BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS (1980) DVD Review @ TCM Blog

I personally haven't yet gotten my hands on a copy of the eagerly-anticipated, forthcoming Battle Beyond The Stars DVD or Blu-ray yet (I'll be picking up my Blu-ray disc when it goes on sale, with everyone else, on the 12th), but the TCM "Movie Morlocks" blog has just posted a nicely enthusiastic advance review of the upcoming Shout! Factory disc, and of the movie itself. Nice to see it getting some respect elsewhere on the Internets.

Check it out HERE.

"Building Boba"

My friend Nate Piekos, graphic designer and comic book letterer extraordinaire, has just started building his own Boba Fett armor and is chronicling the process on a new blog, Building Boba. Check it out!

Nate is an extraordinarily talented (and disciplined!) guy. His comic book fonts (Blambot) are fantastic, professional and affordable, his fantasy webcomic, Atland, is well-written, addictive and beautifully cartooned... and that's just scratching the surface of Nate's seemingly inexhaustible talents.

If You Like Space: 1970...

Let me indulge in some shameless self-promotion for a moment... Some of the DVD reviews on this blog originally appeared in my DVD Late Show review column, which I have been writing regularly (mostly) for the last six years. The column originally debuted on filmmaker Kevin Smith's Movie Poop Shoot website in 2005 as a bi-weekly feature. Subsequent incarnations of the column appeared online at Quick Stop Entertainment and, later, Forces of Geek. Several print installments also appeared in IDW Publishing's DOOMED magazine.

A year ago this January, I moved the feature to its own, dedicated website - DVD Late Show. New reviews - between 1 and six new articles, depending on what I have on hand - generally appear there weekly, and the archive contains over 550 DVD and Blu-Ray reviews - mostly sci-fi, fantasy, horror and action films/TV. If you enjoy the reviews and my other articles here at Space: 1970, you'll find a lot more of the same at the Late Show.

PLEASE check out the site, and if you find it entertaining and/or helpful, bookmark it, Follow It, "Like" it on Facebook, and make it a regular stop. Spread the word, link to it - I'd really like to make it as successful as this site has turned out to be. Thanks, guys.

My STARCRASH (1978) Blu-Ray Review

I spent all of last night delving into it's vast trove of treasures, and now I've posted my review of Shout! Factory's new Blu-Ray edition of Starcrash over at my DVD Late Show website.

You may gather that STARCRASH is one of my favorite movies, and you're right. I've always maintained that the only bad movie is one that fails to entertain, and by that criteria, STARCRASH is far from a bad movie. In fact, I find it vastly more pleasurable and rewarding than any of the STAR WARS prequels. If you're willing to give it - and its unique charms - a chance, you may enjoy it, too.

You can find the full review HERE. Enjoy.

News: SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN (1974) DVD Details

TVShowsOnDVD has the official press release and pre-ordering information for the upcoming Six Million Dollar Man: The Complete Series DVD set from Universal/Time-Life.

The muscular set - the 4th most requested unreleased show at TVShowsonDVD.com - will be housed in ultra-collectible packaging sporting an audio chip and eye-popping 3-D lenticular artwork. Across 40 DVDs, the complete series will feature all 100 digitally-preserved hour-long episodes, all of which have been remastered from the original, uncut broadcast versions. The set also contains more than 17 hours of all-new bonus material, specially created just for this collection, highlighted by new in-depth interviews with Lee Majors (Col. Steve Austin) and Richard Anderson (Oscar Goldman), among others. Also included will be the three pilot movies "The Six Million Dollar Man", "Wine, Women and War", and "Solid Gold Kidnapping"; the three reunion movies "The Return of the Six Million Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman", "Bionic Showdown" (with Sandra Bullock) and "Bionic Ever After?"; and the never-before-released cross-over episodes of The Bionic Woman, all of which have also been digitally restored from the original source material.* Additionally, for the true completist, the set also contains the alternative syndicated edits of the pilot and reunion telefilms, which, when added together, makes for more than 30 unbelievable hours of bonus programming.

Check out the complete article HERE.

Once again: speaking only for myself, I hate these exclusive "complete series" sets that come out long before individual season sets (usually without all the extras) are available to consumers. Not all of us - especially these days - has TWO HUNDRED AND FORTY DOLLARS (plus shipping) available to blow all at once on a TV show, even one as long-awaited as The Six Million Dollar Man. Twenty-five or thirty at a time for a single season is a lot more feasible, especially with retailer discounts figured in.

Oh well....

DEATHSPORT (1978) DVD Review

This is the first of Shout's Corman titles that I've been disappointed in, primarily because I was hoping for a DEATHSPORT presentation that was superior to the old DVD I already owned, and I didn't get that. I'm not sure what happened there, but it is a disappointment. That said, the package overall is quite good, and the audio commentaries, in particular, are especially welcome. 

My full review of the new Shout! Factory double feature DVD edition of Deathsport (starring David Carradine) and Battletruck (a/k/a Warlords of the 21st Century, 1982) has been posted on my DVD Late Show website. Check it out.

STARCRASH (1978) Advance DVD Review

Nah, I don't have it yet (I wish!), but George Reis has a detailed review up of the Shout! Factory 2-disc DVD edition of Starcrash, which will be in stores on September 14, on his great DVD Drive-In site.

Of course, once it comes out, I'll share my review of the Blu-Ray edition here.

Pre-Order: Starcrash (Roger Corman Cult Classics) [Blu-ray]

or the DVD version: Starcrash (Roger Corman Cult Classics)

LAND OF THE LOST (1974-6) Episode-by-Episode Commentary

My internet pal Michael May has been writing a series of episode-by-episode commentaries and analyses of the mid-70s Sid & Marty Krofft Saturday morning sci-fi adventure series, Land of the Lost.

Land of the Lost is one of my favorite television shows ever, and I intend to write about it here on the site. The world that the writers - specifically David Gerrold, as first season story editor - created for the show was layered and utterly fantastic. You also couldn't complain about the writing (especially in year one), with noted science fiction scribes like Larry Niven, Norman Spinrad and Ben Bova (among others) contributing scripts. It may have been a kid's show, but it was one of the best genre series of its era.

But, as I haven't gotten around to writing about the show yet, and Michael's been doing such an exhaustive job of it over on his own blog, I thought Space: 1970 readers might like to read his articles for themselves.

Links below:

Season One. Part One.

Part Two.

Part Three.

Season Two. Part One.

Part Two.

And Michael's just starting on Season Three now.