Celebrating the Unpopular Arts
 

Month: April 2018

Jim MacQuarrie, Movies, Review

‘Avengers: Infinity War’ – Spoiler-Free Review

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Marvel decided to throw themselves a birthday party, and they invited everybody! Avengers: Infinity War puts the cap on 10 years of Marvel movies and sets the stage for many more to come. Bringing together the Avengers, Guardians of the Galaxy, Dr. Strange, Black Panther, and the people of Wakanda to fight the greatest menace the universe has ever faced, the film does an amazing job of juggling multiple intersecting storylines and enough characters to fill a Greyhound bus.

Jim MacQuarrie, Movies, Rummaging & Ruminating, Science Fiction

‘Battle Beyond the Stars’ – The ‘Citizen Kane’ of Schlock Sci-fi

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When Star Wars exploded on movie screens in 1977, it elevated sci-fi out of the low-budget B-movie ghetto in a way that 2001: A Space Odyssey and Planet of the Apes had tried to do and didn’t quite achieve. While those two films had the spectacular visuals, humanist allegories, and deep thoughts about the meaning of man, they lacked the slam-bang action of a great 1940s Flash Gordon movie. Star Wars showed that people would go for big dumb fun, and the race was on for the next one. In the years that followed, many studios attempted to join the “Me Too” Chorus, with Star Trek grabbing the high-end market and the original Battlestar Galactica locking up the TV audience. The low end was filled with cheesy movies featuring clumsy alien make-up and iffy blue-screen effects. 30-odd years later, one movie stands above them all as the greatest film in the crowded “cheap Star Wars knockoff” genre: ‘Battle Beyond the Stars.’

Books, Comics, Comics Culture, Science Fiction

Byron Preiss: An Appreciation

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Byron Preiss was a writer, compiler, editor and publisher of science fiction, fantasy, horror, and graphic novels. As a fan of those genres, as well as comics and pulp fiction, among other things, he tried to innovate ways to present and publish similar materials for a wider reading public – something he did throughout his life.