Born and raised in Chicago -- with a decade-long detour in Saudi Arabia -- before settling in the San Francisco Bay Area, Zaki Hasan is a professor of communication and media studies and a member of the San Francisco Bay Area Film Critics Circle and the Hollywood Critics Association. His film reviews and analyses have appeared in The San Francisco Chronicle, IGN, Birth.Movies.Death, HuffPost, Philly Weekly, Fandor, and Sequart, and he is co-host of the MovieFilm Podcast and Nostalgia Theater. He is also co-author of Quirk Books' Geek Wisdom: The Sacred Teachings of Nerd Culture, as well as a contributor to books on the Star Wars, Planet of the Apes, and Blade Runner franchises.