(Christopher Reeve... now THAT'S Superman!)


For much of this week I have been watching and participating in an going debate on Variety's website regarding the validity of Chief Film Critic Scott Foundas' review of the new Superman movie Man Of Steel. For those of you who haven't read it Scott didn't give Man Of Steel the most glowing of reviews, stating that its "humorless tone and relentless noisy aesthetics drag down this heavily hyped, brilliantly marketed tentpole attraction."

You could t...

Perhaps it should have come as no surprise that this week’s report by NASA, regarding the data collected by the Mars rover Curiosity, was do doggone anti-climactic in light of all the Internet buzz and media hoopla that ensued after scientist John Grotzinger announced that the findings were destined “for the history books.” 

It’s hard to live up to that kind of advance publicity. Just ask Kim Kar...

It was the Autumn of 1970. There is no earthly reason why I should remember it so clearly today, seeing as how I was all of 8 years old at the time and I sometimes seem to have trouble these days recalling things that happened just a few minutes ago. But for me that era burns bright in my memory like some eternal sunny summer day, a warm shelter o...

One of our current county commissioners here where I live has a favorite expression that he voices whenever the discussion turns to the differences between the way things are done now and the way they were done in days gone by:  “We’re not in Mayberry anymore.”

I understand what the gentleman means when he says this, but each time I hear it I find myself fighting back the urge to respond: “We never were living in Mayberry! Mayberry doesn't exist. It’s an entry in the Atlas of Make-...

Ran across a thread on www.moviefanfare.com yesterday where guest blogger Peter Eramo, Jr shared his own personal top five celebrity crushes - stars who, to use his own words, "are simply hot, hot, hot!"

It was an interesting list to say the least. Not surprisingly it included three current celebrities - Scarlett Johansson, Jessica Biel and Christina Hendricks - two of which I have to admit have never done much for me. (I'll leave it to others to figure out which two.) I was impressed t find...

You know, at the outset it really didn’t seem like all that difficult a task to undertake. After all, all we were trying to do was find our way to a restaurant.

Well, okay, not just any restaurant. We were on the hunt for Tony Packo’s Cafe – renowned throughout the land as the favorite eatery of that legendary American veteran of the Korean War, Maxwell Q. Klinger.

Maybe I’d better start at the be...

When I was a little boy, there were two heroes that I really looked up to.

The first was my father. Well, I suppose that’s typical enough…every little boy I ever knew wanted to grow up and be just like his old man, and all the little girls wanted to be like their mommies. That is, until all those little boys and girls grew into teenagers, and suddenly Mommy and Daddy were somehow transformed (if only for a brief time) into Mother and Father. The Dreaded Enemies.

The other great hero of ...

As long as we're on the subject of "Star Trek," let me begin by stating that there's a story behind the above illustration...

Back in 2000, as much for my own amusement as anything else, I wrote an essay entitled "The Eugenics War Declassified," in which I attempted to explain how the Eugenic Wars first mentioned in a 1966 "Star Trek" episode could have still occurred given what had actually transpired historically during the intervening years. As a fan of Philip José Farmer and his Wold Ne...

“I didn’t know you were a Trekkie, Small.”

The comment was made by my boss one day a number of years ago as he happened to overhear a conversation I was having with a co-worker. We were talking about the film “Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country,” which I found (and still find) to...

(Note: The following was my entry in a contest Time magazine held in the late 1990s - I forget the exact year right off - in which the publication asked its readers to submit ideas for an episode of a television series in which characters from another series make an appearance. The winner was some dummy that had Homer SImpson turning up on an episode of "E.R." I still like MY idea better....)

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Dear Time:

My name is John Small. I live in Ravia, Oklahoma, and the following is ...