Summer is almost over (I report for Registration next week) so I decided to watch these Aliens vs. Predator movies that garnered mixed reviews when they showed up a few years ago. The first movie, Aliens vs. Predator (2004), is the better movie: better plot, better cast, better production values. A scientific archeological team is assembled and sent to mysterious city found in the ice of Antarctica. The mission is funded by the billionaire Charles Weyland played by Lance Henriksen. Little does the team realized that they’re in the battleground between aliens (from Ridley Scott’s Alien series) and Predators (from the SF series featuring hunters from another planet). Much gunplay and mayhem ensue. GRADE: B-
Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (2007) continues the story from the previous movie, but presents the Alien vs. Predator battle in miniature. The story is set in the small Colorado town of Gunnison. Aliens escape a crashed Predator ship and immediately start killing people. A Predator arrives to set things straight. More shooting and explosions ensue. The cast is lame and so is the plot. GRADE: C-
The commercials and the trailer for Hope Springs market the movie as a comedy. It isn’t. In fact, clunks of the movie are couples counseling sessions. Meryl Streep plays Kay, a Coldwater Creek clerk, who is distressed by the lack of intimacy in her 31-year marriage to Arnold (an accountant) played by Tommy Lee Jones. Meryl signs them up for intensive couples counseling in a remote Maine town called Hope Springs. The therapist, played by Steve Carell, listens to their marital problems and assigns Meryl and Tommy “exercises” designed to restore their lost intimacy. Gaffs and misfires ensue. Hope Springs is a message movie and the message is hopeful. But not for one second did I believe Meryl Streep was a frumpy clerk or Tommy Lee Jones was a parsimonious bean counter, or that Steve Carell was a therapist. Their stardom eclipses their roles in this movie. And the depictions of Elder Sex may disturb some viewers. Movie critic David Edelstein called Hope Springs a “post-menopausal chick flick.” I wouldn’t go that far. GRADE: B 
Philip Harbottle captures the Sense of Wonder of early science fiction in Britain in this marvelous volume. After World War II, prolific British writers like John Russell Fearn and E.C. Tubb burst on the scene. Other British SF writers like Arthur C. Clarke and Eric Frank Russell became international writers. Harbottle explores some of the pre-WWII writers, too. Vultures of the Void includes hundreds of covers from British SF paperbacks and magazines, most of which I’d never seen before. That, alone is worth the price of this book. But Harbottle’s enthusiasm and scope in documenting the history of British science fiction writing makes the stories he tells all the more entertaining and enlightening. I highly recommend this wonderful book!
