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Bringing back blogging like it's 2008

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Nothing's In a Vacuum

Essays, Not Rants! 228: Nothing’s In a Vacuum   San Diego Comic-Con brought with it a new teaser for Netflix and Marvel’s upcoming Luke Cage, featuring said hero beating up bad guys. Ordinarily, this would be cool enough, because, duh. But, before this butt-kicking takes place, we get a shot of Luke putting up the hood of his jacket. It’s a precise shot that focuses a lot of attention into the act: Luke doesn’t just wear his hood up, he deliberately puts it on before heading in.   Luke Cage is m

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The Beauty of Pokémon Go

Essays, Not Rants! 227: The Beauty of Pokémon Go   A recent issue of TIME Magazine (a magazine I usually like) ran a small article about Pokémon Go. In an article describing how the game “shows the unnerving future of augmenting reality,” writer Matt Vella describes players in Prospect Park as “a dozen people shuffling about haphazardly, their zombie eyes fixed on glowing phone screens.”   Okay. Fine.   Honestly, I shouldn’t be too surprised. This is the same publication that ran a cover articl

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Life Over a PokéStop

I live over a pizza joint. A semi-famous one that's more expensive than dollar pizza and too milky for my blood, but you get the idea. Also one usually hopping at 2am on a Saturday night for obvious reasons.   Anyway, this pizza joint is also now a Pokéstop. Which is preeeetty great 'cuz I can get a steady stream of Pokéballs.   But.   And this is the magical part.   Everyday, at some time at night, someone decides to put a Lure there. Now, Manhattan is full of Lures at night (must be when the P

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Excuse Me As I Geek Out About Rogue One

Essays, Not Rants! 226: Excuse Me As I Geek Out About Rogue One   A new teaser of sorts for Rogue One dropped and it’s the sort of behind-the-scenes sizzle reel that I go nuts for. You’ve got folks on sets, folks in costumes, folks with prop guns; all that good stuff. ‘cuz when you combine Star Wars with moviemaking stuff, you’re really going right up my alley.   It also helps that I’m incredibly psyched for Rogue One.   Right off the bat, there’s the obvious thing that I love the cast’s diversi

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Catching 'em All

Essays, Not Rants! 225: Catching ‘em All   Like many people my age, I grew up playing Pokémon. And man, I caught ‘em all. Literally all of ‘em. At least in Yellow and Gold; I got close in Ruby and that’s where I stopped.   So when Pokémon Go was first announced last year I thought it seemed really cool. Like worth upgrading my four-year-old phone for. In case you haven’t heard, here’s the skinny on Go:   It’s Pokémon in real life. You go places, your phone tells you there’s a Pokémon there, you

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Sticking To The Obvious

Essays, Not Rants! 223: Sticking To The Obvious   I put off watching Spotlight for a while. It had a lot going for it — talented cast and the subject matter — reporters investigating child abuse covered up by the Catholic Church — was charged, tragic, and topical. Way I saw it, this was gonna be a heavy, intense movie. Hence putting off watching a presumably gut-wrenching movie   Which is why it’s so frustrating that Spotlight wastes so much potential in favor of being painfully obvious at best

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Top Nine Movies of 2015

Essays, Not Rants! 222: Top Nine Movies of 2015   Woah, it’s June, and I haven’t done of these yet? Big reason is because there are some movies that I still haven’t seen. Like Carol, which I really need to get around to soon. Then there’s The Room, which I really should see, but am not sure if I’m ready for the toll of that movie.   So anyway, here are my, at current, top nine movies of 2015, with an extra space left for a movie that catches me in left field.   9. The Martian It’s a well done m

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Visions of the Future

Essays, Not Rants! 221: Visions of The Future   There are a lot of things I like about science fiction, chief among them the genre’s capacity for using metaphor to discuss bigger ideas. Like how the original Gojira explored nuclear fears and Edwards’ Godzilla discussed the question of the relation between humanity and the environment.   But another thing I really like about science fiction is the way it tries to guess what happens next. Ender’s Game saw the potential of computer networks for a u

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Being There

Essays, Not Rants! 219: Being There   It’s a stormy night in 1995 and you’re a college student just returned from a year abroad. During that time your family moved to a large house on the outskirts of town. A house, you discover, without anyone home that looks like it’s been stolen.   That’s how Gone Home opens, a game where you assume the role of Kaitlin and explore your new house, trying to figure out what happened during the year you were away.   Now, Gone Home toes the line of being a video

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A (Civil) War of Flaws

Essays, Not Rants! 216: A (Civil) War of Flaws.   Civil War came out. This post it about that. Yes, that’s all the intro I’m giving.   Marvel’s done a fantastic job of giving their characters major flaws. Look at the original (cinematic) Avengers: Iron Man’s selfish, Captain America’s noble to a fault, Thor’s proud, The Hulk’s, er, angry, Black Widow doesn’t trust anyone, and Hawkeye’s just the archer (okay, so he’s more the cynic). It’s these clearly defined character defects that make them cla

Conflict of Thrones (Not BZP's)

I've been wondering why this latest season of Game of Thrones hasn't felt as enticing as usual, why it feels a little meandering-y. And I think it may be because of a lack of conflict? Last season had clear bits: Tyrion and Varys were going to Meereen (politicking their way there), Jon Snow was trying to save the wildlings (against Alliser), Jamie, with Bron, was trapped in boringland trying to get his daughter-neice back (against the boringones).   This season hasn't had that much of a conflict

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Superhero Stardom (A Response)

Essays, Not Rants! 218: Superhero Stardom (A Response)   There’s a recent New York Times article I came across that laments how the rise of the superhero genre has conflated actor-stardom with character-stardom. The article itself doesn’t really chase down the points too well, but the central gist (as far as I can see) is that in the recent slate of films, characters have come to trump actors. As Wesley Morris suggests in the article, when you watch Oceans Eleven, it’s George Clooney doing all t

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Graduated/Alumnus.

So yesterday, well, Wednesday, I was at Yankee Stadium for the all NYU graduation where the entire NYU class of 2016 commenced. Or did commencement. Whatever. Was cool. Today (Thursday), though, was the Gallatin graduation, the one specific for my school. Gotta walk across the stage and all that.   Did the thing.   Got a degree in Narrative (Re)Construction; now to find a job. But first, wooo!

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The Elusiveness of Fun

Essays, Not Rants! 217: The Elusiveness of Fun   What is fun?   No, not what’s fun to do, what does “fun” mean? Johan Huizinga, a Dutch guy that wrote a lot about play and what play means, said in his Homo Ludens that “this last-named element, the fun of playing, resists all analysis, all logical interpretation.” He goes on to lament that there’s, to his knowledge, no direct translation in a Western language that really captures what “fun” is (and if you check Wiktionary, you’ll find the transla

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Order, and Narrative Thereof

Essays, Not Rants! 215: Order, and Narrative Thereof   I’m one of those people who will respect you less if you pick an album to play, and then play it on shuffle. See, there’s a deliberate rhyme and reason for the order of songs on an album.   U2’s War needs “Surrender” to be its penultimate song. After an album about war, violence, and fighting for hope, we have a song about giving up which leads into “40,” an adaption of the Bible’s Psalm 40. It’s crucial that the album ends there, in that s

Kid Stuff

Essays, Not Rants! 214: Kid Stuff   You ever go back and check out a story you liked as a kid? Sometimes this means realizing how insufferable some cartoons were, but other times you end up rereading Prisoner of Azkaban and realize that holy ###### that’s a special book.   Which brings up an important thing about children’s stories. Namely, what is a story for kids? Is Star Wars a children’s story? It was one of my favorite stories as a kid and that seems like a decent barometer for what counts

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Where TMD Explains Why You Should Fund His Movie

Essays, Not Rants! 213: Where TMD Explains Why You Should Fund His Movie   There are five days left for my movie’s Kickstarter. So that means it’s time for me to go on a spiel about why you should fund The Conduits. ‘cuz I’m really proud of this story and want you to be able to see it when it’s done without all that festival hoopla (and just for $9!).   So what is this whole production? The Conduits is fundamentally a student film, given that it’s being worked on primarily by students and being

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Something Something Diversity Something Star Wars

Essays, Not Rants! 212: Something Something Diversity Something Star Wars   There’s a new Star Wars trailer out, this time for Rogue One! Now, when they announced it to be about a ragtag band of Rebels stealing the Death Star plans; that got me excited. I’m all about ragtag teams pulling off heists. But then they announced the cast. We’ve got Felicity Jones starring and, in addition to Forest Whitaker, people with last names like Luna, Yen, Wen, and Ahmed. If there’s one thing I like as much as

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Rogue One

Laptop is out of comission due to being unable to find its own harddrive (did you know that that's a thing that can happen?), but I'm logging on to BZP on a school computer because this is important.   Rogue One.   It's like a check boxes of things I'm into: Star Wars Women who kick butt Diversity AT-ATs Star Wars Ragtag Teams doing Cool Stuff I'm psyched, dude.

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Josh Kinda Just Wants To Talk More About Star Wars

Essays, Not Rants! 211: Josh Kinda Just Wants To Talk More About Star Wars   The Force Awakens’ planet-obliterating Starkiller Base is powered by absorbing its system’s sun and firing it as a weapon. This mechanic allows fighter pilot Poe Dameron to utter the phrase “but as long as there’s light, we got a chance” without it feeling remotely hollow or contrived. It reflects, as well, the standoff going off in another part of the planet and, even bigger, the general concept of the Star Wars saga a

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Oh yeah, so what's the movie about?

So in response to the bunch of screegrabs I posted in my last entry, Inferna Firesword mentioned that she wondered what the plot was. Which made me realize that, outside of linking to the Facebook and Kickstarter, I haven't really talked about the story.   Here we go!   The Conduits is about Rachel Watkins (her) who reluctantly teams up with Morris Chen to find out what happened to her father when he disappeared. Standing in her way are Fafnir and her Cavaliers who will stop at nothing to put an

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Psst, check out some stills from my movie.

Still wondering about the Kickstarter? This is the shots we've been getting. Now, keep in mind, this is all before color correction, vfx, or anything done in post. Heck, we've still three more days of shooting.              

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