The New Yorker: Into Darkness a ‘Drone Allegory?’
The New Yorker featured an interesting essay today titled “Is ‘Star Trek Into Darkness’ a Drone Allegory?” The essay dovetails with some of my criticism of the film shared in a previous post. In particular, this essay by Amy Davidson notes that in addressing counter-terrorism issues the setup in the movie has promise, but in [...]
Star Trek: Into Darkness – An Action Film in a Space Suit Void of the Best of Science Fiction
Star Trek: Into Darkness came out this weekend, and as a result reviews have been varied. By and large they seem to be very positive, not only from moviegoers, but also from critics, although there have been some reviews that have been very negative. Unfortunately, with this post I must contribute to the latter category [...]
The Walking Dead Continues to Wrestle with Darabont’s Ethical Concerns
After Frank Darabont’s unexpected and sudden departure from The Walking Dead at the beginning of production for Season 2 many fans wondered and worried whether the quality of the writing for the program would be compromised. Although some have expressed concerns about the allegedly slow pacing of this season in contrast with the first (a [...]
Alien Impregnation in Science Fiction: The Mystical Pregnancy Trope
I recently shared this interesting video snippet at the TheoFantastique Facebook group page and thought it was worth including here. This piece was brought to my attention through Sociological Images in a piece titled “Pregnancy Porn: Alien Impregnation in Science Fiction.” The piece originally comes from Feminist Frequency: Conversations with Pop Culture. This feminist critique [...]
Science Fiction and the Parasitic Human
Recently James Lee made national headlines when he entered the Discovery Channel building, took hostages, and threatened to kill them and blow up the building. Thankfully the situation ended with the hostages escaping unharmed and the only loss of life came with the gunman at the hands of law enforcement. In the wake of the [...]
Barack Obama: The Twilight Zone Revisited
As the nation continues to debate the health care reform bill, now the law of the land, it is interesting to recall one of the more curious aspects of the legislation. During the debate as Democrats rallied votes within their own party to pass the bill, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi made the strange [...]
AVATAR: Probing Beyond Visuals to Culture and Identity
My latest article for Cinefantastique Online is now available at this link, a review and commentary on AVATAR. Following is an excerpt: In regards to Na’vi religion, some commentators have referred to it as pantheism, but this is technically inaccurate. The Na’vi believe that Eywa, the divine “All Mother,” is connected to and in some [...]
The Dark Knight: Batman, Bush, and the American Conscience
I admit that when it comes to being able to take in the latest box office happenings I am often late to the party. Time and budgetary restraints mean that I usually take in recent films as they come out on DVD. Thankfully the lag between box office and DVD debuts are shrinking these days. [...]
