The View From The Mountain

There have been so many films made about Robin Hood that it’s impossible not to hit one of them if you were to randomly shoot an arrow into a field. Hell, even Doctor Who has done a fun episode, Robot of Sherwood , that deals with the Robin Hood legend. But the most recent big-budget Robin Hood film, starring Taron Egerton--along with a weird assortment of costumes that looked like they were ripped off from a Star Trek episode--was a huge bomb, which might as well have brought the noble Legend of the Hood to an abrupt end. But Robin Hood is an extremely tenacious fellow who should never be counted out, as proven in Robin Hood: The Rebellion , a thoroughly enjoyable and scrappy little film with a big heart that stars Ben Freeman as the Prince of Thieves. Finding out that his beloved Marian (Marie Everett) has been taken captive by the Sheriff of Nottingham (James Oliver Wheatley), Robin Hood plots a rescue. However this rescue involves storming the Sheriff’s castle stronghold. The ...

Warning, this here review has spoilers. Terminator: Dark Fate was a big bomb at the box office back when it was released to theaters in November of 2019. And that’s a shame, because I thought the film was very good. Perhaps it was the film’s extremely dark opening, where they kill off John Connor within its first five minutes, that turned some people off. This is understandable, since the previous film that DF is supposed to be a direct sequel to, Terminator 2: Judgment Day , is now considered a classic of the SF/action film genre. And for DF to coldly kill off one of T2 ’s main characters must have made its detractors think: “what was the point of wiping out everything that had gone down in T2?” But the Terminator series has always been about the underdog. Each Terminator movie--at least the better ones--deal with a disparate group of people who come together to try and prevent a nightmarish dystonian future from ever happening. And killing off John Connor was the right move, b...

The release of Terminator: Dark Fate on physical media last week got me thinking about this Terminator diorama that I made several years back. This is a 1/32 scale metal figure of the Terminator from Andrea Models, a figure kit company that's based in Spain. After I assembled it, I painted it using hand brushes. I built the diorama around this figure, basing it within a small diorama box that was originally made to display toy cars. The walls and floor are styrene sheet; the large cans and air pressure rig are from 1/35 scale diorama sets. A clear plastic cover protects the scene from dust. And, judging from the dust seen in this picture, it's doing a very good job. I've had this diorama for just about fifteen years, now. Being a big fan of the Terminator films, I'm very happy I picked up this figure.