News Around the Net!
#BringBackMST3k!! Joel Hodgman has launched a kickstarter to bring back Mystery Science Theatre 3000!! I’ve backed the project, I hope you all will too!
Prepare to lose your afternoon, comic-book fans. Alan Moore (author of Watchmen, V For Vendetta, From Hell, and so many other great works) answers a TON of questions in this great Q & A thread.
As the release of The Force Awakens draws ever closer, this in-depth interview with J.J.Abrams will help tide you over. (Nice to hear him admit to script problems on Super 8 and Star Trek Into Darkness.)
In other Star Wars news, you’ve gotta love this super-detailed fan theory laying out the case for Jar Jar being a trained force-user who was secretly behind all of the events of the prequels.
Sacha Baron Cohen & the great Mark Strong have fun with spy movie tropes in The Brothers Grimsby? Sign me up:
I wish Pixar would stick with creating original films rather than sequels, but it’s hard to feel too unhappy about this new teaser trailer for Finding Dory:
I’m also quite happy with the latest, most substantial look at Netflix’s upcoming Jessica Jones show, the adaptation of Brian Michael Bendis & Michael Gaydos’ phenomenal comic book series Alias. I am really hoping this doesn’t disappoint. We’ll know very soon!! This trailer is great:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3UYWK2jeX0
I don’t think I’ve written anything yet here about the news that a new Star Trek TV series is in the works! (Albeit one that won’t actually air on TV — it’ll only be available on CBS’ All Access digital subscription service.) I love the idea of a new Trek series, it is too-long in coming. Star Trek belongs on TV. But obviously my degree of excitement in this new venture will be determined by who is involved, and the subject matter of the show. (The most pressing question is not just the era of the show — Kirk’s era? Pre-Kirk? Next Generation era? Beyond Next Gen? — but rather the timeline. Will this new show be set in the timeline of the original Trek shows and movies, or the rebooted J.J. Abrams universe?) For the moment, the involvement of Alex Kurtzman (who co-wrote the terrible scripts for the two rebooted Trek films, as well as several of the abominable Transformers films) does not give me joy. But hope springs eternal. And as for the show’s only being available digitally, I am OK with that. I’ve long felt that CBS/Paramount should play to Trek’s built-in fanbase by using digital platforms to deliver new Trek shows to the fans. (Why not use a Netflix or Amazon model to help pay for the creation of an expensive sci-fi show?) If that’s what it takes to make a new show financially viable for CBS, I am OK with that. If the show is any good, fans like me will be willing to pay. (Devin Faraci has the best analysis of the new Trek series announcement that I have seen anywhere so far.)
Speaking of Trek, readers of this site know that I quite enjoy Pocket Books’ “expanded universe” (to borrow a Star Wars term) of Trek novels that take the stories and characters beyond the end of the shows and movies. The past decade of novels has created a wonderfully intricate epic of stories, a vast interconnected universe of characters and plot-lines that run from book to book. I love it. Unreality SF recently took a detailed look back at one of Pocket Books’ first experiments in a) taking the Trek story beyond the status quo left by the films and shows, and b) creating a large story-line to carry over multiple books. The “A Time To” series from a decade ago first took the Trek books beyond the events of Nemesis (the final official filmed adventure of the Next Gen gang). Great article about a great, ground-breaking series of books.
In a last bit of Trek business, this is a fun look back at Star Trek: First Contact from the folks at birth.movies.death. I like First Contact a lot, though I wish it wasn’t so filled with plot holes. But the Picard-Lily Moby Dick scene could be the greatest scene in any Star Trek show or movie. For more of my thoughts on First Contact, click here.
Also from birth.movies.death, this is a great look back at The Perks of Being a Wallflower. I didn’t know anything about the book when I first watched this movie a few years back during one of my end-of-the-year movie-watching binges. But the film hit me like a ton of bricks and I really fell in love with it. It’s one of my favorite coming-of-age movies of all time. Click here for my original review.
This is a fun look back at the surprising number of spy films that have been released in 2015. I agree that, to my astonishment, the latest Mission: Impossible installment was the best of the bunch! I can’t believe I wound up liking Rogue Nation far more than I did Spectre.
Back soon with more! Thanks for reading, everyone!