Christopher Golden delivers the first masterpiece of the “Buffy” adult novel line with “Spike and Dru: Pretty Maids All in a Row” (October 2000), the second hardcover in the series. The best, and least handcuffed parts, of Golden’s previous works (both solo and when writing with Nancy Holder) had been the centuries-spanning backstories of the […]
This series celebrates 50 years of the “Planet of the Apes” film franchise. Here, we look back at the second film in the original series. Despite common misconception, “Planet of the Apes” (1968) does not reveal that nuclear warfare knocked the humans back a peg; that’s what Taylor (Charlton Heston) guesses, but it’s not confirmed […]
Christopher Golden is arguably the elite “Buffy”/“Angel” spinoff writer, but the early issues of Dark Horse’s classic “Angel” series prove he’s not infallible. I assume he wasn’t given enough time to get a good feel for the Angel-Cordelia-Doyle dynamic, because Issues 1-7 – which comprise the entire Doyle era of the series – mostly rely […]
This series celebrates 50 years of the “Planet of the Apes” film franchise. Here, we look back at director Tim Burton’s re-imagining of the material for his 2001 film. Screenwriters William Broyles Jr., Lawrence Konner and Mark Rosenthal shake out the puzzle pieces of the 1968 “Planet of the Apes” screenplay and Pierre Boulle’s 1963 […]
John Passarella makes a strong Buffyverse debut (he’d go on to write two “Angel” novels) with “Ghoul Trouble” (October 2000). Set in the spring semester of Season 3, this young-adult entry has a lot of elements that feel like a standalone TV episode, notably a band called Vyxn that plays a five-night stand at the […]
“The Greatest Showman” (2017), now available for home viewing, takes us back to a time when anything is possible if you dream big and are persistent. Did such a time ever exist? That’s beside the point, as is what happened behind the scenes at Phineas Barnum’s circuses. (Don’t do an extensive internet search if you […]
This series celebrates 50 years of the “Planet of the Apes” film franchise. For this post, though, I’m taking a step further back and looking at Pierre Boulle’s 1963 novel. Pierre Boulle’s 1963 novel “Planet of the Apes” is one of the classic “books that are better than the movie,” but it still gets lost […]
Remember that time in Season 3 when Buffy fought a bunch of Tyrannosaurus rexes? Well, it happened, if you count the books as canonical. In “Paleo” (September 2000), which is set at the start of the spring semester of senior year (I’d place it just before “Gingerbread,” 3.11), three baby T-rexes and a timimus get […]
Movie review: This Snyder-Whedon mash-up works as a theme park ride.
Earlier this decade, Ernest Cline pulled off a remarkable feat: He got seemingly everyone who grew up in the 1980s to read his very first novel, “Ready Player One” (2011). Friends who never talked about books told me to read “Ready Player One.” Friends who claimed they never read books told me I’d love “Ready […]