The View From The Mountain

After one postponement after another, Star Trek: Discovery finally premiered on September 24, with the first episode showing on the CBS broadcast network, and the second episode on CBS All-Access, the struggling streaming service that CBS owns. But I guess it’s safe to say that CBS All-Access struggles are now over, thanks to the multitude of people signing up just to see the second half of the saga that began on broadcast TV. And speaking of that saga, Star Trek: Discovery takes place ten years before Captain Kirk takes off on his legendary journey. Yep, like Star Trek: Enterprise before it, Discovery is yet another prequel, another lame attempt to latch onto a popular version of Star Trek --the Kirk era--instead of taking off with a completely different version of it, like what Gene Roddenberry did with Star Trek: The Next Generation . But I have to admit that, five minutes into the first episode, “The Vulcan Hello” , I was engrossed with the goings on. That’s mainly because o...

The Mummy , the 2017 version of the classic Universal monster, crashed and burned at the box office this past summer (although it did extremely well at the overseas box office). It strived to be a far more vibrant and exciting version of the Boris Karloff version of the Mummy that was released in 1932, to which this film was often compared to in its promotional and publicity materials. And yeah, the Karloff Mummy is very dated and creaky--with the exception of a still-chilling sequence of an expedition member going insane with horror at the (off-screen) sight of the Mummy making its way out of its tomb. Yet Universal seems to have forgotten its other Mummy remake, the superb film that was released in 1999 with Brendan Fraiser and Rachel Weitz that--unlike the Tom Cruise version--was such a hit that it spawned two sequels. The Fraiser version had a sense of fun and high adventure that effortlessly blended humor and horror into an extremely enjoyable package that stands up to repeat...

I have to admit to never being a big fan of Seth McFarlane’s. I’ve never watched Family Guy , and I don’t really care for his sense of humor, which often boarders on being extremely childish and way too on the nose for my taste. So when I heard that he was doing The Orville , a science fiction series for Fox, I figured that I would avoid it like the plague, just like I’ve avoided Family Guy and his film projects. What convinced me that The Orville would be bad was the trailer for the series, which made it out to be another laugh-riot spoof, this time on science fiction shows (and I’m not adverse to a good SF spoof--I loved Galaxy Quest --I just didn’t want to see one done by McFarlane). But then I discovered something interesting. Shortly before the pilot for The Orville was to air, I found out that the series was not a spoof, and that it wasn’t even a comedy. Intrigued by this turn of events I watched the pilot, which was written by McFarlane and directed by Jon Favreau (who also ...

When Ghost in the Shell, the live-action version of the 1995 Japanese anime film of the same name announced that its lead character would be played by Scarlett Johansson, there was some concern in the social media and regular entertainment media circles about having a white woman play what was traditionally a part played (or voiced) by a Japanese actress--which is where the term ’white-casting’ comes into play. And I could certainly understand the feeling, since there are plenty of superb Asian actresses (both in Hollywood and aboard) who could easily have played this part. But the new Ghost in the Shell, directed by Rupert Sanders (who directed Snow White and the Huntsman ), had chosen its actress. And Johansson is very good in the part of a dying woman who gains a second chance at life when her brain is placed within a sophisticated android body. But the corporation that performed the procedure is not working for free; they expect Johansson’s character to use her newfangled android...