Essays, Not Rants! 165: Top Nine Movies of 2014 Eventually you get to the point when you realize if you keep putting off this list until you’ve seen everything you wanna see you’re never gonna write the darn list. So I’m writing it. So here’s my list of top nine movies for 2014; nine because I’m leaving a space for movies I haven’t seen but want to. And it’s my list, so it’s very, well, me. I liked Birdman well enough and loved Godzilla, but neither quite made the list. These are the ones th
Essays, Not Rants! 104: Top Ten Movies of 2013 I have weird taste. I love pulp, but I love heart, and I love a movie well done. In light of that, here are my top nine movies of 2013. Some movies didn’t make the cut. I really liked 12 Years a Slave for what it managed to do, that is create a story about slavery was genuinely moving yet not a white guilt tract. And I thought Her was fantastic as I did Star Trek Into Darkness, but all those aren’t on this list. So what movies are? These are the
Essays, Not Rants! 055: Too Many Characters, Too Little Time I started watching Game of Thrones with a couple friends of mine because everybody and their grandmother (actually, no, your grandmother wouldn’t watch Game of Thrones) have been telling us how good it is. And it is, but that’s not quite the point of this essay (that’s not a rant). One of the great things about Thrones is the incredible amount of characters. Seriously, this show gives Lost a run for its money. Unlike Lost, however, T
Essays, Not Rants! 233: To Tell The Truth How do you tell the truth? Saying “Alice and Bob broke up” may be what happened, but is it the truth of it all? Breakups are messy business; did Alice break up with Bob or Bob break up with Alice? Did Bob break up with Alice for Charlie? Suddenly there’s a narrative attached to the happening, which in turn colors our perception of what happened. It may be less accurate, but it could be closer to the truth. Maybe the truth is Bob feels like his heart’s
Part Two of TMDs Fifth Annual Movie Awards Alright guys. Time for the individual awards. As you should expect (if you've been following my awards [which you totally should be]), we've got my… unique categories. Which are the categories you should care about. —————————— Worst Movie Basically, what sucks. These movies are not so-bad-they're-good, but are so-bad-they're-worse. Nominees: October Baby A movie so heavy handed with its message the story barely gets told. Rock of Ages Great soundt
Hey guys. Yep. It's late. As it happens college is conducive for procrastination. Whodathunk? Welcome To Josh's Fifth Annual Movie Awards Part One As usual I'm listing every movie I saw this year. You get the idea. Naturally these are all subjective. Legend: º means did not see it in cinemas Multiple * denotes number of times saw in cinema - — Eh. More or less sucked. -/+ — Meh. See it if you want. + — Fairly good film, worth a watch. ++ — One of the better films of the year. Definitely
Hey everyone! For the record, I know I am way overdue. I blame this on a mix of procrastination, waiting for movies to come out in Singapore, then waiting for movies to come out on Netflix, then just more procrastionating. In any case, Welcome To TMD's Fourth Annual Movie Awards Part One As usual I'm listing every movie I saw this year. You get the idea. Naturally these are all subjective and it has been a while since I've seen some of them. Enough of an opening, here it is: Legend: º
Now that we can link to, y'know, the whole Web 2.0 thing that happened years ago. So. Me. Elsewhere. Here's my YouTube channel. You can see
I
for
or even a much older video of my response to
. I'll probably post some of them individually. Enjoy reading Essays, Not Rants? Here's the main blog (BZP's just a mirror!) There ya have it. Or me, as the case may be.
Three years ago to the day I was hospitalized for the first time on account of my heart trying to kill me. What's happened in the last three years? Here's the quick timeline: July 13 2010, Josh goes for a cardiac stress test, his heart goes into Ventricular Tachycardia and hits 255 BPM. Is subsequently hospitalized and diagnosed with ARVC: his heart is turning to fat. Plans emerge to implant an ICD (defibrillator), however an MRI discovers water near his heart and the surgery is postponed and
Essays, Not Rants! 031: Time Doesn’t Flow Linearly Well, actually time does go linearly in real life. But this is fiction I’m talking about. Y’know those stories where events are told in the order of the sequence of events? Well this isn’t about that. Lost’s early episodes followed a basic format: focus particularly on one character on the Island all the while showing us flashbacks to their life before. We see Sawyer’s escapades as a con man while we see him attempting to pull a con now. Ch
Essays, Not Rants! 366: Thursday Nights I don’t know if you heard, but getting tickets for Avengers: Endgame was quite the trip. AMC Theaters’ website full-on crashed and they shut down their (also overloaded app). Other websites, like Fandango were showing errors if you tried to access showings for an AMC. As someone with that fancy-shmancy A-List subscription, this was a real pain (I ended up going to the theater in person to buy my tickets). This isn’t the first time there’s been a mad da
Essays, Not Rants 038: Throwing Burritos One of my courses this semester at NYU is one on Science Fiction. In this particular class we had read and were discussing Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? One of us commented about how Rachael pushing the goat off the building reminded him of that scene in Anchorman where Baxter gets punted off the bridge. The discussion continued, and someone mentioned that in Anchorman, Baxter gets punted off the bridge because Ron throws a burri
Essays, Not Rants! 016: Thrilling Heroics Every boy has his favorite superhero. Doesn’t matter if they’ve never read a comic; pop cultural osmosis will take care of that. Growing up, my favorites were Batman and Iron Man. My brother was a Spider-Man fan. I’ve got a buddy who loved Green Lantern and another who liked Robin. But why is it that we love heroes (super or not)? Whether they’re named Tony Stark, Luke Skywalker, Frodo Baggins, Buffy Summers, or Atticus Finch, we have our heroes. But w
Essays, Not Rants! 247: Thoughts on the Prequel Trilogy Last year I watched all three of the original Star Wars movies and commented on them in the lead to The Force Awakens. Since we’ve got another prequel coming out, I figured I’d do the same thing for the prequels before Rogue One (which I’m seeing on Thursday [!!!] on the biggest freaking screen in New York City[!!!]). Now, I have a soft spot for the prequels, so this isn’t going to be the angry nerd ranting you may expect. In fact, I
I stayed up 'till 2am Tuesday night finishing the game, stayed up another two hours mulling it over, and two days later I'm still processing the game. Here's some initial thoughts I scribbled out: It's just a very different video game. For starters, it's not exactly a terribly 'fun' game. Not that it's not good or a great play, but that it's like Zero Dark Thirty, an incredibly well put together thing that's not easy to watch. Look at the Infected, the zombie-like creatures. Y'know what a co
Essays, Not 195: Thoughts on The Holy Trilogy Doing something different this week. In advent of The Force Awakens, the club I run at NYU is marathoning the Original Trilogy. In lieu of an essay, what follows is something of a live blog. Star Wars (A New Hope) It’s remarkable how much of the first few minutes are told visually. The first proper dialogue isn’t until Vader interrogates Antilles. Once we get to Tatooine, we’re back to relying on the visuals for Artoo’s run in with the Jawas. The lac
I'm tired. It's been a long day (woke up at 4 in Atlanta, hopped on a plane, started work at 1, got home past 10) and there's some serious scthuff going down. Todays' entry is rambling and a little more charged than I'd like for BZP. You can read it on Essays, Not Rants' website if you're so inclined. In any case, hug someone. Love somebody. There's more to this world than hate.
Essays, Not Rants! 263: This Is You In This Story There’s this thing with good stories where you have this gut response of "I wanna do that!" Video games thrive on immersion, by letting you enact what these characters do; meanwhile movies, tv, books, comics, etc let you vicariously experience events. But what if you do get to be that character? Metal Gears Solid 2: Sons of Liberty and Star Wars: The Force Awakens both explore that, by making the protagonist of each story very much a surrogat
Essays, Not Rants! 189: This is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things, JEB! I don’t really talk about politics on this blog…ever. Well, aside from, y’know, the historical or entries on diversity or women in fiction. But every now and then something shows up that’s nonpartisan enough but still related enough to what I usually write about for a good discussion. An interview with Jeb Bush (Or JEB) has been making the rounds lately, wherein he’s asked who his favorite superhero is. This alone is worth n
Essays, Not Rants! 357: Thirteen Or So Years Later I think it was my cousin who turned me in to Kingdom Hearts, years ago, via a ROM of Chain of Memories. It was a novel game, mixing as it did Disney worlds with a Final Fantasy mentality. I played the original PS2 game later and shortly after rented the third game, Kingdom Hearts II from Blockbuster (remember those?) and subsequently bought it. This was all back around the summer of 2006. This past Tuesday, the tenth non-remake game in the
Essays, Not Rants! 137: THEY’RE MAKING A CAPTAIN MARVEL MOVIE Marvel announced their upcoming slate of movies this week and I am very excited for one very important reason: Captain. Marvel. Now, of course I’m pumped for the other announcements. Captain America 3 is officially Civil War, which bodes very interesting the MCU at large. Black Panther’s also showing up in Civil War and getting his own solo film a year later. We’re getting a second Guardians and another Thor, which is cool (especi
Essays, Not Rants! 373: They Changed It But That’s Okay The band Barcelona enthralled me with their first album, Absolutes, with its soaring melancholic piano-driven sound paired with some soulful songwriting. It was a shock to the system when their sophomore album, Not Quite Yours, instead featured a more rhythm-focused sound and the piano relegated to support in many songs. Their third, Basic Man, sounds even less alt-rock; it’s an album full of mellow synthy grooves. Each of their albums so
