Essays, Not Rants! 030: The Consistency of Continuity The way reality (and by proxy, stories) works is that if one thing happens then something else does. Because of this, we have a natural sequence of events that happens. It’s a consistent sequence of events that have bearing on each other. Man, describing continuity is difficult. Basically, if something happened, it happened. Events that happen influence the next one. Yet how much this affects the story depends on, well, the story. Let
Essays, Not Rants! 308: Wakanda Forever So. Black Panther. Right now, I want nothing more than to geek the crud out about this movie. It’s, wow. Ryan Coogler’s quickly become one of my favorite directors (courtesy of Creed and Fruitvale Station), and this movie is the icing on the cake. There’s so much to love about it. The plot moves along at a clip pace, so much so that I found myself wanting more when it ended. Its supporting cast is as interesting as its leads, with everyone getting th
Two years ago yesterday I was told I had a very potentially fatal heat condition. Several doctors later and here I am. I’ve got a bar in my chest and my heart seems to be fine. Yes, like Iron Man. So here's to two years of amazing grace. Your move, heart disease.
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.
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
Saw a Sneak Peak tonight at a nearby IMAX theater. In a word: magnificent. Just, dang. I went with a friend of mine who's a huge Trekkie (she sat me down to watch Wrath of Khan a few months back) and she loved it too. Gotta say it's a toss up between it and Iron Man 3. But dang. Go watch it.
Essays, Not Rants! 070: Dialogue in Fight Choreography Did you see Man of Tai Chi? Don’t bother; the acting’s questionable, plot is tenuous at best, and the dialogue is stilted. And that’s just the surface. The one thing that makes the movie remotely remarkable is its choreography: more so than in many other movies, the fight scenes seem to convey not only the growth of the protagonist but a sort of dialogue between the characters as well. Let me explain (and I will spoil everything because
Essays, Not Rants! 136: Let’s Talk About My Movie In case you haven’t heard, I’m making a movie. Not just that, but I need your help to make it happen. Here’s why. “Ghosts That We Knew” is a story about not being alright. Becca, the protagonist, isn’t where she thought she’d be in her life Things haven’t been going the way she’d hoped they would and she’s stuck. With all that comes the nagging doubts in the back of her head, voices that remind her of how life’s not working out. I wanted to
So this is my late post-Spring Break entry. For the first time in my college career(?) I left the City during Spring Break, this time to visit my girlfriend in Paris, where she's studying abroad (because she's super smart and writes essays in French when she's not sciencing in English). Now, despite the whole growing-up-on-a-ship thing, I'd never actually been to mainland France (Martinique, yes, but that's practically a different country sorta), so going to France made country 55 for me, a
Brother and I signed a lease on an apartment today, as neither of us wanna live in dorms next year. It's very much a dinky New York apartment (sixth floor walkup, no sink in the bathroom), but we figure it's got character (also: actual two bedroom, a living room [!]) and it's near our usual haunts (few minutes from some decent bars, not far from my favorite dollar pizza place, near Trader Joe's, near campus), so, yeah, it's a win. Holy [censored] this is what growing up is. My name's on an a
Essays, Not Rants! 344: First Man(liness) I’m a little tired of manly manliness in cinema. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll always have a soft spot Predator, Die Hard, or a good Spaghetti Westerns. But it’s 2018 and I’m kinda tired of that being the MO for male characters, especially manliness for the sake of manliness, like that 50s stoic, silent masculinity. In short, I’m really tired of 'traditional' masculinity, especially when it’s idolized and unquestioned. Which leads me to First Man, the new
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
Y'know that thing where you're offered everything you wanted? Something you've wanted for a long long time that embodies just about all you hoped for? Know what I mean? But you know you can't take it? That as much as you wish you could you can't? That you have to do the right thing and say no? And step back out alone, without what you could have had? And even though you did the right thing you feel like #### and it haunts you? So you talk it out, you pray it out, you write it out, you get
Essays, Not Rants! 046: Why Abrams Is The Man For Star Wars A little more than a week ago it was officially announced that JJ Abrams would be directing the new Star Wars. Some people met this news with a measure of caution. Myself? I think Abrams is the person to direct it. L ook at Mission: Impossible III. Abrams made his directorial debut with the sequel to this established series. He kept strongly to the themes and style of the original TV show (so I’m told). Not only was it considered
Been listening to Relient K's new record more or less incessantly since yesterday. Gotta say, I really like it. No, not quite as good as Forget and Not Slow Down, but that's more because it's incredibly different (And FNSD is one of my favorite albums ever (up there with Vice Verses and How To Dismantle an Atomic Bomb and Scars and Stories). But I really like the differentiness. To that, "If I Could Take You Home" is an early favorite ("Don't Blink" and "When You Were My Baby" are other highli
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
My lease ends at the end of May and I'm moving. It's part price, part the mouse hunt of the past couple months, part the six floor walkup, part the uneven floors, part the lack of a sick in the kitchen, part the price, part the fact that my bedroom door doesn't really close properly anymore, and part the price. I'm gonna miss the fire escape and the roof and the location and the apartment, though. But Mata freaking Nui apartment hunting in New York is rough. I mean, probably not if you have a
Essays, Not Rants! 099: Heart of a Child I grew up in the 90’s with a steady diet of Lego, Jedi, superhero cartoons, mecha anime, Power Rangers, and Ninja Turtles. All this was peppered in with bedtime stories from my Dad, some of which were about the Chinese strategist Zhuge Liang, others were about Han Solo and Luke Skywalker going on adventures, and still others about Superman and Batman teaming up to fight bad guys. There are side effects that come with this; the firm belief that giant r
Essays, Not Rants! 266: Star Wars’ Newfound Dearth Of White Guys The Star Wars video game Battlefront 2, the follow-up to 2015’s Battlefront, was revealed a couple weeks ago, and the sequel seems to be righting a lot of the mistakes of the first game. It boasts more interesting combat, the return of classes, multiple eras in which you can play, and Jedi Rey as a playable character (which, right there makes me wanna preorder it). Unlike the first, which was basically online multiplayer only, th
Essays, Not Rants! 108: Interconnected I’ve been waiting for Agents of SHIELD to really get into its groove proper. It finally did last week, courtesy of some major plot points from Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Which is kinda odd, really. A feature film bearing a different name affecting a TV show that much. I mean, it makes sense within the universe they’re creating, but from a meta perspective, it’s terribly uncommon. And that’s one thing I love about the stories Marvel Studios’
