I’ve been an admirer of the tiny giant, June Foray, from the time I was able to read the end credits on the cartoons. She was not only one of the greatest voice actors ever, she was also a wonderful, warm and gracious lady. Last week, she passed away at the age of 99.
Fans often grump that today’s pop culture is awash in reboots, remakes, sequels, and continuations… but is that always bad? Here are a few that improved on the original.
We’ve received the sad news that actor Adam West passed away on June 9th after a battle with leukemia. He was 88 years old, and is survived by his wife Marcelle, six children, five grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren. Like all of you reading this, we here at the Atomic Junk Shop were fans of Mr. West, so we thought he deserved an Atomic Roundtable where we talked about Mr. West, his career, and our personal memories of him.
Today, I take a look at what I call The Goldblum Effect. Why no, I don’t have much to do, why do you ask?
I bet you thought Star Wars Day was May 4, right? That silly pun has gotten most of the attention, but given the significance of the day this year, we’re going to go ahead and celebrate the real Star Wars Day. Forty years ago today, May 25, 1977, was the world premiere of Star Wars (renamedStar Wars Episode 1: A New Hope when it was re-released in 1981), the movie that introduced the world to Jedi and Sith, droids and wookiees, Han Solo and the Force. It also sold a whole lot of theater tickets and toys.
A couple of weeks ago I spent a Monday evening at the world premiere screening of the National Geographic Channel’s first scripted series, Genius, followed by a pretty elaborate cocktail party at which I almost met Ron Howard, Geoffrey Rush and Vincent Kartheiser. But we’ll get to that.
Michael Eury’s new book is HERO-A-GO-GO: CAMPY COMIC BOOKS, CRIMEFIGHTERS & CULTURE OF THE SWINGING SIXTIES, and it’s all about the Camp Craze of the 1960s, when EVERYONE, thanks to Batman and James Bond, was a superhero, a swinging secret agent, or BOTH. Here’s what Michael had to say about the project…
