I caught this Danish film, based on the lives of two real-life Second World War Resistance heroes, thanks to Netflix.  Since it’s based on real-life Resistance heroes, you know going in that this won’t be a happy film, because pretty much all the real-life Resistance heroes died.  (Hey, I’m not telling you anything the original […]

When I was a child, Omar Sharif was my image of Genghis Khan.  I had seen the big-screen Hollywood biopic, perhaps the last to be made in the tradition of Ben-Hur and El Cid, with Omar as Temudjin, Stephen Boyd as the villainous Jamuga, and Robert Morley, of all people, as the Chinese Emperor.  The […]

Paul Stotts has written an extremely perceptive review of This Is Not a Game.    (Extremely perceptive because he agrees with me, okay?) [The] interconnection between reality and fiction is masterfully explored in Walter Jon Williams’ latest novel This Is Not A Game, a beautiful multi-layered novel, both vastly entertaining and astute. It’s a fascinating sociological […]

A few years ago I made an effort to visit the crypt of pioneering Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe, which is located in a moderately obscure Prague church called Our Lady Before Tyn.  Tycho’s meticulous astronomical observations, all with equipment he designed and built himself, were so good that his Rudolphine Tablets were used well into […]