Patrick Stewart, Star Trek Captain Picard, dies aged 86

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Patrick Stewart, Star Trek Captain Picard, dies aged 86

30 October 2026

Some late news to hand. British actor Patrick Stewart, known to Star Trek fans as Captain Picard, of The Next Generation (TNG) series of the iconic sci-fi show, died on Wednesday, 28 October 2026.

This just days after Walter Koeing, from TOS died earlier in the week, on Monday.

There is the erroneous tendency to believe TNG crew are considerably younger than those of TOS, given TNG is set almost one-hundred years later. I was slightly surprised to realise — or, should I say, be reminded — Stewart was just four years younger than Keonig.

It’s been an awful week for fans of the Star Trek franchise.

Rest in peace Koenig and Stewart, and thanks for the great stories.

Then there were two: vale Walter Koenig, AKA Pavel Chekov, of Star Trek

28 October 2026

The American actor, who died on Monday at the age of ninety, was best known for his portrayal of Russian navigator Chekov, on the star ship USS Enterprise, in the Star Trek original TV series, from 1966 to 1969, and the subsequent movies.

I obviously don’t follow the sci-fi show as much as I used to, and was surprised to learn yesterday Keonig reprised his role as Chekov in a 2015 fan made film, Star Trek: Renegades, trailer.

In Renegades, he’s over one-hundred-and-forty years of age, and holds the rank of admiral. A nod perhaps to a certain line of his from the 1986 Star Trek film The Voyage Home? But don’t all Trek alumni end up as admirals?

With Keonig gone, George Takei as Hikaru Sulu, and William Shatner, as Captain Kirk, are the only remaining core members of the original series. It’s a sad day for fans of the franchise.

Talking of Sulu, I was likewise surprised to find out he served as president of the United Federation of Planets, after eventually leaving Star Fleet. This though was in a series of Star Trek novels written by Shatner, which were not series canon.

Taika Waititi film adaptation of Klara and the Sun slammed by critics

19 October 2026

Not the news I wanted to hear: Taika Waititi’s adaptation of Klara and the Sun, has been slammed by critics at preview screenings. The consensus seems to be the New Zealand/Aotearoa filmmaker overdid his signature whimsy bringing Kazuo Ishiguro’s 2021 novel, which I liked, to the big screen.

This was something I wondered about after seeing the trailer in June. At the time I wrote if Taika Waititi is directing, we’re going to get Taika Waitit. But his flamboyant style is perhaps not ideal for a novel such as Klara and the Sun, the tone of which could be best described as sombre.

Other adaptations of Ishiguro novels better — perfectly in fact — reflect their haunting source material. The Remains of the Day, and Never Let Me Go, directed by James Ivory, and Mark Romanek respectively, among them. The book is better than the film? Seems the case for Klara and the Sun.

AI, absence of Eisenberg, Fincher, see The Social Reckoning flop

16 October 2026

Brent Lang writing for IndieWire:

With only one member of its creative team returning, Sony Pictures shied away from selling it as a sequel, but the studio still sprinkled bits of “The Social Network’s” DNA into promotional materials.

The Social Reckoning, directed by Aaron Sorking, a continuation of sorts of 2010’s The Social Network, is poorer, it seems, for the absence of David Fincher, and Jesse Eisenberg. Fincher’s obligations to Netflix kept him away, while Eisenberg, among other things, didn’t want to repeat himself.

Recent controversies surrounding AI, the Hugging Face hack, and claims the technology could result in humanity’s extinction, have also apparently proved to be significant distractions.

You can’t do anything without AI somehow meddling. Despite The Social Reckoning not doing too well at the box office, I’d still like to see it, though that will probably be by streaming.

Richard Linklater to spend twenty years making another film

15 October 2026

The American director, whose credits include Boyhood, and the Before trilogy, began filming Merrily We Roll Along in 2019. The story spans twenty years, and Linklater wants the characters, portrayed by Paul Mescal, Beanie Feldstein, and Ben Platt, to be seen ageing over this time.

He has to be commended for not trying to achieve this some other way.

Stories playing out across lengthy time frames are Linklater’s forte. Boyhood, was filmed over twelve years, while the three Before stories were made nine years apart, between 1995 and 2013.

With Merrily We Roll Along we have to wait until around 2040 to see if the two decade time investment was worthwhile. I doubt Linklater will disappoint though.

About The Souffle, a film about homelessness by Jacob Hazeldine

17 September 2026

Here’s something I only discovered recently: someone can still be homeless, even if they are not sleeping rough, or on the street. Couch surfing, living in temporary or emergency accommodation, and boarding houses or caravan parks, are also considered forms of homelessness in Australia.

This even though a person has a roof over their head for the night.

Connor van Helsing (Instagram link), a resident of Darwin, in Australia’s Northern Territory (NT), has experienced all forms of homelessness, including sleeping rough.

van Helsing has collaborated with Australian filmmaker Jacob Hazeldine (Instagram link), to bring his lived experience of homelessness to the big screen in About The Soufflé (trailer).

In terms of rental accommodation, the NT comes second only to Australia’s most populous state, New South Wales (NSW), in terms of cost.

This means a single person in the NT, earning only the minimum wage, is presently priced out of the rental market. And if people here don’t have friends or family they can call on when something goes wrong, they may all to quickly find themselves homeless.

About The Soufflé, which was filmed on a shoe-string budget of just fifteen-hundred Australian dollars, premiered at the Darwin International Film Festival, last week, on Friday 11 September 2026.

I’m not sure if the film will screen outside the film-festival circuit, meaning it may be hard to see in cinemas, but perhaps it be available through streaming instead.

Peter Jackson says he is writing a Tintin film sequel

8 September 2026

On the subject of less than faithful book-to-film adaptations, it sounds like a sequel to 2011’s the Adventures of Tintin might be on the way.

To be precise, New Zealand filmmaker Peter Jackson, who collaborated with Steve Spielberg to make the 2011 film, said, earlier this year, he was writing a screenplay for a sequel. There’s the possibility though things may go no further.

The full title of the 2011 film was The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn. Readers of the Tintin graphic novels though will tell you only elements of The Secret of the Unicorn, the eleventh book in the Tintin series, made it into the film.

There were smatterings — quite a lot really — of other stories in the mix on this occasion.

I doubt too many Tintin fans were bothered, though The Secret of the Unicorn, and its second part Red Rackham’s Treasure, contained sufficient material for the 2011 film. There was no need lift segments from other stories, but Spielberg and Jackson saw things differently.

If there is to be sequel, I’d like to see an adaptation — a moderately faithful one — of The Castafiore Emerald. This was the twenty-first Tintin story, and differed markedly from the others, in that it was set entirely at Marlinspike Hall, ancestral home of accident prone series stalwart, Captain Haddock.

Not all fans were pleased by this, as they were accustomed to Tintin and friends visiting several countries, once even the Moon, in James Bond style, in each story.

But to my mind, the blend of intrigue, mystery, supposition, red herrings, and hilarity, made The Castafiore Emerald one of the best stories in the series. Bring on the adaptation.

The book is better than the film but does not need to be

8 September 2026

Emily Wilson, Professor of Classical Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, in the United States, has lashed American film director Christopher Nolan’s recent adaptation of The Odyssey, in a recent London Review of Books article.

Wilson, who translated the version of the Odyssey, a poem traditionally attributed to ancient Greek poet Homer, used by Nolan, was less than impressed by the screenplay:

I was humbled to learn that Nolan has read at least the first line of my translation of The Odyssey into iambic pentameter. In at least one interview, he cited my version of the first line of the poem: ‘Tell me about a complicated man.’ But I would be ashamed to have written any part of this script.

Stern stuff. Another of Wilson’s comments, in regards to book (or literature) to film adaptations, also caught my eye:

Adaptations needn’t and shouldn’t follow the original with anything like the exactitude of a translation.

In other words, there’s no need for filmmakers, who adapt a book to film, to follow the source material to the letter. A point-of-view many directors would say makes sense. In the same way perhaps cover songs shouldn’t be carbon copies of the original, but rather re-interpretations.

But try telling that to the fans of a book, who are often appalled by the screen version. The book-is-better-than-the-film people. But how might Nolan have fared with Odyssey had he taken the story in a different direction? Even though it can be argued his is not a faithful adaptation.

Is AI use making people behave more robotically?

3 September 2026

Shouldn’t it be the other way around? It seems not. The more people use AI agents, the more robotic their behaviour comes, says Victor Tangermann, writing for Futurism.

Tangermann’s article brings to mind the trailer for The Social Reckoning, which I linked to a few days ago, and the robotic-like demeanour of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, as portrayed by Jeremy Strong.

I doubt it was director Aaron Sorkin’s intention to suggest Zuckerberg’s likely high use of AI has seen his manner become more robotic, but it doesn’t seem entirely coincidental.

Trailer for The Social Reckoning, the bleak follow-up to The Social Network

31 August 2026

A trailer for The Social Reckoning, directed by Aaron Sorkin, which opens in Australian cinemas on Thursday 8 October 2026, and follows-up 2010’s The Social Network, which Sorkin co-wrote.

As I wrote a few months ago, The Social Reckoning is a far darker continuation of the Facebook story. That said, hints of what were to come, namely co-founder Mark Zuckerberg’s megalomaniac tendencies, were seeping through in The Social Network.

In this instalment, Jeremy Strong, instead of Jesse Eisenberg, portrays the Meta CEO, and does so with a callous, robotic demeanour, as if Zuckerberg were no more than an AI entity of Meta’s making.

If recent headlines featuring Meta haven’t already, The Social Reckoning may well turn a few people away from Facebook, and social media generally. This would be no bad thing.

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