Kevin Singer's Blog, page 7
March 4, 2016
Watch this movie: The Babadook
Horror movies are our modern-day fairy tales. They use dark imagery to highlight our blackest fears in order to help us manage them. For a horror movie to work well, it must tap into one of these universal fears or struggles, otherwise, the movie ends up being an incoherent, gloopy mess. The Babadook, a strange little […]
January 14, 2016
Bye, Bowie
I don’t get emotional over celebrity deaths. Of course I feel empathy, but despite the familiarity of their faces, celebrities are strangers. But for some reason, the death of David Bowie feels different. When I was a kid I watched MTV constantly. Cable was new back then. There were few choices. But MTV — I […]
December 9, 2015
Goodbye, Clara Oswald
FINALLY! A sign-off for a Doctor Who companion that was both fully satisfying and organic. While the return of Doctor Who to television a decade ago has been an overwhelming success, turning the BBC sci-fi show into a worldwide phenomenon, it’s had its share of problems in terms of storytelling. One of those problems is its […]
November 4, 2015
What’s the single scariest moment on screen?
Horror/suspense fans out there, I’m talking to you. Admit it. We love watching scary edge-of-your-seat movies for the same reason we love roller coasters: that rush of adrenaline, that supreme thrill that gushes through your body when fear jumps right out at you. I know I do. Lord knows there are way too many chilling, […]
September 28, 2015
The trouble with daleks
Confession here: as much as I love Doctor Who, the series has one glaring weakness, one that I’ve been able to overlook, mostly — its villains. Before I get started on my rant, I’ll talk about what I love about BBC’s half century old sci-fi classic. Doctor Who is playful and thrilling and joyful. Its […]
July 21, 2015
Xena reboot: yes or no?
There was a time when genre shows were a rare thing on TV. In the years after The Twilight Zone and Star Trek, and before Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Lost, genre fans had only a few choices: the super serious X-Files, and the wacky Hercules, with Kevin Sorbo. In 1995, the producers of Hercules launched a […]
July 15, 2015
Robots: our ticket to life on the moon?
If I were a scientist intent on colonizing space, our very own moon wouldn’t be my first choice. But maybe, since it’s the closest of all celestial bodies, it should be. And, maybe the answer to us getting there is robots that would construct homes for us and pave the way for lunar life. What’s the […]
July 5, 2015
Aliens: do they look like us?
If anyone’s noticed, one of my minor obsessions is alien life. I’m not one of those who believes we’re being probed by Roswell-style aliens. My interest is more about fantasy (and maybe reality). If there’s a book or movie with aliens in it, chances are I’ll be interested. Take one of my favorite TV shows: Farscape. […]
June 21, 2015
Read this book: Ready Player One
How do you write a book about a dense subculture and make it accessible to a wider audience. I don’t know that trick, but Ernest Cline, the writer of the book Ready Player One does. Somehow he managed to take the incredibly detailed world of video games and obscure Japanese anime, and make novices like […]
June 9, 2015
Meet the newest weird creatures
Thanks to the good people at Scientific American, one of my favorite news sources (as well as the oldest continuously operating magazine in the US), we’ve got some more strange Earth-based life forms to marvel over. Last month, Scientific American released a slide show featuring ten newly-discovered creatures. These range from a frog that keeps […]
