Steven Howell Wilson's Blog, page 29

I Just Finished – Murder on the Orient Express (2017)

I wasn’t sure what to expect from this film, going in. I remembered the 1974 film coming out—probably from commercials and buzz on morning news programs. I remembered that one was an all-star “vehicle” (pardon the pun) of the type that was so popular in the 1970s. I never cared much for such films, when I was little. They seemed designed to appeal to boring people who drank martinis, talked about Nixon and watched too much football.

Kenneth Branagh’s film is, too, an all-star vehicle, with no...

I Just Finished – Twilight Zone “The Lonely”

Jack Warden and Jean Marsh star in the sad tale of Jack Corey and Alicia. Corey is a convicted felon, although he claims that he killed in self-defense. He’s a decent enough guy, from what we see of him in thirty minutes, that you tend to believe him about that. But he’s been sentenced to solitary confinement on an asteroid which, Rod Serling’s narration tells us, is “nine million miles from Earth.”

Suspension of disbelief factor here — there are no asteroids regularly that close to Earth. 9...

I Just Finished – Nick Offerman: Full Bush

Sometime this past Summer—I guess—my wife Renee asked if we all wanted to go see Nick Offerman at the Warner Theatre in DC in November. I was very excited about the idea—and promptly forgot the entire conversation. There’s a certain special quality to being over fifty and having worked yourself stupid: things you planned in advance can come back to you as wonderful surprises, because you had no idea you planned them.

At our annual Hallowe’en party, which we only remembered to have because peo...

My Philcon Schedule

Sat 1:00 PM in Con Suite (Room 800)

Yoji Kondo Memorial

Sat 6:00 PM in Plaza III (Three) (1 hour)

HOW DO I MAKE AN AUDIOBOOK OF OUT OF MY WORK? (2866)

[Panelists: Christopher Mayer (mod), Jay Smith, Steve Wilson]

How do you find appropriate Voice Acting talent? What happens to your property rights if you sign up with a company to produce it for

you? Is ACX.com the solution to all of your problems, or just a good place to start?

Sun 10:00 AM in Crystal Ballroom Three (1 hour)

THE ROLE OF ANTIQ...

I Just Finished – Action Comics 987-991

“The Oz Effect” is a five-part story which reveals the origins (kinda) of the mysterious Mr. Oz who has been appearing in DC Comics for quite a while now, in different titles. He’s a dangerous guy, and, like any powerful, godlike being, his followers might be even more dangerous. In the course of this story, in Oz’s name, one of his followers detonates a bomb (and himself) in an attempt to kill the staff of The Daily Planet. His motivation seems to be little more than because Mr. Oz told him...

I Just Finished – Alfred Hitchcock’s Movie Soundtracks

Okay, they’re not Hitchcock’s. He didn’t compose them. They’re Bernard Herrmann’s. Specifically, this collection includes the soundtracks to The Wrong Man, Vertigo, and North by Northwest. Herrmann scored a lot of Hitchcock films, especially his big, splashy Universal ones. Popular films whose Herrmann soundtracks are not included herein are Psycho, Marnie (perhaps not as popular a film, but a beautiful soundtrack), and The Man Who Knew Too Much (the 1956 release, with Jimmy Stewart and Doris...

Back in the Day, I Liked… Supergirl (1972) #10

My first superhero comic. Sue me, I liked girls at a young age. We were in Rehoboth Beach in July, 1974, maybe a week or two after I had lost my comic-buying virginity to an issue of DC’s Ghosts. My Mother, eager to encourage reading, I guess, and having noticed that I was beginning to spend more and more time staring at my brother’s discarded comic books, said to me, “There’s a candy store over on the next block that sells comic books. You might want to go there.” If I’m not mistaken, I was...

Back in the Day, I Liked…Ghosts #30

This was the first comic book I ever bought for myself. I believe I had read a couple that belonged to my brother—an F-Troop issue, and a Gorgo. He did not read super-hero comics. In fact, he actively detested them. He read war comics, and the occasional movie or TV tie-in. In July, 1974, however, I was spending the night with my cousins in Hyattsville, and I learned that my Uncle Bob was a fan of super-hero comics, and had been since the 1940s. I’ve talked about that before, so, if you actua...

I Just Finished – The Free Thoughts Podcast – Washington’s Five Tricks

So this is a bit political, though not “I hate the giant orange / I hate the scary hag” political. I listen to this podcast regularly. It’s produced by libertarianism.org and the Cato Institute, and I always find it informative and thought-provoking. I don’t always agree with everything I hear, which is a good thing, but, when I listen, I feel I’m listening to highly intelligent, highly educated people talking about things that actually matter. And by “things that actually matter” I mean pret...

I Just Finished – Captain America #695

My son Ethan handed me this and said, “You need to read this.” It explains and excuses, he told me, the faults of the recent “event” which unjustifiably stole the name Secret Empire. It brings back Captain America, the real Cap, not the Hydra agent who everyone should have realized was simply a story device. They didn’t realize it. They got all bent out of shape by it, and suggested that Marvel’s creative teams had actually become Nazis. It seems comics fans have become less sophisticated ove...