Author Archives: JD DeLuzio

Spider-man swinging out of the MCU?

Just when it looked like Disney and Marvel Studios had all of their Marvel Toys back, Sony has rejected a new deal that would have seen the profits between the two studios split more equitably– that is, Disney would have received a bigger percentage. At present, it appears that Sony will be continuing on their own with Spider-man, leaving him out of the official MCU films.

Of course, with the kind of money that might be made, and Sony’s shaky track record with the Web-slinger, expect twists and updates to this story.

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2019 Hugo Awards

The 2019 Hugos were awarded on the weekend at 77th World SF Con in Dublin, Ireland.


Video courtesy of orbzine

The two winners everyone wants to know: Best novel went to Mary Robinette Kowal’s The Calculating Stars which we reviewed here (I was, to be honest, lukewarm on it, though it has a great premise) and Spider-man: Into the Spider-verse, which we reviewed positively here won for Best Dramatic Presentation, Longform.

You may find the others at the link in the first sentence, or below.

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Summer Review: When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth (1970)

It wouldn’t be summer without some Weekend Reviews of older films, classic, curious, or forgotten, of interest to the Bureau. This 1970 creature feature follows up Hammer’s better-known One Million Years BC. It’s not as celebrated as that film, but it’s better than Hammer’s other quaintly ridiculous “Cave Man Pictures”—and it exists in both family-friendly and slightly more adult variants.

And these old features come, after all, the closest SF usually gets to a beach movie.

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Summer Reading: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

The small beam of white light shone steadily into the left eye of Rachael Rosen, and against her cheek the wire-mesh disk adhered. She seemed calm.

We find ourselves a week into August and we haven’t run a Summer Review of a classic SF novel. So, if you’re heading out to do some sunlit reading and you’ve never scoped the novel that inspired Blade Runner (a movie set in 2019!), consider, between Pan-Galactic sips from a plastic cup, trying to answer Philip K. Dick’s lingering question, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

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Movie Review: Once Upon A Time in Hollywood

Alternate history is SF, right? In Quentin Tarantino’s lastest film, we have a meandering story about a fading actor, which then turns into alternative history and a movie about, I suppose, movies. It is also the first Tarantino film I’ve seen in the movie theatre (rather than at home) since Kill Bill, Volume 2. What I like about Tarantino’s work I rather like in this movie. What I don’t like about his work I really don’t like in this movie.

Back to Hollywood, then, fifty years ago….

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Novel Review: Black Leopard, Red Wolf

If you encounter any discussion of Man Booker1 prize-winner Marlon James’s recent fantasy novel, you will hear two things: one, that it’s a sort of Game of Thrones set in Africa, and two, that the description doesn’t really do justice to it. In any case, the noteworthy novel represents the first part of The Dark Star Trilogy.

It’s a very dark start, with frequent graphic violence, sex, and sexual violence.

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Weekend Review– Stranger Things, Season Three: Episodes 3-8

We reviewed the first two episodes of Stranger Things, Season Three, when they dropped July 4, and promised a revisiting a the entire show once everyone had the chance to see it. Alas, we’re a little late on delivery, as we’re now in the final weekend of July, but I suppose that means everyone has had a chance to watch.

It’s July of 1985, the Cold War continues, and dark things burble beneath Hawkins, Indiana.

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