Science Fiction

Super 8

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Super 8
  • IMDB: link

super8-posterWriter/director J.J. Abrams sets out to make his version of a classic Steven Spielberg film in Super 8. Those who expected a Cloverfield sequel (which it thankfully isn’t) may be disappointed. What we get instead is a little bit War of the Worlds, a little bit Close Encounters of the Third Kind, a little bit Jaws, and a whole lot of E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial – all filtered through J.J. Abrams lens-flare-filtered frame.

The story centers around a group of kids in a small Ohio town during the summer of 1979. In true Speilbergian fashion we get single parents, teasing shots of the film’s monster, and many, many reasons to be wary of the United States Government.

The film begins with a son (Joel Courtney) dealing with the tragic death of his mother. After a short jump ahead we see a snapshot of Joe’s (Courtney) life including his uneasy relationship to his father (Kyle Chandler), the town’s deputy sheriff, and time spent working with his friends to create an 8mm film.

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Star Wars: Jedi – The Dark Side #1

/ / Comics

star-wars-jedi-dark-side-1-coverFifty-three years before the Battle of Yavin, and twenty-one years before the events of Episode I: The Phantom Menace, the Jedi Council uncovers dark rumblings in the Outer Rim Territories.

Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn and his padawan Xantos (a noble of Telos IV) will be sent, along with Jedi Master Tahl and her padawan Orykan, to Xantos’ home planet to stop a political assassination and a conspiracy which threatens the lives of everyone on the planet.

This new series from writer Scott Allie and artist Mahmud Asrar will focus on Qui-Gon Jinn’s years working on the Outer Rim long before he would take on a padawan named Obi-Wan Kenobi. The first issue sets up the characters and situations which will play an integral part in the first five-issue story arc, but it doesn’t do much more than that. I also found Asrar’s art a bit sloppy in places. The close-ups of each character are very detailed and you can tell why he was chosen for the project, but the larger shots seem rushed and a little blurry. Hit-and-Miss.

[Dark Horse, $2.99]

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Doctor Who – The Curse of the Black Spot

/ / Television Reviews
  • Title: Doctor Who – The Curse of the Black Spot
  • tv.com: link

Although the Sixth Series has had a few memorable moments (such as the appearance of Richard Nixon and The Doctor’s new nickname for River Song), I’ve got to say it’s been largely a disappointment. The foreshadowing of the Doctor’s (Matt Smith) death and the malevolence of the Silence is the weakest intro to a season since the first two episodes that relaunched the series with Chrisopther Eccleston. I’ve been hoping things might pick up, but I’m afraid they’re getting worse.

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Source Code

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Source Code
  • IMDB: link

source-code-posterGroundhog Day meets Twelve Monkeys in this new tale of time travel and alternate realites from director Duncan Jones (Moon) and screenwriter Ben Ripley (Species: The Awakening).

Jake Gyllenhaal stars as Colter Stevens, a soldier who awakes in the body of a complete stranger eight minutes before the commuter train he’s riding is set to explode. Over the course of the film he will be slingshot back and forth from his reality, a small one-man pod set at an indeterminate time in the future, back into the train reliving these events over and over again.

While in the present his only contact will be with his command officers (Vera Farmiga, Jeffrey Wright) via cam. They won’t answer his questions. They only want his help. The bomber who blew up the train will attempt detonate an even larger bomb somewhere in downtown Chicago unless Stevens can identify him and give them the information need to stop him.

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