Alvin's Adventures in Pop Culture

The Expanse – TV Preview

I had pretty mixed feelings as I watched the preview episode of the new sci-fi TV series, The Expanse (which has been made available on space.ca and syfy.com) which premieres in mid-December. It is part of the US Syfy channel’s efforts to return to better quality science fiction programming, and has been hailed as a…

Getting Creepy with Netflix

I’m not one for horror movies (kinda chicken that way), but around Halloween I think it might be fun to scare myself a little (in the safety of my living room) and Netflix helps by providing all kinds of movies to choose from. I don’t think I will ever really enjoy those gross-out-gory kinds of…

Firefight by Brandon Sanderson – Book Review

I’m enjoying all this super-powers/super-hero stuff on TV and in the movies, but I admit I’m also getting tired of how they are very similar and blending into each other. That’s one of the things I loved about Brandon Sanderson’s novel, Steelheart, and a big part of why I also loved the sequel, Firefight. In…

Fall TV 2015 – Weeks 3/4

Fall tv premieres are winding down, and we’ve had a few episodes with many of the early-starters. Unfortunately, the new crop really hasn’t had very many standouts. I’ve already stopped watching a number of the shows that I tried out a week or two ago. In any case, there are a few more shows returning…

Fall TV 2015 – Week 2

The second week of the new tv season was full of surprises. I gave a chance to a few new shows (Code Black, Quantico, The Grinder) that I didn’t plan to watch (They were free episodes on iTunes — thank you, Marketing Department!) and I ended up liking them way more than expected. There are…

Summer Movies in the Fall

I know that everyone’s probably seen these movies already (They were, after all, some of the biggest hits of the summer.), but now that some of these blockbusters are coming to iTunes, I have been able to catch up a bit (if you follow my blog, you should know that I’m always catching up with…

Fall TV 2015 – Week 1 New Shows

In keeping with this week where many season and series premieres have been so chock full of TV goodness that they needed to be split in two, I am also saving the new show premieres to be discussed in part two of my week one TV reviews! So here goes: Heroes Reborn I loved season one…

Fall TV 2015 – Week 1 Returning Shows

I love it when the networks premiere their seasons all at once. Previously they have tried spreading out the start of the season over months, but this year I can barely keep up with all the new and returning shows this week! Early reviews have not given Fall 2015 a good grade, but I think…

Summer 2015 Sci-fi & Fantasy capsule book reviews

I’ve been reading a number of books over the summer: tales of magical lawyers, medieval samurai, peculiar children, interplanetary missionaries, and blade-carrying death-gods really run the gamut, but sadly most of them have been disappointments. (Given that they all had good reviews out there, maybe it’s just me.) Nevertheless, I think they’re all worth checking…