Sunday, June 25, 2023

Another Take on the Cult of Celebrity

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My usual first thought regarding the cult of celebrity is its foolishness--and the second, its essential backwardness, reflecting as it does...

Remembering Spin City

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Recently considering the politically "safe" character of the '90s-era sitcom I found myself recalling the sitcom Spin City , p...

Nineteen Eighty-Nine and the Way the Summer Box Office Used to Be

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Recently I remembered here the year 1989 at the box office--both the hype that surrounded it, and the ways in which that year did anticipate...

Is the World Already Crawling With Artificial Super-Intelligences?

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Amid the present furor over progress in the area of chatbot development many a commentator is raising the tired old specter of inhuman intel...

H.G. Wells' "Bookish Illiteracy"

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In his Experiment in Autobiography there is a point at which H.G. Wells suggests that the "caricature-individualities" of his rea...

On Longtime Fans

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I remember how when I first started to look into science fiction seriously, and read some of the history and criticism of the field in the c...

Remember When They Thought the Action Film Was Dying Out?

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Probably not. But that was the way the entertainment press was talking circa 1990, believe it or not. What brought that on? Simply put, th...

Red Forman's Vision of the '70s on That '70s Show

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Watching That '70s Show years ago (mostly in reruns) I found it a mixed bag. Some of it worked, some of it didn't. The antics of ...

Cameron Diaz's Last Comedy, and Science Fiction Become Reality: Thoughts on the 2014 Movie Sex Tape

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I was not a particular fan of Bad Teacher , but I did end up catching the reteaming of director Jake Kasdan with Cameron Diaz and Jason Sege...

A Word on Genius: Balzac's The Two Brothers, Again

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The two brothers in Balzac's Two Brothers are Philippe and Joseph Bridau. From early on in life, because of how they look and how they ...

Those Who Walked Away From Self-Publishing

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Recently I was surprised to read claims that people are still self-publishing millions of books annually--precisely because self-publishing ...

Was 1989 a Signal Year for the Evolution of the American Box Office?

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Recently I remarked 1989 as the year when all the "armchair executive" stuff in the press began to impinge on my personal consciou...

Might it Be Comforting to Disbelieve in the Bestseller List?

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I have written at some length about the failings of the bestseller lists as an index of the book market --the ambiguities of their signaling...

Remembering the Summer Movie Season of 1989

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Looking back the summer of 1989 is probably when I first noticed all the talk about the box office--partly because there was so much of it ....

Was You Only Live Twice a Natural Stopping Place (or Even Point) for the Bond Film Series?

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The post's titular question may sound odd. However, consider the reality of the series. In You Only Live Twice the plots, budgets and s...