cinema that I could enjoy along with everyone else.
But somewhere along the way, I got burned out by the endless stream of superhero movies. I haven’t even seen Nolan’s third Batman. It matters not to me how great the movie might be, I’m sick of the endless barrage! Continue reading Jessica Jones Broke Up With Me
In the third and final installment of my Star Trek movie-themed articles, we’ll explore that bugaboo of 21st century Hollywood as it applies to Star Trek: the reboot.
J.J. Abram’s Star Trek was as welcome and anticipated as when the original series was revived with Star Trek the Motion Picture. Star Trek is the Michael Myers of science fiction: no matter how many times you think it’s been killed, it refuses to stay dead. Once again it rises like a phoenix in a rebooted form.
Continue reading To Boldly Reboot One of the Most Beloved Franchises in History
This is a continuation of my article “To Boldy Film What No Man Has Filmed Before,” which covered the first six Star Trek movies starring the original cast. Those films ended an era that will never return, but Star Trek itself lives on with a new generation and a new crew that has become as beloved as the original.
I will continue with the numbering scheme I began in the first article with the first six movies, to continue the exploration of the odd-numbered curse, to see if it holds up with these new films.
Once upon a time a little TV show came and went within three seasons, and that was the end of that. It was on its death bed after two seasons, but the passionate fandom put it on life support for one more season. Life support it was, as it gasped through the whole third season with mostly inferior episodes. A cartoon version came and went, and Star Trek sunk into the same oblivion as other long-ago popular science fiction series like Flash Gordon.
Continue reading To Boldly Film What No Man Has Filmed Before
