I decided to wait until after the second episode to give my impressions of “Almost Human” (7 p.m. Central Mondays on Fox), because Sunday’s pilot was simultaneously confusing and lacking in new (or even new-ish) ideas. Fox’s latest attempt at an expensive sci-fi franchise — following the likes of the quickly canceled “Terra Nova” and the longer-running […]
The latest Star Wars Insider (No. 145) noted that libertarian writer L. Neil Smith was asked by Lucasfilm to keep politics out of his Lando Calrissian trilogy, which — as I noted in my review of “Lando Calrissian and the Mindharp of Sharu” — was an odd request considering that Lando displays the libertarian trait […]
Like his 2009 sci-fi classic “District 9,” “Elysium” has the distinct dystopian touch of writer-director Neill Blomkamp: Slums surrounded by desert wastelands, futuristic weapons and gadgets encrusted in grime and blood, and a sweaty everyman hero who has a chance to change the course of human history for the better.
Princess Leia has enjoyed the spotlight this year as the new “Star Wars” ongoing comic series and the novel “Razor’s Edge” have explored her exploits in the early days of the Rebellion. All of this calls to mind a 1995 story that trod similar ground: The four-issue Dark Horse comic series “River of Chaos.”
I was too young to read the 1970s and ’80s “Star Wars” spinoff novels when they came out, but those seven books sat in my childhood collection just the same. I read “Splinter of the Mind’s Eye” and the “Han Solo Adventures” in high school, but I didn’t get around to the “Lando Calrissian Adventures” […]
Writer-director Gavin Hood, best known for helming 2009’s “X-Men Origins: Wolverine,” does a wonderfully faithful job of adapting Orson Scott Card’s 1985 sci-fi masterpiece “Ender’s Game” to the big screen while also keeping things entertaining. It’s been awhile since I read the book, but the film seems to hit all the same beats and themes, and it […]
Michael Stackpole and Timothy Zahn are the two authors who introduced the most important and iconic EU characters in the 1990s, but ranking a close third is Kevin J. Anderson. While he’s not in the same league as the others as a writer, there’s no denying that his creation of Luke’s Yavin IV Jedi Academy […]
TV review: It’s about a mother and daughter, but also so much more as Amy Sherman-Palladino breaks through with a hit.
Having been swept up by the Luke-Callista romance introduced at the end of “Children of the Jedi,” it was with some optimism that I gave Kevin J. Anderson’s “Darksaber” (1995) another chance, despite my negative opinion of the “Jedi Academy Trilogy” (which I also recently reviewed). I especially looked forward to re-reading the Return to Hoth segment, a short horror story […]
‘Star Wars’ flashback (Comic book review): The wedding of Luke and Mara might seem like a big deal, but this bland story gives us little to celebrate.