Entertainment Archives · Link Parish

Remake, Reboot, or Rest in Peace? Soldier

Writer David Peoples gave us Blade Runner, Unforgiven, and 12 Monkeys. He and director Paul Anderson–Mortal Kombat, Event Horizon–delivered Soldier. Essentially Shane in Space, this Science Fiction, One Man Army actionfest starred Kurt Russell. Critics and audiences hated it. My…

Hooray for Hollywood

Sometimes Hollywood gets it wrong. Sometimes rather a lot really. Sometimes we do, too. Get things wrong. Growing up, I really really really wanted to be an astronaut. I knew the history of the space program, the good and the…

Crossing the Streams

If you’re fortunate, you love what you do for a living. If you’re truly fortunate, you’ll do what you do for a living… with geeks. A co-worker in my current digs knows that if they send a certain email, within…

Remake, Reboot, or Rest in Peace? Dragonriders of Pern Game

For over thirty years, master storyteller Anne McCaffrey entertained us with her epic science fantasy series the Dragonriders of Pern. The settings intrigued us, the characters grabbed us, and the stories–oh the stories. Two trilogies initially, two short story collections…

Fakereals, Realfakes

“We all know synthespians are coming. Very soon we will reach a point when we switch on a television or a computer, see an actor or newscaster, and not know if they are flesh and blood and what’s more… not…

Punk Punk. Who’s There?

“Something Is Broken in Our Science Fiction. Why can’t we move past cyberpunk?” That’s the title of a Lee Konstantinou Future Tense article Slate ran in January. The entire article is worth a read. But for me the precious metal…

State of Fury

What’s better than having a superhero hail from your hometown? Having the coolest man alive hail from there. Ah yup. Well, a character he plays, at least. Thank you Marvel for the shout-out. The good people of Huntsville, Alabama, home…

Quoth the Raven, Ever Noir

“The most American film genre, because no society could have created a world so filled with doom, fate, fear and betrayal, unless it were essentially naive and optimistic.” Those are the words of the late Roger Ebert, critic, historian, journalist,…

Remake, Reboot, or Rest in Peace? Dollhouse

Dollhouse was called “The best action show on network television” It was. They said “The Actives are all young hot women.” They weren’t. Fans complained “Fox is marketing this thing like it is Cathouse.” Fox was. Picture the ‘Eliza Dushku…

No Such Thing

…As bad publicity. In 1946, Kirkus Reviews described Halldor Laxness’s Independent People as “A sprawling, unselective, overlong… A bleak and bitter book, with little to interest or attract the American reader.” In 1955 Laxness took home the Nobel Prize in…

Category: Entertainment