Movies
While the summer movie season officially ends this week, unofficially it petered-out a few weeks back. Ever year when the season ends I’m surprised as to how fast it went by, even though way back in May I’m always thinking that it’ll be done before I know it.
I saw a few movies this summer; Avengers: Infinity War, Deadpool 2, Solo: A Star Wars Story and Mission: Impossible – Fallout and for the most part enjoyed them all. Though, honestly, I really don’t go to movies I don’t think I’m not going to enjoy, I tend to save those for home. It’s pretty rare that I get stuck inside a movie theater these days watching something I don’t like. It does happen, but not as much as it used to. At home I feel comfortable turning movies off if they’re going south but I don’t feel comfortable walking out of a theater. I think the closest I ever came to walking out was during the movie Drive.
Looking at the winners this summer, it’s no surprise that Avengers: Infinity War came out on top, but I was surprised to see that Incredibles 2 was right behind with Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom in third. In fact, Incredibles 2 is now the highest grossing Pixar movie of all time, in second, Finding Dory. I would’ve never guessed that.
Most interesting was that while most Star Wars news articles I read this summer were how Solo: A Star Wars Story was a flop, it actually didn’t do too badly at the box office coming in right behind Deadpool 2 but ahead of Mission: Impossible – Fallout. That movie got a lot of stories written about it how it was the biggest M:I movie to date and a career rejuvenator for Tom Cruise. And Solo did better than M:I. I suppose, though, when expectations for a Star Wars movie are so high that only it earning a billion dollars at the box office are considered a success these days, that when a movie makes only $215 million it’s a flop.
What To Watch This Week
Swamp Thing – Tuesday
The answer to two trivia questions aires this week on Sony Movie Channel. Those questions? What is the second DC character to get his own film and, Wes Craven directed a movie based on a DC comic book, what was the name of that film?
Jack Ryan – Friday
Amazon Prime debuts their series Jack Ryan based on the character from the novels of Tom Clancy like The Hunt for Red October and Sum of All Fears — though the TV series isn’t directly based on any of Clancy’s novels. John Krasinski becomes the fifth person to play the title role after Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford, Ben Affleck and Chris Pine did so on the big screen.
Them! & The Time Machine – Saturday
This Saturday afternoon TCM airs a double sci-fi horror feature. First up is Them!, one of the earliest giant monster movies that, along with Godzilla, helped kick off a craze that’s still going well today. Then comes the 1960 movie adaptation of the H. G. Wells novel The Time Machine.
Books
Jack Ryan
Oddly enough, John Krasinski is now the face of Jack Ryan on the covers of the Tom Clancy novels that featured that character. If they were going to use Krasinski here, I just wish there were some variety since all these photos look like they were taken at the same boring old photo shoot.
Cool Sites
The Reading & Watch List
- Eerie Sky Glow Called ‘Steve’ Isn’t an Aurora, Is ‘Completely Unknown’ to Science
- An Oral History of ‘GoldenEye 007’ on the N64
Rumor Control
Every year I write 24 articles for the Fort Wayne Reader, and every year it can be tough coming up with things to write. I’ve been doing that for 14 years now so I’ve covered a lot of subjects. But the last few years coming up with things to write have been, dare I say, easy. Or if not easy that easier. I think it’s because over those last few years there have been so many sci-fi and horror movies and TV series out there to write about. In fact, if I wrote about things I thought was crap as well as things I liked, coming up with things to write about would be a breeze.
I’ve got the rest of 2018 planned out with things to write about, and even some of 2019 planned too. This year I’ll be writing about things like The Orville and the 1988 movie The Blob. I’ll also be writing a piece about the 20th anniversary of my blog that’s happening this fall. For 2019 there are things like the delayed new X-Men movie, Pet Sematary and the new Top Gun movie too. I’m sure I’ll be writing about TV series as well but there’s really nothing next year that has a firm release dates yet.
What’s been taking up a lot of my time lately is my annual fall TV preview. It always starts off small but turns into a beast as more and more series are announced. The 2018–2019 one isn’t too bad so far, right now it’s just twice as long as one of my regular columns. What happens is that I write it, think I’m done, realize that I’ve forgotten some shows, add them in, then weeks later have to add a bunch more shows when even more release dates are announced.
And I’m sure I’ll still miss something.
I’m also contemplating writing a much-longer piece that I’m used to on the TV series The Orville since that show will debut later on this year. I usually have a bit of time on my hands come the winter months when it’s dark outside by the time I get off work and it might be nice to work on something with a little more length than I’m used to.
Cool Movie & TV Posters of the Week
Gifted poster 
Justice League poster
