• A Look Back,  Inside Entertainment

    A Look Back: Star Trek IV – The Voyage Home

    If you wanted movies news in the 1980s, you had limited avenues. There was no internet. I’m sure there were magazines, but as a teenager I had no idea what they were. I – and so many others – had to rely on Entertainment Tonight (1981), a television magazine about movies and TV series. I’d watch Entertainment Tonight for three things: interviews with actors I liked stories on movies I was interested in, and any clips. Back then, there wasn’t simultaneous release of movies. Often, they would open in Australia months and months after they’d opened in the US. So Entertainment Tonight was a valuable tool for a nerd such…

  • A Look Back,  Inside Entertainment

    A Look Back: Star Trek III – The Search for Spock

    Every movie enjoys the same conceit: that the good guys might not win. But it’s a fallacy. In most stories, the good guys do wins. There might be twists and all that, but the bulk of stories end with the unspoken fairy tale climax of, And they lived happily ever after. But for the sake of our enjoyment, we entertain the prospect that they might not. After all, a predictable plot where we know what’s going to happen isn’t going to compel, excite, and tantalise us. We’ll grow disinterested – just as we would seeing the same repeat for the umpteenth time. Now the problem arises that some stories are…