This might sound like an odd statement, but Ray Garton writes a pretty darn good “Buffy” novel despite having a tenuous grasp of the show. “Resurrecting Ravana” (2000), about an ancient Hindu demon that descends on Sunnydale (drawn by the Hellmouth, natch), is a good mystery yarn, and he makes sharp observations about the nature […]
Geek culture is indisputably mainstream today (as evidenced by the 57 superhero shows on TV), but that wasn’t always the case. So when did the transition happen? It was a gradual process, but I like to point to the game show “Beat the Geeks” (2001-02, Comedy Central) as a fulcrum. Like many great geeky things, […]
“American Vandal” – an eight-episode fictional docu-mystery that dropped last fall on Netflix – explores the snicker-worthy case of someone spray-painting penises on 27 cars. And to be sure, creators Dan Perrault and Tony Yacenda intend the straight-faced talk about “dicks” and “ball hairs” and “mushroom heads” to appeal to our inner juvenile comedian.
“Groundhog Day” (1993) is of course the touchstone of the “repeating the same day” genre, so when another film comes along with that premise, it’s intriguing, but it also gives me pause: Will it merely repeat “Groundhog Day” for a younger generation, or will it have something new to say? Available via Redbox and streaming, […]
Elisabeth Massie connects on some things and misses on others in her first and only entry in the “Buffy” young-adult line, “Power of Persuasion” (October 1999). When she lets the dialog flow naturally, we get witty exchanges. Joyce asks Buffy if that was Willow on the phone. Since Willow is possessed at the time, Buffy […]
“The Cloverfield Paradox” (which recently debuted on Netflix), the third installment of the loosely connected Cloververse saga, takes topical physics such as the recently discovered God Particle and the popular multiverse theory and smashes them into a movie that has little to do with science. Let’s just say it’s not going to pass muster with […]
Book review: We take a look at the source material for TV’s “Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams.”
I’ll have good things to write about Mel Odom’s Buffyverse work when I get to the “Angel” novels, but he makes an inauspicious debut with the young-adult entry “Unnatural Selection” (June 1999). It’s somewhat of a mystery story, which is rare among “Buffy” TV episodes, and there is a nice scene of Buffy and Angel […]
TV commentary: We compare two CW shows going through creative struggles.
TV review: Here are my rankings of the 10 episodes of the Amazon Prime series that adapts selected Philip K. Dick short stories.