Tag Archive: science fiction
Eric San Juan
April 11, 2016
And it starts in five minutes. Something came over me the other day. It might have been Netflix suddenly throwing Trek in my face. Maybe it’s the result of a space slug crawling into my ear. Don’t know. Whatever it was, it resulted in a feeling I’ve pretty much never had in my life: “I should watch some Star Tek – and a LOT of it!” If that sounds like a knock on Star Trek, it’s not. Rather, it’s just to say that I’ve never been anything more than a vaguely casual Star Trek fan. I watched most of the original series as a kid, saw many seasons of The Next Generation and one or two of Deep Space Nine with my old man, saw…
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Eric San Juan
December 18, 2015
Technically, I wrote this review 10 years ago for a site called DVDinmyPants.com. That site is long gone, though (you can only find it on the Wayback Machine), and since this is the greatest review in the history of film reviews (and also because of Star Wars mania right now), I’m reposting it here. It’s purposely over the top, but also completely sincere: The Empire Strikes Back Let’s cut right to the chase: I fall into the camp that declares The Empire Strikes Back the best of the Star Wars films. Which means I also fall into the camp of people who actually have an opinion regarding what the best Star Wars film is. Which means some of you are probably surfing off to another page…
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Eric San Juan
December 17, 2015
A movie comes out today, a small little thing that may have slipped past your notice. A few people might go and see it. The release of the first new Star Wars movie in many years makes today something of a geek holiday, but amid all the glee and celebrating the movie is going to be something else. Something far less positive: incessant bitching about what an awful person George Lucas is. Because on the Internet, no mention of Star Wars is complete without also mentioning how George Lucas, the man who created Star Wars, ruined everything you hold dear by being the worst person in the world. I’d say that has gotten old, but it got old years ago. Instead, I’ll say that it’s…
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Eric San Juan
October 4, 2011
Science fiction is great, a genre associated with lasers and spaceships by the general populace but which historically has done a remarkable job of exploring big questions about who we are, why we’re here, and what we can accomplish as a species. The “science” part of the equation can be pesky, though. As our scientific understanding of the universe advances, stories that once seemed rooted in a potential reality — say, the existence of intelligent life elsewhere in our solar system — can now seem dated, quaint, or downright silly. So with that in mind, this blog post poses an interesting question: Are ‘Golden Age’ stories too dated and is it worth it to recommend Heinlein, Asimov, etc. to the new SF reader? The answer…
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Eric San Juan
October 30, 2010
We’ll cap off this Halloween season foray into public domain horror films tomorrow with the biggest classic of the classics, but for now let’s just have fun with the schlocky B-movie fun of The Brain That Wouldn’t Die, a 1962 flick about a doctor who keeps his girlfriend’s decapitated head alive and goes in search of a body to attach it to. Two of the characters in this movie are billed as “Blonde Stripper” and “Brunet Stripper,” so you know this is good cinema. Oh yeah. It’s in the public domain, so check it out: The movie is freely and legally available for download here, though I can’t vouch for the quality.
