Reading Time: 12 minutes If you didn’t know any better, you’d think it was 1986 again. We’re at war with Russia by proxy, Kate Bush is top of the charts, and Top Gun is in the movie theaters. Tom Cruise has soared back into our cinemas and into our collective consciousnesses. But is he the squeaky-clean maverick that the […]
Arts
What’s happening in arts and entertainment, shared through a secular lens at OnlySky, a secular community for nonreligious Americans.
Posted inFilm/TV
‘The Serene Squall’, and other perfectly human contradictions
Reading Time: 8 minutes One of my biggest issues with J. J. Abrams’ Star Trek (2009) was its abysmal treatment of Spock’s core struggle with his human and Vulcan halves. Oh, he still had that tension in the movie! But Abrams also had Spock casually shacking up with a human (Uhura!) while loathing the human side of himself. Did […]
Posted inBooks
Adam the Ape: A thought-provoking middle-grade book for science-loving readers
Reading Time: 2 minutes Humans have been paired with chimps in movies, television, and books as far back as I can remember. I’d assume that’s mostly due to the similarities we share with these great apes—how we can see ourselves in them and undeniably realize our link to them, despite also being indoctrinated elsewhere into the idea that humans […]
Posted inFilm/TV
Review: ‘Jurassic World: Dominion’ short on dinosaurs, entertainment
Reading Time: 2 minutes The original Jurassic Park had fewer than 100 visual effects shots. That they still look good decades later is a testament to that film’s talented production team, which included Stan Winston, whose life-sized animatronics gave Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) animators plenty of on set reference material for how the creatures were supposed to look […]
Posted inFilm/TV
Can any civilization ‘Lift Us Where Suffering Cannot Reach’?
Reading Time: 9 minutes There are many useful narrative structures for humanist stories, and all tend to get airtime in classic Star Trek series. Some involve a juxtaposition of multiple storylines, to hold different crises and outlooks in tension. Others present the full problem early on, allowing different perspectives and conflicts to emerge as characters struggle to find a […]
Posted inBooks
So, you’re a boastfully bookish book hoarder
Reading Time: 3 minutes I’ve heard you all—in personal conversations and in radio and TV interviews—boasting about how many books you own. “You wouldn’t believe how many books I have piled up in my home.” Isn’t this a self-congratulatory semaphore-flag-waving announcement that you are smart? I’m bookish too, but I was taught that it’s inelegant for bookish people to plume themselves […]
Posted inFilm/TV
Review: In the age of streaming, ‘Satantango’ remains as captivating as ever
Reading Time: 3 minutes Sátántangó’s opening shot follows a herd of cows wandering a desolate town. The shot is nearly eight minutes long and free of human dialogue, an act of provocation in its deliberate simplicity and harbinger of things to come. Eight minutes down, about 430 to go—Béla Tarr’s 1994 masterpiece has a daunting runtime of over seven […]
Posted inFilm/TV
‘Spock Amok’: Walk a mile in my ears
Reading Time: 9 minutes One of the most important facets of Star Trek: The Original Series was its spirit of play. In some ways, this was necessary. The series would often be filmed haphazardly, scripts written and handed off to actors last-minute, the late-60s wing-and-a-prayer production flying by the seat of its pants to make it all work on […]
Posted inFilm/TV
Pirating gender in ‘Our Flag Means Death’
Reading Time: 3 minutes As a big fan of HBO Max’s “Our Flag Means Death,” I was very happy to hear that it’s renewing Our Flag Means Death for a second season. If you haven’t watched it, you might be asking: why the big fuss about this show? Well, first: pirates. Second: gay pirates. Then, throw in dashes of […]
Posted inFilm/TV
Review: ‘Prehistoric Planet’ takes nature-as-spectacle filmmaking to new heights
Reading Time: 2 minutes In the opening moments of Prehistoric Planet, the BBC’s splashy, heavily computer-generated nature documentary narrated by David Attenborough, we’re shown a tyrannosaurus rex swimming in open water with young offspring in tow. It’s an uncharacteristically vulnerable look for one of popular culture’s most enduring symbols of brute, primordial strength, and functions as a mission statement […]