blog2

So many movies are scheduled to be remade or rebooted. In the past few weeks I’ve read or heard that Stargate, Predator, Highlander, Gremlins, IT, Jumanji, Star Wars, Logan’s Run, Poltergeist, Videodrome, Starship Troopers, and even Police Academy - please don’t, have some mercy – are going to be remade or rebooted. With all these reboots and remakes, I got to thinking about the books I would like to see rewritten or rebooted. The first one that came to mind is 1984 , and not just to update the title. Imagine including all of the current and near future technology in a rebooted 2048. Winston Smith would find it much harder to hide from today’s surveillance technology, but much easier to edit the truth. And instead of discovering a book in the attic above the shop, Smith could find a USB flash drive once owned by Julian Assange.       Going on similar lines, the next book I thought is long overdue for a rewrite is The Bible . Imagine rewriting The Bible so...

While writing my last post, a review of the excellent movie Edge of Tomorrow , I had cause to reflect on science-fiction movies starring Tom Cruise.  He has some impressive credits: Vanilla Sky , Minority Report , War of the World s , Oblivion and Edge of Tomorrow . I have enjoyed them all.  I then contemplated whether any other actors have appeared in so many great science-fiction movies. Charlton Heston immediately came to mind with Soylent Green , Planet of the Apes and The Omega Man . As I am a fan of John Carpenter movies, I then thought of Kirk Russell who stared in The Thing , Escape From New York and Escape From LA . He also appeared in the big screen version of Stargate and had a small role in Vanilla Sky . But had any of those actors made it into a science-fiction hall of fame? T here is a Science Fictionand Fantasy Hall of Fame located at the EMP museum in Seattle, a museum dedicated to contemporary popular culture. Hall of Fame Members Brian W....

  Edge of Tomorrow is a gripping, fast-paced, action science-fiction movie. It has time-travel, aliens and Tom Cruise being killed over and over again. What more could you want? It’s not exactly original, with a premise very similar to Source Code , except aliens replace the terrorists. For those who missed Source Code , think Groundhog Day , only in Edge of Tomorrow the conceited main character has to die to reset the day, and the stakes are slightly more than bedding Andie MacDowell. Cruise has to save the world, once more. Cruise plays a different kind of hero here. He is not the Joe Everyman of War of the Worlds , or the inquisitive technician of Oblivion . In Edge of Tomorrow he is a media spin doctor for the army, Major Bill Cage. He is a man who knows how to spew out propaganda for the war effort, but has no intentions of going anywhere near the war front.   The aliens are called Mimics. Their navigation system must have malfunctioned because they...