The View From The Mountain

Daniel Craig exploded onto the scene as James Bond in 2006’s Casino Royale. And, after four 007 adventures, he calls it a day with No Time To Die, a film that was supposed to have been released back in 2020 but was pushed back for a year and a half, thanks to the pandemic. Apple and Netflix made multi-million dollar offers to the 007 people to air NTTD on their streaming services, but the Bond producers held out for a theatrical release, which they finally got in the fall of 2021. The irony here is that MGM, which releases the Bond films, was bought out by Amazon, which owns its own streaming service. James Bond is happily retired from spy craft and happily living with Madeleine (Léa Seydoux) in Italy--until their extended honeymoon is disrupted by the usual assassins who come out of the woodwork gunning for Bond. It turns out that Spectre, the criminal organization that Bond previously tangled with, is still very much active--and it looks as if Madeleine aided i

When I was a kid, my G.I Joe figures were twelve inches tall, and they came with an assortment of vehicles, many of which I had. I was a kid back in the 1970s, and G.I. Joe then was mainly an adventurer, he was an Indiana Jones-type of explorer several years before Raiders of the Lost Ark had even been released. When the G.I Joe resurgence happened in the 1980s, I was too old to be playing with G.I. Joes, having given my old figures away to my younger cousins. Besides, I really didn’t care for the whole 80s craze of having the cartoons be nothing more than half hour commercials for the toys. When I heard they were making Snake Eyes, I originally thought it was going to be a remake of the Brian DePalma film starring Nicolas Cage as a cop trying to uncover a conspiracy during a hurricane in Atlantic City. In other words, I really had no knowledge of the “new” G.I. Joes--one of which is a dude dressed in all black who goes by the handle of Snake Eyes. But when I went in

Tom Holland and Daisy Ridley team up for Chaos Walking , a science fiction film that’s based on the book The Knife of Never Letting Go by author Patrick Ness. Ridley plays Viola, an astronaut who crash-lands on an alien planet that’s already been colonized by a first wave of settlers from Earth. The only problem is, she winds up in a settlement that consists only of men, with the women having vanished years before. And all of the men have a strange affliction where their thoughts can literally be seen and heard in the air around their heads. Holland plays Todd, the youngest member of the colony who comes to Viola’s aid--although it becomes an equal partnership as Viola and Todd fight to survive in a world gone mad! Chaos Walking was directed by Doug Liman, who’s done some pretty good films in the past (Edge of Tomorrow, Go), and it runs with its interesting premise of how all of the males’ thoughts on this planet are an open book (women’s thoughts remain

Having watched the new and improved Dune film on HBO-Max three times now (and loving every second of it), I thought it was time to make a Dune diorama for myself. I love the Dune universe, having been introduced to it by my father many moons ago. The scene I depict is a giant sandworm passing by a castle built on solid rock, on the planet of Arrakis--better known as Dune. I saw the David Lynch-directed version of Dune with my father on opening day, back in 1984. While that version had its moments, we didn't really care for it too much. The sandworm and the base of the castle were sculpted from Scupley, which had to be baked. The castle itself was sculpted from Apoxie putty, which air-hardened on its own. The Apoxie putty allowed for more details in such a small scale. My father and I watched the Dune miniseries on the Sci-Fi Channel, and by that time, I had read all six of Frank Herbert's original Dune novels

I guess this means no mall for us.  Not having read the R.L. Stine novels (I wasn’t the target audience), I wasn’t sure what to expect from this three part horror movie series based on Stine’s Fear Street series on Netflix. I decided to give the first film a shot, and if I didn’t like it then I wouldn’t bother with the rest. Well, I wound up enjoying these so much I watched the entire three part series.  All three Fear Street films are ably directed by Leigh Janiak, who also co-wrote the screenplays. The first film, Fear Street: Part One: 1994 , warms my heart from the very opening scene, where we see a woman buying a book from a B. Daltons--a long-gone book store that I fondly remember buying the better part of my book collection from as a kid and a teenager. Unfortunately the clerk at this bookstore winds up being savagely murdered by a psycho in a Halloween mask. You sure he's coming from THAT way?! And while it starts out as an unflinching (all three movies are rated-R and cont

  I recently built and painted this 1/35 scale Matilda model kit from Tamyia.     This tank fought for the British Army in the North African campaign of WW2. It also served in Europe. I painted my model as the North African version.  I made the sandbags for it out of Apoxie putty. This is a two part putty that dries as hard as a rock when you mix it.  I made a base for the tank from Sculpt-A-Mold. This is the first tank model I've made in almost twenty years, and it was a lot of fun.