Ray Marsh (Michael Weaver) is a pleasant enough fellow, the host of a popular travel show who has decided that a visit to the farthest northern reaches of the Norwegian Fjords is perfect for his next episode. He's brought his exhausted producer Alan (Tim Griffin)...
It's a dog-eat-dog world out there, and plenty of games have picked up the theme with one v. one combat. Co-op? That's for softies! If you're really tough, if you're gaming with equally tough folk, you want to battle for dominance. Sure, most of your characters might...
A spy thriller that combines great action sequences with an engaging story, exotic locations, and attractive protagonists? What's not to love with the new action film "The 355"? Well, almost everything, unfortunately. The story revolves around what we in the film biz...
It used to be that American cars were made in America, and foreign cars were made overseas and imported. In that environment, it wasn't a surprise that many people tried their best to "buy American" to support the local economy, American workers, etc. That simple...
You don't have to be mobility impaired to get tired of bending down every time you want to slip on a pair of shoes. You can force any shoe to be slip-on, ostensibly, but eventually, the back portion of the shoe is damaged and both looks and fits poorly. Not good,...
Prior to the mid 1980s, Japanese cars were defined by the pedestrian brands of Datsun, Toyota, and Honda. All huge manufacturing keiretsu, all producing construction equipment, heavy machinery, even lawnmowers and motorcycles. When Honda introduced its luxury brand...
You'd need to have hidden under a rock not to bump into the engaging and popular mathematical puzzle game Sudoku. Invented by Japanese puzzle enthusiast Maki Kaji, it's a 9x9 grid comprised of 9 3x3 boxes. Each 3x3 box, each row, and each column can only contain a...
There are a very small number of movies that have had a profound impact upon our culture, jumping immediately to the status of cult classic or, in some instances, genre classic. The Matrix, released in 1999, was just such a hit, a film that turned actor Keanu Reeves...
I'd be lying if I said I completely understood the wild and entertaining Chinese action film Schemes in Antiques, but I enjoyed it quite a bit nonetheless. It's an action film about two antiques experts who compete to solve a series of obscure puzzles and riddles to...
When Kingsman: The Secret Service premiered in 2014, it was a sleeper hit. A wry, self-aware take on James Bond and the spy genre, it starred agent Eggsy Unwin (Taron Egerton) as a disaffected young man recruited by a secret, independent spy agency secretly run out of...
Emerging as a seer of the hippie generation, author Kurt Vonnegut Jr. has had quite an impact on Western, and particularly American culture. I remember reading and being fascinated by many of his works, notably Slaughterhouse-Five Or The Children's Crusade and Cat's...
Can places trap evil spirits and thereby become not just haunted, but dangerous? Quite a lot of people believe that they can and therein lies the basis of the haunted house, a motif that appears endlessly in horror and thriller movies. Certainly, if something evil has...
You're a hamster and it's your big chance to make a break for it and escape the zoo. Problem is that you really need to grab a lot of lotus flowers from the lily pads to ensure you have enough food to survive in the wilds. Oh. and hippos. There are hungry hippos (are...
There's a classic episode of the TV series The Twilight Zone called "A World Of His Own" where a playwright causes people in his life to disappear by destroying audio recordings wherein he describes them. It turns out that the world he inhabits is one he has created...
Planet Dave is run by Dave Taylor, who has been writing about film, cars, games, and his lifestyle for many years. He's based in Boulder, Colorado and assures readers he's only occasionally falling into a gravity well or temporal distortion field.