Movies & TV

Tron: Cupcakes

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A pyramid of chocolate and vanilla cupcakes decorated with blue grids. Some of the cupcakes have lightcycles and other items from Tron on them.

Tron CupcakesLast week my wife surprised me with a Tron-inspired birthday party (my birthday’s December 17, the same day that Tron: Legacy was released). As part of that, she asked the good folks at Cupcake Ladies to create Tron cup cakes.

Which they did. The photo at left was taken by my friend Jason Alley (view the full-size photo on Flickr) and yes, the cupcakes did taste as good as they look.

The cupcakes made my day, and were the perfect prelude to heading to King of Prussia to watch Tron: Legacy in IMAX 3D with my friends. It was a good movie — I describe it as pure, distilled 1980s wrapped in glass. My 12-year-old self loved the film. My 39-year-old self was happily distracted by the beer sampler I drank at Rock Bottom Brewery before the movie.

Star Wars Talk to Your Kids PSA

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Advice for geek parents on when to introduce kids to Star Wars, and how to tackle the delicate issues of Luke Skywalker’s father, the correct order to watch the movies, and the heresy of the special editions.

Teaser: Lightning in the Bottle

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I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a really good live action steampunk movie (or even a bad one for that matter). For all the love of the subgenre within geek circles, it’s never made the jump to mainstream consciousness. Lightning in the Bottle looks to change that (if not winning mass appeal, then at … Read more

Lake Placid: Monster vs. Cow

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Back when the Blackrazor Guild still played D&D, we had a list of standard battle tactics. They were things like “spring the ambush then fight your way out”, “lightning bolt in a short corridor”, “fireball at your feet” and the classic “stake out a cow to lure the monster into the open”. Lake Placid is … Read more

Cloverfield: The monster movie Godzilla should have been

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In 1998 director Roland Emmerich released a remake of Godzilla starring Matthew Broderick and featured a monster heavily inspired by the designer Patrick Tatopoulos’ pet iguana attacking New York City. It failed on multiple fronts, starting with uninspiring Godzilla design, continuing with the half-assed Siskel and Ebert knockoffs as government antagonists, and ending with a … Read more

The Rules of a Creature Feature

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The Scream series was famous for enumerating the rules of the slasher horror genre. The Creature Feature has its own rules, and the best movies play by them — or play off of them. Here’s my take on the rules of the genre; feel free to to add your own in the comments.

Predator: 1980s military adventurism meets alien horror

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Predator starts off as a standard 1980s-style military adventure film, not unlikeSchwarzenegger’s own Commando. It’s got the bad-ass elite soliders (led by Arnold’s own Dutch), a bombastic soundtrack, and a pitched firefight with guerillas. But in between the bouts of testosterone, there’s tension. Our troops realize something isn’t quite right — but is it in … Read more

Jaws: The prototypical modern monster movie

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Jaws is the definitive monster movie of the modern era. While there were all manner of science fiction creature features before it, Jaws did what films about vampires, werewolves and other supernatural spawn couldn’t: it made millions afraid of the water. It was the first modern blockbuster, and established a pattern for releasing summer movies … Read more