I recently published a blog piece celebrating my fiftieth year on the planet. In the article, I wrote about the books I read as a child under the age of ten. The intention was twofold: to inform people about the books that inspired a young boy to take on the monumental goal of writing science fiction thrillers (a task which took decades to achieve), and to implore parents to always buy books for their children.
It’s no secret that for BioWare there’s a lot riding on this game. After MASS EFFECT: ANDROMEDA many saw ANTHEM as the new IP that would reinvigorate BioWare. The company and hundreds of game developers spent six years on ANTHEM, and bugs and critical reviews have plagued it following its initial release as a demo. I played the demo and had fun, however, so I purchased the game. There were enough bright spots in the demo to encourage me to trust BioWare.
This week, speculative fiction blog Aurelia Leo published an article I wrote on legendary SF director John Carpenter. Over the decades I’ve searched out any property I could find that Carpenter has directed. Find my thoughts on many of his SF films at the link, including THEY LIVE, PRINCE OF DARKNESS, THE THING, and ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK.
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Over at Speculative Chic they’ve posted an article I wrote about the Science Fiction books and movies that I love most featuring the oceans. They helped inspire me to write THE WAR BENEATH. Some of them are novels from the tail end of the Golden Age of Science Fiction.
The Best Science Fiction Movies of the 1970’sI should clarify that a film’s presence on this blog post is entirely subjective based on my experiences growing up. These were my creative formative years, during which I was discovering genre books, television shows, and movies. I was born in 1970, so really the 80’s were my true introduction to Science Fiction Horror, Thriller and Adventure — books by Asimov and Crichton and films by Cameron, Spielberg, Carpenter, and Verhoeven — but the 1970’s played a huge role in my love for the genre. Detroit Channel 7 broadcast most of the films I saw. Many had poor effects, but the stories were so powerful and the actors so committed that the movies rose above the rest of the stories that were available at the time. The themes were relevant, the plots compelling and interesting, all the base human emotions like revenge and lust and greed and hate were on full display, they spoke of issues that people dealt with every day, and they featured powerful scores and incredible directing. They were gripping.
STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS
(Previously Published at TrekWeb on 18 May 2013)
Format: Digital 2D
Studio: Paramount
Director: J.J. Abrams
Writers: Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman, Damon Lindelof
Rating of STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS: 9/10
Rating of STAR TREK (2009): 9.5/10
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The Best Movie Sequels of All TimeBefore I begin, here are a few basic facts about me that you might already know by now:
I love movies.
I love genre movies — thrillers, action, adventure, horror, science fiction.
I love sagas, series, and trilogies. Call them what you want; I love to revisit characters and storylines that captivated my attention in the first film.
The Greatest Trifectas in (Recent) Film History by TSJWhile writing the blog entry “Where Has the Character-Driven Action Film Gone?” (found here) I mentioned the idea of a trifecta — or “triple” — in film history. There are few directors who can create successful film after successful film. Having one critical and commercial hit is difficult enough. Having two in a row is even harder. And three? Nearly unheard of.
I decided to create a list of the greatest triples in film history. Even the concept seemed absurd, however — what gives me the right to create such a list? Who am I to say one director created a “better” trifecta than another? Moreover, how does one define success or failure in the creative/artistic industry? Sometimes a box office hit can be a critical failure, or vice versa. Well, to be blunt, this is my blog. I’ll write what I want. However, to identify triples and narrow the field it was necessary to create a list of criteria that I would follow.
People often ask me about my favorite movies. I try to watch a lot of thrillers and horror, especially in the Science Fiction genre, I like to talk about movies, and I enjoy reviewing great ones on my blog. So, I figured that this might be a good place to write an article about my top three films of all time.
Counting down from Three to One …
ALIEN ISOLATION is an incredible game. It’s dark and moody and genuinely terrifying.
These days I don’t have much time for video games, but when I do play, I choose ones that fall into the genres that I love: Science Fiction, Horror, Mystery and Thriller. I play on the X-Box, mostly because when the Nintendo-64 was retired, the original X-Box was the console with the most familiar controller and the game most similar to GOLDENEYE and PERFECT DARK — that game was HALO. (I just never got into the Sony Playstation — though I loved playing TWISTED METAL 2, 3 and 4, as well as METAL GEAR SOLID.) Some of the titles I’ve played in the past few years include BIOSHOCK, FALLOUT 3, and the DEADSPACE series.