I'm still waiting for ...Smaug... to drop to a price I'll pay so I can finally see it. I'll be waiting for the third film at least another couple of years.
IIRC for the original ABC airing of Wrath of Khan they actually edited out most of that sequence! I remember wondering what happened to the scene because it hadn't been that long since I'd seen it in the theater. I guess someone thought it was a bit too intense for kids ("they" still thought Star Trek was a kids show).

In Red Dwarf Series 1, Episode 4 "Waiting for God," they pause the credits twice for Rimmer to make a couple of off-screen voiceover comments. I can think of many shows that play extra scenes over the credits, and I think a few have cut back to action mid-credits, and some with offscreen comments over the credits, but I can't remember any other off-hand that literally pause the credits on screen fir an offscreen comment. Mildly interesting!

I watched Melancholia yesterday. And didn't really get it. Wasn't bad, but... didn't get it. (Also not sure it counts as SciFi, whatever various sources say...)

Couldn't agree more. The first season wasn't very good, most of the plot points and twists seemed familiar or obvious (or both), and many of the actors weren't up to much. But it was basically watchable.

Now, a couple of episodes into Season 2, and apparently only two weeks have passed (I thought more had already), and...



So, enough. Unless I get VERY bored...


Makes a lot more sense than nobody ever questioning his constant disappearances and apparent flakiness...!

I've never seen Melancholia, but am vaguely familiar with it. If you feel it is better as a Wild Card, go ahead.

Lois was *constantly* harping on Clark with "Just where did you run off to?" type comments.

I've said it before and I'll say it again - I *love* that show!

The Adventures of Superman is, hands-down, the *best* rendition of the "classic" Superman all the way around. *All* of the main characters are true to their comic counterpart, even when it changed from the Noir of S1 to the kidified S5/S6. It's more faithful to what I read in the comics than any other version. The Christopher Reeve Superman was very good but the Clark character was too "wimpy." In Adventures... Clark was strong but still "mild-mannered" which does *not* mean he's a pushover or wimp as he's portrayed in Superman the Movie. Plus, for my generation, George Reeves *is* Superman.

Yes! Your spoiler comments are spot on! Helps me understand why I felt the way I did. Still debating whether to watch last night's episode or not.

Speaking of "The Adventures of Superman," I watched a Gene Autry movie over the weekend and there's a spunky little orphan girl in it who rides and ropes and shoots and helps Gene out of a tight spot and I thought she looked and sounded familiar so I looked up the cast and she turns out to be Judy Nugent, who played the girl Superman flies around the world in "Around the World with Superman."

I've never seen it before, but when I go to Oshkosh next week, one of the movies playing while I'm there will be Man of Steel, so I'll give that version a look finally.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0ac5AVosug

I admit that I bought mine opening week...but I'm a sucker for special editions and Lego. I'll be mad if they don't do another Lego exclusive at Target for the 3rd movie to match the set!

Huh, I didn't know that about "Wrath." My father was a huge fan, so we had the VHS tapes first, then DVDs. I don't know that I've ever watched it on TV. I've heard that it was considered a kid's show, but I've always found that funny as while you could make a case for it being a family show, it's not really geared at all towards kids...maybe the animated show...but it doesn't really dumb things down or anything.

I started watching Escaflowne, an anime series from 1996. It's an fantasy series about a high school girl who is swept into a portal to another planet. I've watched the first eight episodes, and so far they have set up quite a few characters and the different political intrigues and conflicts.

I also watched It Came From Beneath the Sea, which is part of a Ray Harryhausen set I got for my birthday. The miniature work was amazing, but the plot was pretty standard. Still, it is a fun movie starring sci-fi favorites Faith Domergue and Kenneth Tobey.

Well I finished going through all of The X-Files. Even though I've seen the episodes multiple times there were still a few I didn't remember (utterly forgettable episodes). I realized that the show didn't jump the shark when Duchovny left; it actually started its decent the previous season, and for some reason the writers made Scully less intelligent in the last couple seasons. I thought about watching Millennium and The Lone Gunmen which I've never seen but now I'm in the mood for lighter stories.

Growing up, I always liked watching WarGames with Cloak and Dagger. I could watch both of those over and over.

Continuing my super hero watching with Batman Beyond and Justice League.

I hope I can catch a late-night showing of Guardians of the Galaxy on the 30th so I can count it for the challenge.

I won't be able to see that, but looking forward to finally seeing Man of Steel next week at Oshkosh.

I watched a pair of time travel films the past couple of days, both were first time viewings of films I'd never heard of before purchasing the set on which they came. I purchased the set just for those two films as I already own the Midnight Movies versions of the other two.

First up was Beyond the Time Barrier (1960) from Edgar G. Ulmer. It was better than I expected. Here's the synopsis:

"In 1960, a military test pilot is caught in a time warp that propels him to year 2024 where he finds a plague has sterilized the world's population."

As he's still fertile he gets tapped to help the leader's daughter repopulate the planet - BUT everyone is slowly turning into a mutant! A plan is devised to get him back home so he can avert the coming apocalypse, which - surprise - *wasn't* caused by nuclear fallout. I honestly expected the "twist" to be that *he's* the one who takes the plague back to 1960 but that wasn't the case. It was a fun little film that surprisingly didn't use the 2 time travel to the future tropes/cliches' I expected.

Next was 1964's The Time Travelers from Ib Melchior.

Synopsis:
"In 1964, a group of scientists create a portal that takes them to a barren, mutant inhabited, Earth in the year 2071."

Sounds quite a bit like that first one, eh? Surprise! It's not! Yes, both have "mutants" but they are different and the apocalypse is from a different cause (OK... this time it *was* nuclear fallout). This one reminded me somewhat of Irwin Allen's TV series The Time Tunnel. The trivia at IMDB indicates Allen "borrowed" ideas from this one for his series so that makes sense. Steve Franken (Chatsworth Osborne, Jr. of Dobie Gillis) plays a lab assistant who discovers the time viewer screen is really a portal and stupidly goes through! Of course the rest of the lab folks have to follow and "rescue" him and they become stranded in the future (didn't see that coming did you... of course you did)! At one point the music goes totally "comic effect" style and almost ruins the film (well not really but changed the film's tone to a less serious one) but overall it's really another fun one. There's more comic effect (thanks to the music and the Franken character) and some fun lines. It has a somewhat unexpected twist ending as well.

Both films surprised me by their plots, fairly good acting, effects, and general lack of cheesiness (...Travellers was a bit cheesy at times) with the Ulmer film being the more serious of the two. I'll watch both again at some point.

I've been marathoning the original Battlestar Galactica while setting up book orders, and it's been very interesting to revisit. Of course, I remembered that the show had its fair share of camp, but I didn't realize that it exceeded its quota by quite so much. Little kid Boxey and his mechanical daggit account for a lot of this, but there are many other tropes on parade: beautiful women with perfect hair, misogynistic masculinity, all-powerful aliens, reused footage, etc.

Submitted for discussion: Why are future sports almost universally stupid? For the most part, they either seem to be extremely dangerous or based on American Gladiators. I ask because an episode of Battlestar Galactica features triad, a basketball like game with players dressed in weird S&M outfits.

I saw both of these on TV first and then on the big screen at revival screenings, maybe even on a double bill. BEYOND THE TIME BARRIER was made by Ulmer in Texas back-to-back with THE AMAZING TRANSPARENT MAN with Douglas Kennedy. I remember liking THE TIME TRAVELERS a lot. It had a better-than-average cast with Hollywood veteran Preston Foster in the lead, character actor John Hoyt and western star Philip Carey along for the ride as well. Forrest J. Ackerman (Famous Monsters of Filmland) makes a cameo appearance. When I first saw it, I was impressed with Steve Franken's comic performance and wondered why he never had more of a noticeable comic career. He co-starred with Jerry Lewis in WHICH WAY TO THE FRONT?

I decided to wild card All That Jazz due to the surreal quality of the dance numbers and the inclusion of Jessica Lange as the Angel of Death. I am so upgrading my DVD to Blu when the Criterion drops.

Looking forward to getting away from technology while I'm camping at Oshkosh next week. The only piece of technology I'm taking will be my IPod, and that is mainly due to the EAA Radio app, and its camera it comes with. There are a couple sci-fi movies playing at the Fly-In Theater while I'm there, Star Trek: Into Darkness, and Man of Steel. Need the vacation to get my mind off my dad too, as his cancer came back.

That was all in the IMDB trivia which made me look up a photo of Ackerman to see if I remembered seeing him in the film. I'd read the magazine some but never saw photos enough to be able to pick him out of a crowd. I'd have to screen the film again to see if I can spot him.

I thought the same thing about Franken and looked up his filmography. He was in *lots* of stuff and appeared to have worked fairly regularly up until his death. IMDB lists 167(!) total acting credits with the last one in a film that came out posthumously. He made appearances in quite a few TV programs in the 60s & 70s with the occasional foray into film work. I always thought he was pretty good and typically funny when in a comedic role. I'm probably one of 2 or 3 people outside of France who actually like that Jerry Lewis film!

Last night and early this morning I watched the first 6 episodes of a TV show from 1993 called Space Rangers. I'd picked it up mainly due to a low price and that it is a fairly short SF series. I'd also recognized a few of the actors (mainly Linda Hunt, Clint Howard, and Marjorie Monaghan) and it has a good rating on IMDB. So... that IMDB rating is sorely inflated! It has rather overblown acting, horrible dialog, bad scripts, cheesy effects, and wasted guest star appearances.

The last episode I saw had Buddy Hackett as the guest star and it was *horrible* - even his jokes were off.

A couple of episodes prior saw Claudia Christian in a guest role. The premis was pretty bad - A delegation of lizard like beings were taken to the bar by Christian's character where one of them "fondles" the hair of Monaghan's character. She tells him to "back off" but he immediately goes for her hair again. Our group commander then physically attacks him saying "She said *Back off* so *BACK OFF*!" Of course this is a insult to the lizard guy (he was touched by a human without permission) and they go to full offended mode, threatening to void the trade agreement, until someone apologizes. Everyone is in full "gotta fix this" mode totally ignoring the fact that lizard boy started the whole mess by being a jerk.

So I see exactly why it was cancelled and was somewhat dreading the final few episodes until I find out they put *the entire series* on the first disc and the second one is simply those 6 episodes edited into 3 "movies." Here I'd thought IMDB was wrong and there were really ~12 episodes instead of the 6 listed! Oh well... I can safely ignore that second disc and be comforted that I only dropped ~$5 on the series. I've spent more and gotten worse...

I remember seeing the pilot episode of Space Rangers when it came out, if it is the show I'm thinking of. Did the pilot have to do with androids taking over the role of live soldiers?

The blu-ray is widescreen, if that helps any.