“If You Like The Terminator” Reviews

The first couple of reviews are in, and the word on If You Like The Terminator is good!

Film Monthly: “Scott Von Doviak provides a fun and illuminating time-travel journey…the rigor with which the research was undertaken combined with the laid-back and often times humorous writing style make this a high-quality piece of writing that definitely warrants your purchase.”

Bookgasm: “The tidy paperback is structured with thought and care behind it, reading not like a top-of-the-toilet-tank time-passer, but a collection of thorough and incisive essays on several subjects…Von Doviak is a real writer — not some asshat whose credentials amount to a blogspot page and having a shelf of models and figurines.”

Wayback Wednesday: Sequels From Hell

I have written many reviews that have long since disappeared from the interwebs. On Wayback Wednesday, I bring them back. This week: sequels nobody asked for.

National Lampoon’s Van Wilder 2: The Rise of Taj
95 min., R (pervasive crude sexual content, some nudity and language)
Grade: D

Here’s a remarkable new innovation in the annals of Hollywood marketing: a sequel in which the title character is entirely absent from the movie. (If this catches on, we’re looking forward to Superman: The Triumphs of Jimmy Olsen.) It’s unclear whether original star Ryan Reynolds actually had better things to do, or if the producers decided Kal Penn of Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle is more likely to sell tickets.

Win a Copy of “If You Like The Terminator”!

The A.V. Club is giving away five copies of If You Like The Terminator. Details here.

Wayback Wednesday: Superheroes

I haven’t kept up with this feature, but I still have a ton of reviews from over the years that are no longer available online, so I might as well put them here. Since we’re in the midst of yet another summer of superheroes at the box office, let’s dig into the archives to revisit some earlier, perhaps slightly less successful, attempts at putting superheroes on the screen.

Summer Reality

Summer is upon us, which means it’s time for the networks and basic cable channels to start churning out cheaply-made reality shows to fill the holes on their schedules. Here are my AV Club reviews of three that debuted recently:

Sleeper Hits & Logan’s Run

Allow me to direct your attention toward a couple of posts I wrote as a guest-blogger on Onstage & Backstage:

 

Five Surprise Hits of 1984

Post-Apocalyptic Television: Logan’s Run

“If You Like The Terminator…” Now Available!

Hot off the presses! My new book If You Like The Terminator…Here Are Over 200 Movies, TV Shows, and Other Oddities You Will Love is now available!

This is the first book to explore the spectacular array of films, television shows, and other works that helped inspire The Terminator, as well as those that have drawn inspiration from it. If You Like The Terminator… delves into the history of science-fiction cinema, from its earliest days to the golden age of the 1950s and beyond, encountering killer robots, time travelers and postapocalyptic wastelands along the way. This turbo-charged journey through time also reviews the improbable career of Arnold Schwarzenegger, revisits the action heroes of the 1980s, and reevaluates the films of James Cameron, before touching down in the computer-dominated realm of today’s science fiction cinema and projecting the future of the Terminator franchise.