The View From The Mountain

Once Upon A Time In Hollywood , Quentin Tarantino’s ninth (and, according to him, his second to last film) is a really groovy trip through the Hollywood of 1969. Starring Leonardo Decaprio as Rick Dalton, a fading TV star who’s desperate to keep his career going, and Brad Pitt as Cliff Booth, his friend and stuntman, whose career is also circling the drain. Rick was the star of a popular western TV show before it got cancelled, and now he’s doing guest starring parts on other TV shows--which Rick thinks is beneath him. Even meeting with a movie producer (Al Pacino), who wants him to star in Italian-made westerns, drives Rick into further despair. Decaprio does a great job in creating this worry wart who’s constantly obsessing--as well as whining and crying--over whether he’s doing the right thing every waking moment. In sharp contrast is Pitt’s cool as a cucumber Cliff, a rough and tumble type who just lives for the moment (and who may have murdered his wife). But while Cliff may be...

“Broke into the wrong goddamn rec room, didn't ya, you bastard!” I was reminded by a Twitter post that the movie Tremors just recently celebrated its thirtieth anniversary. I had seen this movie back when it first came out (in the olden days when we went to the video store to rent movies on VHS), and had enjoyed it very much then. Seeing that Tremors was playing on Netflix, I decided it was time for a re-watch. And I was very glad I revisited the little town of Perfection, Nevada once more. Tremors is a great, remarkably smart horror/comedy about a pair of handymen named Earl and Valentine, superbly played by Fred Ward and Kevin Bacon, respectively, who come across massive killer subterranean worms under the dirt of their one-horse desert town. If this sounds silly, it is. But the movie works so well because it leans into the goofiness of its situation and characters by playing up the humor of the eccentricities on display. However, the film (well-directed by Ron Underwood--...

I recently saw Star Wars Rebels for the first time, and fell in love with a TIE fighter that was on the show. It was a converted TIE fighter with the front panels cut off, and painted yellow. This class of fighter was used by the Mining Guild on Star Wars Rebels . It would make sense for mining operations in the service of the Empire to have their own fighter squadrons for protection. I had an old 1/48 scale TIE fighter model lying around in pieces--I had always meant to fix it up again, and so I did: but as the Mining Guild version of the TIE fighter. I like the design. It's simple enough to convert. Cutting off the panels was easily done, and the yellow paint job really helps to give it a distinctive look. And being 1/48 scale (it's the old TIE fighter kit from Revel) it's bigger than the 1/72 scale TIE models out there. If you're interested, I have this up for sale. --SF

It’s interesting that, just as I sit down to watch Ready Or Not , there’s a huge flare up in the media about how Royal lovebirds Meghan and Harry have made the decision to step back from their duties as members of the British Royal family, and will only stay in England part time from now on. As a fan of the democratic process, I was never a cheerleader of royalty, but when I heard that Meghan and Harry had basically said, “Thanks, but no thanks,” I was actually pleased to hear this. All through history, the British Royal family have proven themselves to be one of the biggest pack of scumbags to ever slither across the earth. The original thirteen colonies had a revolution just to get away from them, after all. And if Meghan and Harry really want to put some distance between themselves and these demented dipshits, all I can say is “Godspeed, kids, and keep running….” And I'm not the only one who feels this way. Some folks have taken this view even further. 2019 saw the release ...

I was a Star Trek fan since I was a little spud. Although I don’t remember it, my parents told me that, as a toddler, I watched the original Star Trek series with them when it first aired in the late sixties. But it wasn’t until Star Trek was in syndication in the seventies that I really got into the series. Aside from being a thrilling SF adventure, Star Trek was a constant, soothing reminder for me that we humans would still be striving for a brighter future, no matter how dire the present day appeared--which was a very reassuring thing to hear for a boy growing up in the seventies. When I first heard that Star Trek was returning in late 1979 as a movie, I was extremely happy. I remember being thrilled at the ads for the film that appeared on the back of comic books--which showed a redesign of the Enterprise that didn’t quite match the final refit ship seen in the movie, but I didn’t care. I finally saw Star Trek: The Motion Picture with my father during a wondrous science fictio...

I enjoyed the first half of It , the 2017 movie that’s based on Stephen King’s mega-sized book about a killer clown named Pennywise who stalks a group of children in a small town in Maine. But I was really eager to see the second half, called It: Chapter Two , because of the original It miniseries that aired on TV back in 1990. In the miniseries, which was produced for TV and had to adhere to the stringent censorship of the format, the first half of the story, with its focus on the children battling Pennywise, was very well done. But I always thought the miniseries fell flat on its bright red clownish nose during the second half--which deals with the now-grown group of kids who have to fight Pennywise once more as adults. The scares in the second half of the miniseries seemed to have run out of steam (and this was possibly because the miniseries makers faced too much restrictions from the TV format), and the performances from some of the adult actors were nowhere near as good as th...