I had to have one of my regular blood tests today. After checking in, I sat in the waiting room. Opposite me was a TV tuned to the Fox network. A talk show called Wendy was just starting. Apparently a feature of the show was Wendy going over the recent news, with the studio audience applauding, cheering,…
I went to a screening of Incredibles 2 tonight. I walked into the theater about five minutes before the scheduled start. The screen was blank. That's a bit unusual these days, but it was an IMAX screen; I figured that perhaps they didn't have any commercial fluff that was in IMAX format. The starting time of the…
This is not a review. There will be no spoilers. I had not intended to see The Last Jedi on its opening day. I anticipated the theaters would be jammed. Also, there were was a lot scheduled at work both today (Thursday) and tomorrow (Friday), including a #ScienceOnHudson talk and the lab's holiday party. Just as I…
This is one of those "Oh! I just watched this incredible thing and I gotta tell you about it!" posts. If you're feeling a bit media-saturated and would rather just wait until the female Doctor is unveiled in the next Christmas special, I'll understand if you want to skip this post. So: Sense8 is the series that…
This past weekend I turned on my HBO subscription in order to watch Game of Thrones. It gave me the opportunity to binge-watch another HBO series, Westworld. I have mixed feelings about the series. As I'd heard, the show has a narrative complexity and messes around with the viewers' perceptions in an intriguing way. This sustained the…
There's a lot of good television becoming available right now (e.g., American Gods and Doctor Who). There's one more show that's a bit harder to find in the US that I'd like to bring to your attention. The Hollow Crown is a British TV series that presents Shakespeare's cycle of plays on the events that led to…
I recently tweeted “Just finished watching “It’s a Wonderful Life”. Gosh, it’s dusty in here.” So here’s my list of movies at which I’m certain to tear up, no matter how many times I’ve seen them. For most, the big emotional reaction is at the end, but there are a couple of exceptions.
My take on "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" matches that of most of the reviews I've seen: this isn't the best of the series (I'd pick The Empire Strikes Back); this isn't the worst of the series (tie between The Phantom Menace and The Return of the Jedi). This is a Star Wars movie, picking up the…
As a grade-B horror comedy with well-known actors, maybe I should cut this film some slack. As someone who LARPed for 12 years, I can’t. The story of Knights of Badassdom may be new to the general public, but it’s overly familiar to any LARPer, RPG gamer, or SF fan: what if a group of role-players actually…
Edit: In the four years since I wrote this post, I've offered its link to many folks who expressed an interest in Classic Doctor Who. Over time, this post became a bit obsolete: The current Doctor Who series has increased its references to the classic series; previously "lost" serials have been recovered and are worth including. In…