I’m holding out hope for next year’s new TV series before I issue that verdict. I agree, though, that this trailer reinforces my opinion that the Abramsverse movies aren’t really “Star Trek” as I’ve known it—it’s a completely new franchise which by mere coincidence has characters named Kirk, Spock, and McCoy on a ship…

It’s worth listening to sound designer Ben Burtt’s commentary tracks on the original and prequel Star Wars trilogies. They’re full of stories like, “One day I was in the grocery store, in the frozen foods section, and one of the motors on the freezer was out of alignment and making this funny buzzing noise. I said,…

Welcome into your new role! I’ve enjoyed your articles in the past and wish you well.

Thanks especially for the fantastic articles on writing—as a composer, I always enjoy hearing about the creative process of others in the creative arts, and your articles on this topic were especially insightful. Your movie reviews were always a great combination of informative and entertaining as well. Best wishes in…

Supposedly that’s what the writers of “Star Trek: Generations” were going for in the death of Kirk—a guy who’s had all these amazing adventures dies unceremoniously at the hands of some two-bit villain on some random planet. It was supposed to be sad and poetic, but as in the case of Boba Fett, I’m not convinced it…

As a composer of music, I will freely admit that a certain amount of the composition work I take is because I need the money. Even when that’s the case, though, I still try to do quality work. I’d like to think Michelangelo, Twain, and Shakespeare had the same attitude.

I always found it interesting that in “Back to the Future 2" (which came out in 1989) they used both versions for pronouncing 2015: some characters said twenty-fifteen, some said two-thousand-fifteen. It’s like the writers were hedging their bets since they didn’t know which would catch on—or, they correctly foresaw…

The irony of this is that it brings things right back to the Disney company’s roots. Walt’s first moderate success, way back in the 1920's, was a series of films called “Alice’s Wonderland” which featured a live young actress interacting with a fully-animated environment (a groundbreaking idea at the time):

Just to put things in perspective: I found it interesting, in reading a biography of Walt Disney last year, to learn that a lot of his early animated films actually flopped at the box office when they were first released. Sure, films like “Pinocchio” and “Bambi” are considered classics today, but they lost money when…

A couple of years ago I re-watched that entire series, all one season of it, and it holds up surprisingly well—well-written with decent production values. (It also helps that they never went to the future, and that the time machine is disguised as an antique watch instead of some “futuristic”-looking thing, which…

Agreed. “Cars 2” may be among the weakest of the Pixar films, but it’s still pretty great compared to most of the other (non-Pixar) kids’ movies out there.

I’ll chime in and confirm that my 2-year-old daughter LOVES the “Cars” and “Planes” movies. She even wanted to be Dusty Crophopper for Halloween.

That could actually be kind of interesting—something along the lines of Christopher Bennett’s Department of Temporal Investigations novel series.

I actually read the prequel novel, Before Tomorrowland, which talks about how the parallel dimension in which Tomorrowland was built was first discovered—and it’s made clear that the plan was to “go public” about the discovery from very early on, so that Tomorrowland could benefit everyone. In the movie, though (minor…

The color sensors in our eyes don’t work as well in dim light, which is why colors (including colors in the sky) seem muted at night. The colors of astronomical objects inevitably show up more clearly in photographs. A lot of people are disappointed when they see something like the Orion Nebula through a telescope for…

This is why I was really, really hoping Tomorrowland would be a success (and though I personally enjoyed it, I recognize that it did have its weaknesses)—(1), it’s original, and (2), it was at least trying to be both optimistic and thought-provoking. I was hoping for it to be a big surprise hit so that we’d see a…

This. A thousand times this. It’s not as though there’s something magical about Pluto (“official” planet or not) that says we’ve completed something; it’s an important milestone, to be sure, but is really just our latest step in an infinite journey. I’m glad the video at least partially acknowledges this by calling it…

One of my favorite stories I remember reading about Skylab was how the astronauts fixed a faulty piece of equipment on the outside of the station by going on a spacewalk with a hammer and whacking on it a few times. I guess space repairs follow the same rules as Earth-bound repairs.

Having watched the special features on my DVD’s of the trilogy, I recall the filmmakers talking about how they came up with a bunch of rules for how time travel works in their movies, so that they would at least be logically consistent with themselves. One of those rules is that time travel doesn’t affect memory.…