Spoiler Alert: It's okay for movies to be fun!

 

I've had a busy summer, starting with a trip to India in May and then a few trips visiting family in Minnesota (including CONvergence, where I was on a panel on the Foundation TV show) and some fun witch tourism in Salem, MA with friends. I don't want to be that asshole who complains about having too many travels, so instead I'll say that I haven't had much time or energy for blogging as of late. I haven't made a post in about two months!

To rectify this horrific calamity, I thought I'd write about something that has been rattling around in my head as I've tried to keep up with this summer's busy movie season: it's okay for movies to be fun! 

I've seen a lot of excellent "serious" movies (especially Disclosure Day, The Amazing Digital Circus, and the horror movies grinding up records and getting actual young people into theaters: Backrooms and Obsession). I'll have more to say about those in another post. I also want to get this out there before The Odyssey takes over the summer blockbuster space (I've heard a lot of hype for it, and it will probably live up to it).

These summer 2026 movies have reminded me that movies can be fun: The Mandalorian and Grogu, Masters of the Universe, and Supergirl. (Special mention of one I saw at this year's Chattanooga Film Festival: Jump Scare).

Random Thoughts, Part 29: I've got 928 thoughts, but not being random ain't one of them

My Random Thoughts series has been running so long I'm starting to worry it's not really random. Oh, well. I did take a few months off from posting them, but that only means I have a few months of thoughts to post. And some memes and other stuff to look at just to keep it all a bit random. And now I've reached the milstone of 928 thoughts! What makes that a milestone? Nothing, really. It's just random. Enjoy!

 

A Quasi-Scrooge Enjoys Holiday Horror 2025

 

I donʻt hate Christmas. I really donʻt. But I wouldnʻt say I love it, either.

For several years, Iʻve been watching holiday horror movies. Does this make me a "quasi-Scrooge" as I referred to myself a few years ago?

Iʻm all for peace on Earth and goodwill toward humanity (at least more than the people who run the world these days). But I find myself ambivalent this time of year. And since horror is a genre that allows me to deal with the fact that life isnʻt all puppy dogs and rainbows, it makes sense to me that one way to face my ambivalence about the holidays is to watch movies about homicidal Santas and eldritch elves. 

Random Thoughts, Part 28: Super Sized and Super Random

 

Dear reader, I have been remiss. I have not posted in my Random Thoughts series in almost seven months. I have been doing a lot of random thinking since then. And I have collected even more random funny images. So without further ado, enjoy this Super Sized and Super Random collection of my Random Thoughts!

2025 Hugo Ballot

 

I meant to post a bunch of reviews along the way as I did this year's Hugo reading, but the summer sort of got in the way. Oh, well. I still may write longer reviews for some of these and post them here (I did get to some of the novels in June), but since Hugo voting was due last night, I figured I'd just post my full ballot with a few general explanations while it's fresh in my mind. You can find short reviews for most of these on my 2025 Hugo Goodreads shelf.

Note that I didn't vote in all the categories. It's just too much (it's like taking on a part-time job!), and I don't feel all that qualified to judge some of the categories. Still, I managed to vote in most of the categories this year. See the Hugo website for the full list of categories and nominees.

As usual, I'm loosely following my principles of Hugo voting that I'm most interested in works that somehow break new ground in the genre, have some philosophical element, and/or are just plain enjoyable. Maybe other Hugo voters go on vibes, which are impossible to entirely eliminate, but I try reward things that are on the whole doing something new and interesting.

I'm thrilled to be attending Worldcon this year where I'll be on a panel and doing an academic track presentation as part of the Science Fiction and Philosophy Society. Maybe I will see you in Seattle at this year's Hugo ceremony on August 16!

Review of Reviews, May 2025: Andor, Sinners, and Books by Okorafor, Maas, King, Harvey, Hannah-Jones, Pargin, and Stanley

 

I have gotten behind on posting book reviews lately (I did get one last month), so I thought I should get around to that now that the spring semester is over and grades are entered.

And today just happens to be May the 4th, aka Star Wars Day (as observed recently based on the pun on the date), so I figured I would add a little bit about the latest season of the Star Wars show, Andor. Also, like many other people, I saw and had a lot of thoughts about Ryan Coogler's Sinners.

Books reviewed here: She Who Knows by Nnedi Okorafor, A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas, The Waste Lands by Stephen King, The 1619 Project, edited by Nikole Hannh-Jones, Orbital by Samantha Harvey, John Dies at The End by Jason Pargin, and How Fascism Works by Jason Stanley.

There is also a super secret Star Wars day review hidden in here...

Let the reviews commence!

Random Thoughts, Part 27: Trump 2.0, Sci-Fi AI vs. Real AI, Black Cats, Satanic Panic, Musical Time-Slippage, Conceptual Constructions of Politics, Sinners, etc.

 

My random thoughts continue, now with 27 parts with 801 total thoughts! With the second Trump administration driving us full-bore into making America less great several times every single goddamn day, I've had a lot of politics on my mind lately. And there are continuing issues about AI. I worry my random thoughts are not so random these days. But randomness doesn't rule out clusters of similar ideas. And you'll still find a few other things in there about my dental habits, listening to Nirvana, the Satanic Panic, the film Sinners, cats, and more. And of course, there are memes! Enjoy!

Holiday Horror 2024

I'm getting to my Holiday Horror post a little later than last year's post, but it's New Year's Eve and it's still Hanukkah and Kwanzaa, all of which I include under the banner of "the holidays," so it's not actually late (although I seem to have watched mostly Christmas-specific movies this year). What better way to deal with my conflicted feelings about this Most Wonderful Time of the year than lots of blood and guts and tinsel?

Thanksgiving Horror 2024: Black Friday Edition

 

In recent years (see here and here) I've made a tradition of watching Thanksgiving horror movies around US Thanksgiving. As with other holiday horror, this is a fun way to process my complex thoughts and feelings about this horrific, delicious holiday. And this year I discovered a film about that most uniquely American of holidays, Black Friday, in which we trample each other to buy stuff we don't need immediately after a holiday about giving thanks for what we already have.

I'll start and end with the movies I watched for the first time with a nice leftover sandwich of movies I've watched in the past. And for some reason, lighting in the films seems to be on my mind lately. Go figure.

I should acknowledge that today is also Native American Heritage Day, which in a peak American contrast, is always also the Friday after Thanksgiving.

Pandemic Journal Reboot: The Rumors of COVID's Demise Have Been Greatly Exaggerated

 

My recent positive COVID test

During 2020-2022 I was posting a lot of my Pandemic Journal here on the blog. I got up to Part 25 in 2022. I didn't stop writing in that journal, and I even occasionally posted an entry on a specific topic, like this one on the Fourth Pandemiversary.

I guess just as most of the world lost interest in COVID, I lost interest in posting all of my entries here on the blog. I've also been journaling a lot less in the last year or two, often only once every couple of months.

I had a good reason, however, to start the Pandemic Journal again in earnest when I tested positive for COVID in late June! So, as both an exercise in self-indulgence and a public service announcement to get a COVID test if you have symptoms, here is a ... "sequel" doesn't sound right, so let's call it a "reboot" of my Pandemic Journal. And there are still memes, of course!

"Bullets Don't Have a Name on Them": Civil War (2024), Gaza, and Guns

 

"Bullets don't have a name on them."

- One of my neighbors

Alex Garland's Civil War (2024) is one of the more disturbing films I've seen recently, and that's saying something, because I also watched Jonathan Glazer's The Zone of Interest several weeks ago. I've been meaning to write something about Civil War since I saw it last week. And here I am. 

Frank Herbert Beyond Dune: The Eyes of Heisenberg and The Godmakers

 

I still intend to write more about Dune Part Two (beyond my initial non-spoilery thoughts here). I've seen it a few times, and I've loved it more each time. I hope to see it at least once more in full-size IMAX before trying to wrangle some of my many thoughts into something resembling a comprehensible blog post. Please accept the following post for now!

It's easy to forget for those of us who love Dune and its various screen adaptations, but Frank Herbert wrote a lot of novels that are neither Dune nor its sequels. I've read a few of them over the years, including The White Plague a few months ago.

The good thing about Herbert's non-Dune work is that it's fun to explore a favorite author's other work. The bad thing about exploring Herbert's non-Dune work is that none of it is Dune. 

It's difficult advice for Dune-obsessed nerds like me to take, but every time I read non-Dune Frank Herbert, I tell myself not to expect Dune. Because it never measures up. But failing to be one of the most influential and mind-expanding science fiction series of the 20th century shouldn't stop you from reading a novel, even if it is written by the author of that series.

So, here are my reviews of two non-Dune Frank Herbert novels I've read recently: The Eyes of Heisenberg and The Godmakers!

So I Watched All the Oscar Nominees for Best Picture... Again!

 

Last year I wrote a post called "So I Watched All the Oscar Nominees for Best Picture." I didn't set out to do so, but at some point I realized I had seen a few of the nominations and figured I might as well complete my tour. So I did! And it was mostly pretty fun. It didn't hurt that my favorite, Everything Everywhere All At Once, was the winner.

Well, dear reader, as Britney Spears once said, "Oops, I did it again." 

Dune Part Two: Non-Spoilery First Reactions!

 

Earlier tonight I was lucky to be able to catch the early IMAX premiere of Dune Part Two five days before its official US release date of March 1! Like a lot of Dune nerds, I've been eagerly (obsessively!) anticipating this one since 2021. For those who haven't seen it yet and who aren't Kwisatz Haderachs, here are my 100% spoiler-free initial thoughts on the film!

• The show I attended was almost entirely sold out. I think there were a few open seats in the front row, but choosing a seat off to the side didn't spare me from sitting in a full row. It's probably been four or five years since I've been in a theater so packed. I had forgotten how simultaneously exhilarating and annoying it is to share a film with a few hundred people.
• How was the film? I loved it. The reviews are not kidding. This is a masterpiece. Villeneuve's Dune adaptations will go down as some of the best science fiction films of all time. And I don't say that lightly or just because you have to either 100% love or 100% hate everything in our current click-bait culture. It really is that good.
• There were several scenes where even the near-constant shuffling and crunching and shifting of a few hundred people went entirely quiet, because every single person in the theater was too mesmerized to be annoying. Even the guy next to me put down his phone for a few minutes here and there.
• Yes, there are changes from Frank Herbert's novel. Some of them are pretty big. But I loved all of them. They work in service of adapting Dune to a visual medium in the 2020's, and there are several things that serve Villeneuve's own vision, but not in a way that detracts from Herbert's. I sometimes get annoyed by narrow-minded fans who expect a film or TV adaptation to basically just film the book. But you can't do that. You shouldn't do that. And Villeneuve doesn't--to his credit. Besides, the book is always there if you want to read it--and you should!
• I was really interested to see how the film would handle some of the weirder aspects of the book, and it succeeds admirably, splendidly, at time almost overwhelmingly. I'm almost tempted to think that Villeneuve should keep making the rest of the series when things get really weird and not stop with Dune Messiah as he intends to.
• I loved Hans Zimmer's score of the first one, and I love this one just as much. Really some of my favorite film soundtracks in... well, ever.
• The actors are all amazing. Javier Bardem and Zendaya in particular get a lot more to do in this one. Florence Pugh's Irulan does more than in the novel. Christopher Walken's Emperor is a bit understated compared to previous Emperors, but I like it. Rebecca Ferguson is always one of my favorites, and she brings the commanding presence she brought to Doctor Sleep to her role here (I would follow Jessica or Rose the Hat anywhere, whether out of fear or love or some combination of the two).
• There are some funny parts. No, really. And they work.
• The Harkonnens get to shine in their evilness even more. Austin Butler can do a lot more than Elvis impersonations. We get to see a bit of the Guild, too. The Corrinos get a decent amount of screen time, and Irulan does more than write epigraphs or the weird floating head intro to Dune (1984). The record for most Irulan still goes to Frank Herbert's Dune (2000), which is one of the things I really like about the miniseries. 
• The Bene Gesserit are as interesting and terrifying as ever, maybe even a bit more. They've always been my favorite of the many factions in Dune, although some of this is colored by my love of the later books where they play a huge part.
• The Fremen are depicted in a really interesting and more nuanced way (even more so than in the book, or at least the first book). Souhelia Yacoub as Shishakli deserves a lot of credit on this count.
• Is it long? Yes. It's almost three hours. Does it feel as long as it is? No. Not at all. As if in a spice trance, time and space have no meaning while watching Dune Part Two.
• There was at least one scene in the book that wasn't in either Dune (1984) or Frank Herbert's Dune (2000), but that does appear in Dune Part Two.
• The deep and often troubling philosophical questions of the novel are there. Much more so than in previous adaptations.
• There were a few things I wanted to see that weren't included, but most of them were more than made up for by the interesting choices of Villeneuve and the other filmmakers. My fellow Dune fans, even if you don't 100% love all the choices this film makes, I think any lover of Dune will agree the changes are interesting at the very least, or maybe they even make you rethink some aspects of the story. And after all, that's one of the great things any adaptation can do. Especially with a text and deep and multi-layered as Dune.
• So overall: if you like Dune or science fiction or just fascinating bits of well-crafted cinematic weirdness, I encourage you to check out Dune Part Two! The official US release date is 1 March 2024 and slightly before or after that worldwide.

As I did for Dune (2021), I plan to write a spoilery review of Dune Part Two after I've had a chance to think about it, and maybe see it a few more times. Will my plan succeed? Only a Kwisatz Haderach can tell!

Sci-Fi Kant: The Thing Itself by Adam Roberts

 

The Thing Itself by Adam Roberts has been on my list for years, and a cold snap in January seemed like the best time to read it. As a philosopher and science fiction fan, I was already on board for science fiction with a Kant angle, but the obvious links to Lovecraft and John Carpenter's The Thing made it so much MY THING (itself?) that I'm shocked it took me so long to get to it. I'm sure I would have read it sooner if I realized it was so funny (not quite as outright zany as Douglas Adams or The Illuminatus Trilogy and not quite on an Iain M. Banks wavelength, either, but in some category of hilarity nearby). 

Holiday Horror 2023, Part Two!

 

Is it too late for Part 2 of my Holiday Horror 2023? I don't know, but I'm doing it anyway! It may be early January, but the true horror of the holidays is with us all year, so check out some thoughts on Night of the Comet, I Trapped the Devil, The Sacrifice Game, and There's Something in the Barn ... and because I count New Year's as part of "the holidays," Strange Days, and Midnight Kiss.

Review of Reviews: December 2023

 

It's the week between Christmas and New Year's, that blank time filled with cheese, sugar, and not knowing what day of the week it is. I've been having fun reading, but I have been somewhat remiss when it comes to writing reviews. Lest I disappoint the small handful of humans and bots who will read this, here are my reviews of some of what I've been reading lately: Transcendent by Stephen Baxter, The Chrysalids by John Wyndham, The Sum of Us by Heather McGhee, and Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer. I also recently finished A Prayer for the Crown-Shy by Becky Chambers, but I need more time to process how much I loved everything about it. I'm also returning to an old favorite, The Player of Games by Iain M. Banks, which I'm loving just as much if not more than I did when I first read it ten years ago. Anyway, on to this Review of Reviews: December 2023!

Holiday Horror 2023

 

Here at Examined Worlds we have a tradition of writing about holiday horror movies. I guess it's my way of dealing with my complicated feelings about the Most Wonderful/Horrific Time of the Year. It's not that I hate the holidays, really. It's just that it's all a bit much sometimes: the pressure to produce holiday magic at all times through food, cheer, and cheesy decorations, the rampant commercialization that makes you feel like an asshole if you don't buy your loved ones new cars and expensive jewelry, hearing a million versions of the same songs over and over and over and over, each one more insipid than the last ...

Okay, no need to rehash all that. On to the movies!

Birthday Report: 2023

 

Every year I've had this blog, I've written a little something for my birthday. And this year is no different!

But aren't birthdays for kids? First of all, why should kids have all the fun? If being an adult requires draining life of all fun, wonder, and joy so you can pay bills and work until you die, well, then, what's the point of that?

I've always liked the message of Ferris Bueller's Day Off (yes, I am that old!): "Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it." And birthdays are great days to do that!

Movie and TV Mini-Reviews: The Boogeyman, Yellowjackets, Star Trek: Picard, Beavis & Butt-Head, and More

As the prophecy of a recent post foretold, I'm back with some short reviews of movies and TV I've been watching lately. I'm including The Boogeyman, Yellowjackets, Star Trek: Picard, Beavis & Butt-Head, John Wick 4, Sinister, Insidious, and X. These reviews get weirdly impressionistic, so if you're looking for elaborate plot summaries and the like, you may be disappointed. Just the mood I'm in these days, I guess. Enjoy!