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I was excited as the next Star Wars fan to get a sneak peek this week of the new "The Dog Strikes Back" Volkswagen ad that's set to debut at the Super Bowl. Like the big hit of last year, "The Force," a clever ad that featured a Darth Vader-dressed kid frustrated when his Dark Side powers don't work (until Dad makes his day by starting up the family's VW Passat with his remote), I was thrilled to see how my beloved Star Wars franchise might be subtly referenced this year. More »
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British pharmaceutical company GW Pharmaceuticals has developed a medical marijuana drug called Sativex. The drug is delivered orally via a spray pump, and is the first of its kind to be produced by extracting high-inducing cannabinoids like THC (pot's primary psychoactive ingredient) from the cannabis plant itself. More »
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Once upon a time, not so long ago, everybody agreed what the label "steampunk" referred to. But now the term is being used to refer to all sorts of entertainments, from future history to adventures on other planets. Is it time to rethink what steampunk means? More »
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Robotech rocked our worlds in the 1980s with its complicated characters and dense mythology. But where's our Robotech movie? Why can't we see Rick Hunter and Lisa Hayes on the big screen? Veteran book editor Jen Heddle makes a passionate case for why we need more Robotech now. More »
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We're all bracing for a robot uprising. Any moment now, a computer could become self-aware and decide to wipe us out. Like Skynet. But really, you should be more scared of posthumans — like mutants or cyborgs. People whose direct ancestors are humans, but they've developed into... something else. More »
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Science may be a source of fascinating, world-changing discoveries, but that doesn't stop people from bitching about it. Two of the most common complaints from the public about scientific work are actually complete misunderstandings of how science is done. The worst part is that these two complaints divert the public's attention away from two reasons they should be criticizing science articles but almost never do. More »
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Since the 1980s, comic artist and Maxx creator Sam Kieth has been one of medium's finest spinners of tripped-out phantasmagoria. Here, Anna Breslaw looks back, forward, and directly at Kieth and discusses why his works have resonated with her over the years. More »
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Did you know that there's a not unsubstantial corner of YouTube devoted to pornographic videos that aren't pornographic? And did you know that thousands of people click these painfully unsexy clips daily? More »
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Putting a good spin on things, verbally, can be a habit, a necessary business skill, or a vocation unto itself. Take a look at euphemism, who it hurts and who it benefits, and how different cultures, both internationally and intranationally, deploy it. More »
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A lot of people have been sticking poor Battle: Los Angeles in their lists of the year's worst movies, genre or otherwise. And we have to stick up for this war movie about aliens invading L.A. — it's actually a pretty decent action movie, and not nearly as horrendous as a lot of people would have you believe. More »
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Nine years ago, I watched Doctor Who for the first time. I was instantly hooked. To this day, if I watch a classic Doctor Who story, I will love it unconditionally. I just wish I had the slightest idea why. More »
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Several years ago, I was getting burned out in my high-stress newspaper job, and I came across a fancy hardcover book listing science fiction publishers, agents and editors. I paged through it on my lunchbreak, until I found a part of the introduction which proclaimed: "Many writers now make a decent living just from writing science fiction short stories." More »
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The leads of the Star Wars and Star Trek franchises have come to verbal blows as of late, and a certain mellifluous Enterprise helmsman has attempted to ameliorate the situation. What this public spat ignores is that there's a superior Star film out there, one that eschews flights of fancy and makes your appreciate the grim, icy mechanics of our lousy reality. I am, of course, talking about the 1986 extraterrestrial-flan masterwork Star Crystal. More »
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Tonight sees the midseason finale of Person of Interest, Jonathan Nolan's attempt to turn The Dark Knight's themes into a weekly TV show. More »
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There are so many reasons why teenage girls hate their bodies that it's basically impossible to list them all. But Twilight: Breaking Dawn tries. The flick is basically a surreal, humiliating music video about teenage body panic. Every fleeting moment of self-hatred you've ever had about yourself is chronicled in excruciating detail here — and I think that's why so many of us love to watch. It's also why we hate ourselves afterward. More »
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Why do so many of science fiction's greatest stories have to do with meeting — and possibly falling in love with — strangers and strange beings? Author Pat Cadigan, whose story "Angel" is in the new anthology Alien Contact, muses about the allure of Meeting the Other. More »
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Doctor Who has earned a place in history with its longevity and the breadth of the show's amazing creative imagination. And a big reason why the world is still delighted by the exploits of the dotty British time traveler is because Doctor Who has constantly renewed itself, jettisoning everything except the basic concept of an alien in a time-traveling Police Box. More »
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Universal Pictures chief Ron Meyer caused a splash late last week, when he admitted that "we do make a lot of shitty movies," and listed Land of the Lost, The Wolfman and Cowboys & Aliens among the studio's clunkers. More »
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I didn't want to write about Glen Duncan's nerd-baiting book review in last Sunday's New York Times. The one that starts, "A literary novelist writing a genre novel is like an intellectual dating a porn star." And just goes downhill from there. More »
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The Last Airbender wasn't punishment enough. Whatever we did to deserve Hollywood's "racebending" shenanigans, we've still earned more suffering. Tron Legacy's Garrett Hedlund is reportedly starring in Akira. And there's still the Americanized Cowboy Bebop in the pipeline too. And an Americanized Space Battleship Yamato. More »
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Just imagine a world where live-action episodes of Star Wars and Star Trek are both appearing on television every week. More »
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The 23rd James Bond movie is about to start production, with Sam Mendes (American Beauty) directing. Imagine if there had been 23 Batman movies. Or 23 Star Trek movies. Few other movie series can boast that kind of staying power, not just in terms of number of movies but in terms of enduring cultural relevance. More »
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Most authorities seem to believe that Star Wars Episode One: The Phantom Menace was a bigger disappointment than The Matrix: Reloaded. The Phantom Menace scored 61% on the Tomatometer, with a 65% audience rating. The Matrix: Reloaded scored 74% on the Tomatometer, with a 74% audience rating. More »
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There's a dreadful ailment that afflict superhero movies: the villain overload. Movies about costumed crime-fighters seem to attract surplus villains, like barnacles. Is it because the merchandising people want more toys to market? Or because they just want to pad out the cast with a few more names? It's hard to say. More »
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Next year, the Hunger Games movie series begins and the Twilight movies end. It's sort of a passing of the tween torch, from vampire angst to post-apocalyptic deathmatches. And no doubt, Hunger Games will be hoping to capitalize on the Twilight audience. More »
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Everybody knows that remakes are a plague and an abomination. Why are they remaking Total Recall? Or Escape from New York? Why is the guy who did 28 Weeks Later allegedly remaking both Highlander and The Crow? Are remakes good for anything at all? More »
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We are, most people would agree, in the midst of a Golden Age of Television. Since the late-1990s, the programming that's been pumped into our homes has been as good as it's ever been — and, in many respects, better than the movies that have long sat atop the Pop Cultural Quality Pile. But why aren't we also in a Golden Age of Genre TV? More »
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There have been a lot of disgruntled rumbles about the monsters in Moon landing conspiracy flick Apollo 18. I've even heard people say, "Well, if those are the monsters, then I'm definitely not seeing the movie." What the hell, people? Sure there are things wrong with this movie, but the monsters are definitely not it. In fact, I thought the monsters were classic and clever. Here's why. More »
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Welcome to Privacy Club. You cannot find Privacy Club on the internet. More »
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Two depressing facts became apparent the other day: 1) NASA is so desperate to get people excited about space travel, they were willing to consider collaborating on the horror mockumentary Apollo 18. 2) The fall 2011 season is the first time there's been no TV show, on any network, featuring people on spaceships, since probably the mid-1980s. More »
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We expect a lot from Syfy, because it's the only cable channel devoted to science fiction. So it's inevitable that the network formerly known as the Sci-Fi Channel will disappoint us occasionally. And sometimes people blame Syfy unfairly — like when Syfy pulls the plug on a low-rated show. More »
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Writer John Ostrander knows about heroism. The writer of some of our favorite titles, including Suicide Squad, The Spectre and some great Star Wars comics, Ostrander has often dealt with heavy issues of morality and sacrifice in his work. In this piece, reposted from ComicMix, Ostrander takes issue with one aspect of the recent Doctor Who stories. More »
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With a few notable exceptions, most of the contenders for the seat of Republican presidential candidate are outspoken critics of science. They and their supporters refuse to acknowledge the reality of climate change, want science teachers to tell students that human life was created by a spiritual force from beyond space, and suggest that the best way to get out of our debt hole is to cut government funding for the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health, which allocate money to cancer research and childhood autism treatments. More »
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Hollywood sells us quick hits of entertainment, and counts on our attention-deficit disorder to keep us distractible. But Hollywood also has its own case of ADD, chasing fads and cool ideas, and then running them into the ground. That can be a very good thing, because some fads are so dumb you can't wait for Hollywood to lose interest in them. More »
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You always hear writers and other creative people talking about "selling" something to the reader, or the audience. And it sounds terribly crass. What if you're a great artist, and you don't want to try and sell anything? This all sounds like... commerce. Or something equally distasteful. More »
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One of the great movie success stories is the outstanding response to Iron Man — which helped launch our current golden age of superpowered action movies. True, the boom started with X-Men and Spider-Man, but Iron Man proved that a lesser-known hero* could hit big with the right creative team. Iron Man opened the floodgates. More »
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Doctor Who comes back for a run of six episodes starting this weekend, and our hopes are high. If nothing else, we know there will be witty dialogue, insanely cute actors, and mind-bending plots. But we're hoping for more than that. More »
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Harry Potter director David Yates says he's interested in turning Stephen King's The Stand into a multi-movie series. Good luck — this is a task that could make Potter look like a cakewalk. More »
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As we heard last week, the Dr. Strange feature film was inching its way toward production as Marvel shuttles its B-list heroes to the multiplex. More »
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Renowned horror author John Shirley, pioneer of the splatterpunk genre, offers a few ideas about where human violence comes from — and it's not violent entertainment. More »
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