Went to see Harry Potter And The Order of the Phoenix last night and enjoyed it. Best film so far for me. The acting was better across the board, all of the big three (Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint) turn in good performances with fewer of the big reveal faces that feature heavily in [...]

Ok, I have a nerd confession. I have never loved Transformers. Didn’t watch the cartoons, never had the dolls. That said the new Transformers movie is pretty good. Nobody is going to call it the thinking man’s science fiction film, but it is a very good summer movie with characters you don’t immediately loath and [...]

If anyone ever wonders why I aspire to being an evil genius this story is the exact sort of thing that warms my heart.
Via Old is the New New

I loved Brazil, it is easily one of my top ten films. The movie is an Orwellian look into an England where the big brother society has crept in through regulation, paranoia and bureaucracy… hmmm nah, I don’t see that happening anywhere do you? The hero of the movie gets into trouble when he has [...]

Went and saw 300 tonight. I enjoyed it, but it left me feeling I had just watched the best propaganda movie for an evil nation ever produced. This movie would have made any Nazi film maker feel proud. I had the graphic novel years ago and the look of the movie is a brilliant take [...]

Dr Ray Stantz: Personally, I liked the university. They gave us money and facilities, we didn’t have to produce anything! You’ve never been out of college! You don’t know what it’s like out there! I’ve *worked* in the private sector. They expect *results*.
Bonus: The World Reacts!

I am a huge Godzilla fan but I am always surprised to meet people who treat the films too seriously.  They are great fun, who doesn’t love watching a guy in a ruber suit stomp a city? Anyway here is a good article on the problems a real Godzilla would face. Doesn’t spoil my fun [...]

As a follow up to the piece on Cartoon Animal Biology here is a paper on B Movie Monster Biology. What a great week to be a biologist! Now we need an article on the biology of man eating squirrels and we will have a trifecta!
Via Slashdot

So I went off to a science fiction convention this weekend for the first time in a looooong time. I saw a notice that my favorite author would be at Balticon there and I saw that I would be back in the US for the weekend so I went ahead and prebooked tickets.

May 25th: Today in 1977 the first of the two Star Wars movies opened. I remember it very well, saw it on opening day with a friend who was also into comics. We were both comics fans and had bought the whole comic adaptation but neither of us had read the last issues as we [...]