The Murderbot Diaries seems tailor-made for adaptation. Now as an Apple TV+ show is coming, I am getting excited and rereading the first novella in the series, All Systems Red. I’ve actually read three books in the series, and it feels very episodic as we follow the adventures of a security robot (maybe you could…
Category: Sci-fi
Empire of Silence (The Sun Eater, Book 1) by Christopher Ruocchio – Book Review
We start with a story that the main character (and sole point of view), Hadrian Marlowe, is recounting: his life story after he has achieved the notoriety of being named “Sun Eater”, due to his having destroyed a sun, killing millions of enemy aliens. But that story is not part of this book (presumably we…
Catching up with genre TV: Star Trek, Star Wars, Marvel, Doctor Who, and more
It has been a long minute since I last posted, but I admit I’ve been feeling a bit of entertainment ennui. Most of my favourite franchises have been so mediocre and underwhelming. A lot of hype in the fandoms has been around how they appear to have gone “woke”, and that being the problem. I…
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes – Movie Review
I never watched the original Planet of the Apes series of films (starring Charlton Heston back in the 1960s and 70s), but I am a fan of the recent trilogy of Apes films (2011-17) that told an origin story for what led the apes to take over the world from humans. (I also watched the…
Oscar Schmoscar 2024 – Oppenheimer, Barbie, Past Lives, Elemental, Nimona, & The Creator
I started this semi-annual post to acknowledge that I’m not always interested in the movies that get nominated or win Oscars. This year is definitely no exception in that there were very few nominated films that I had already watched prior to the nominations (and in fact, relatively few movies have caught my eye over…
Dune Part 2 – Movie Review
The first part of Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of Frank Herbert’s classic sci-fi novel Dune was amazing. Visually stunning, it delivered an engaging story that brought Herbert’s characters to life and made this incredible, fictional universe feel very real. This second part continues right where the first film left off: Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) and his…
Rebel Moon: Part One – A Child of Fire – Movie Review
It hasn’t been a great year for blockbuster movies, or for beloved action franchises, but along comes director Zack Snyder, with his big-budget space-opera based on a rejected Star Wars movie idea, and I didn’t really know what to expect. First off, I am an established fan of Snyder’s, having loved 300, liked Watchmen, Sucker…
Frightfully Catching Up With Jordan Peele’s Get Out, Us, and Nope
In honour of spooky season, I decided to do a little movie marathon of scary films by the recent horror-meister, Jordan Peele. Part of the comedy duo, Key & Peele, more recently Peele split his career down a very different path, becoming a celebrated writer-director of successful horror movies. When I heard positive reviews of…
Wheel of Time, One Piece, Ahsoka, Ragnarok, Mech Cadets & Lower Decks: Fun genre TV is back! (Fall 2023)
The rush of having these six genre (aka nerd-friendly) series release within a couple of weeks brings me back to the days of watching dozens of new series whenever the fall season kicked off on network TV. Nevertheless, I now relish the flexibility of being able to watch them at my own pace (and savour…
Alvin's Adventures in Pop Culture 