38/2022 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Cox again indulges in an adventure heavily reliant on references to past canon, but it works better here due to focusing primarily on three distinct TOS episodes, rather than peppering “remember when…” moments throughout.
🎥 Interview with the Vampire
Interview with the Vampire (1994): ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️: Hadn’t seen this one in decades, yet it still holds up quite well (though, while I’ve come to accept Cruise as Lestat, I still think Julian Sands would have been a better choice).
Difficult Listening Hour 2022.07.24
Unrehearsed, seat-of-the-pants, let’s-see-what-happens mixing. You never know what might fall into one of these!
Since temperatures are supposed to be in the ’90s this coming week, the first hour is songs from the ’90s with “heat”, “hot”, “fire”, or “sweat” in the title. Then a few more songs just because I wasn’t quite ready to shut down yet.
🎥 I Still Know What You Did Last Summer
I Still Know What You Did Last Summer (1998): ⭐️⭐️: Notably dumber than the first. Enjoyable if you’re in the mood for this sort of thing, but by no means good.
📚 Savage Trade by Tony Daniel
37/2022 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Another encounter with the Excalbians — those rock creatures who masqueraded as Abraham Lincoln and other historical characters. They’re back (as a new set of historical personages) and looking for asylum. A perfectly acceptable Trek adventure revisiting and re-exploring old adventures.
📚 The Rings of Time by Greg Cox
36/2022 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️
An entertaining adventure across two time periods, but sometimes I think Cox gets a little too clever with the constant references to other Trek adventures. Sometimes it’s fun fan service, but sometimes it’s nice just to read a story without a wink-and-a-nudge on every other page.
🎥 I Know What You Did Last Summer
I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997): ⭐️⭐️⭐️: I’d missed this one (the entire series, actually) until now. Exactly what I expected from a late-90s teen slasher film, it kept me entertained.
🎥 Geostorm
Geostorm (2017): ⭐️⭐️⭐️: This is a “big dumb disaster movie” three star rating, not a “serious cinematic work” three star rating. Starts off with a scenario that now seems sadly ridiculously optimistic (faced with disastrous climate change, the nations of the world actually work together to do something about it), and then gets progressively more ridiculous as it goes. But then, you don’t exactly go into a Dean Devlin disaster movie expecting serious consideration of highbrow topics, you go in to see shit get blown up real good. And on that level, it’ll do.
📚 The Snow Queen by Joan D. Vinge
35/2022 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 1981 Hugo Best Novel
Science fiction that somehow reads like fantasy (that’s not a complaint, to be clear). At times almost feels like a alternative take on Asimov’s Foundation universe, with a galaxy-spanning empire crumbling, and a repository of knowledge meant to rebuild civilization, only going in a somewhat different direction.
🎥 Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022): ⭐️⭐️⭐️: The parts of the movie that were standard MCU stuff were, well, standard MCU stuff — enjoyable, just what you expect, nothing groundbreaking one way or the other.
The parts of the movie that were Sam Raimi doing his thing with a ridiculous budget to play with were great.
The end result (for me, at least) is an above-average entry in the MCU canon.