C.S. Lewis, in his essay on Science Fiction, writes that you cannot adequately critique something unless you like it. Only a fan of a genre can distinguish the strong from the weak examples of that genre. Otherwise you are criticizing science fiction for not being drama, or whatever, not analyzing its quality as science fiction. I don't phrase ( Read more... )

We've started getting in on seeing free pre-screenings of upcoming movies. This is precisely the opposite of what we normally do with seeing movies 3-6 months late at the Dollar Theater, but it's been a lot of fun. It's like being in a secret club, the test case for all these things. It's like someone cares about my opinion ( Read more... )

This evening we tried to go down to see the closing night of the Barber of Seville at Shakespeare in the Park, but it got rained out. So we went and saw Falcon Is Basically Awesome the Winter Soldier at the dollar theater instead. All of my thoughts about this movie are about Sam Wilson. And really they come down to Sam Wilson is basically ( Read more... )

So. Still watching the movie. We're halfway through. Nothing has happened. Well, a console exploded at Chekov. Then he got better. Ayyup ( Read more... )

So Tuesday Night is Date Night at the Dollar Theater. But now we play D&D on Tuesdays, so Monday Night is Date Night! And the second Hobbit movie was finally flat enough and cheap enough for us to go see. WOOHOO!

Well, I say WooHoo...and I mostly mean WooHoo, but golly, that movie gave me so much approval whiplash. It would go from Awesome to ( Read more... )

GUYS I TOTALLY WATCHED THE WRATH OF KHAN TODAY.

Spoiler: IT WAS AWESOME.

So I had scene it before. Which just meant that I picked up on all the massive massive foreshadowing, and got super wibbly in the beginning of the movie. "You're supposed to be dead." Gah, right in the proverbial feels.

I was overwhelmingly impressed by how good the ( Read more... )

So, I finally saw Captain America. It's funny because his name is Steve. (hee hee hee...Steve).

Guys, I am such a sucker for stasis plots. You have no idea. Almost as much as doomed time-travel plots. (The Merlin subplot in "Battlefield" is both) Now, I knew this was gonna be a stasis plot going in, because I'd seen the Avengers. But still ( Read more... )

Tuesday night is Dollar Theater Night! Admittedly, today is Monday, but the principle holds ( Read more... )

Happy New Year's, one and all! If anybody challenges you to a mutual decapitation contest, don't do itHad a huuuuuuuge Japanese feast today with the fambly (including the baaaaaaaaaaaaby), then watched "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy." That was...narratively difficult to follow ( Read more... )

So I finished the Hobbit today! Have you guys ever stopped to marvel that a book like that - a fairy tale for children and High Fantasy at its best - includes both Geopolitical Consequences and the Common Cold? When do you ever see disease in fiction that isn't plague? Give me an example of "and then this character was a bit under the weather ( Read more... )