While viewers discusses the merits of the latest installment in the Star Wars saga, a recent video-essay tackles a long-debated question: was the original film (and by extension, the saga) saved by spectacular editing?
Author Archives: JD DeLuzio
Disney acquires Fox
In a long-negotiated deal, Disney will acquire Twenty-first Century Fox. This means a few things: Disney now controls even more of the media landscape, and the X-Men and Fantastic Four now belong to Marvel Studios.
The Star Wars we never saw: Fan Trailer
Students at the Visual Effects students at the DAVE school in Florida have created a trailer for The Star Wars, using Ralph McQuarrie’s original designs and Lucas’s earlier concepts.
The Star Wars: Concept Trailer from The DAVE School on Vimeo.
‘Oumuamua back in the news: do aliens approach? And what will NASA be announcing today?
Astronomers identified Oumuamua, the cigar-shaped extrasolar object passing through our solar system, back in October. More recently, it has made the news because its unusual qualities make for cool sensationalist headlines. Stephen Hawking, et al have not actually said the thing is an alien craft, and probably aren’t betting it is, but its unusual shape and nature mean that scientists have to check all possibilities.
It’s more likely just an unusually-shaped asteroid from another system.
Or a space whale. It could totally be a space whale, right?
In an unrelated development, NASA will make an announcement later today regarding the Kepler Space Telescope and its ongoing scanning of the galaxy for signs of inhabited planets.
UPDATE: With Google-based “machine intelligence” helping to analyse the Kepler data, NASA confirms an eighth planet in the Kepler-90 system, making it the first to tie our system in the number of known planets.
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Review: Crisis on Earth X, Parts One and Two
The most ambitious (thus far) of the CSDCTVU crossovers takes place this week. ‘’ll be reviewing the first two eps here; Lex Pendragon will take over with Parts Three and Four.
The Big Day arrives for Barry and Iris. Several invitees encounter trouble getting to town. Two guests are squabbling, while two others have a too-public debate about their relationship. One guest acts like a drunken obnoxious doof. Two others drink a little too much and wake up in bed together.
In short, it begins like every wedding ever—until the point where it resembles every superhero wedding ever, and Nazis, accompanied by alt-reality versions of some familiar heroes, crash the party at the most predictable point imaginable….
Novel Review: Meddling Kids
“Gentlemen. I staged a haunting in an old mansion and dressed myself as a giant salamander to scare people away. I was captured by four teenagers and a Weimaraner. And I am sixty. Do you seriously believe I pose a threat to anyone?”
Edgar Cantero revisits the teen detective genre, as the damaged, now-adult members of the Blyton Summer Detective Club, and their dog’s grandson, return to face the thing they’d left undone. Because that wasn’t just Old Man Wickley in a costume that last summer, years ago; something stirs beneath the earth, a chthonic thing filled with evil intention, and it might get away with it, too, despite the best effort of these young meddlers.
Discussion: Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams
Has anyone been watching this high-production anthology series, which first became available in September? This is the place for comments and discussion.
Supergirl Review: “Midvale”
This week, our random DCWBTV review looks at Smallville Midvale Supergirl. The series took an entertaining and divergent road trip in which the main cast scarcely appear at all, young Alex and Kara play Nancy Drew, and Chloe Sullivan helps save the day.
Discovery Review: “Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum” and “Into the Forest I Go”
The last two episodes take the Discovery where no one has gone before…. And we won’t know where that might be until January.
Future Franchise Deals and Discussions with Disney
If you haven’t already heard, Rian Johnson will be overseeing an entirely new Star Wars trilogy, set in some other corner of a galaxy far, far away. Buzz holds that it might not even shoehorn in connections to every existing character.
Talks have stalled, but Disney and Fox continue to discuss a deal that would bring Marvel properties such as the X-Men and the Fantastic Four back under the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s control.
If this happens, should the mutants and heroes rejoin? Or stay in their own universes? And will we finally get a good FF film?