Essays, Not Rants! 143: The Mustache of Self-Actualization I use this blog to hash out ideas for papers sometimes. Writing weekly helps me get ideas sorted or even just to keep churning out 600-800 word rants essays keeps me on my toes. One thing I’ve found myself needing to work on recently is zeroing in on one aspect of a work rather than only looking at the big picture. So I thought I’d do that. “All great men have mustaches,” says Andy Samberg’s character, Rod early in Hot Rod, hence his
Essays, Not Rants! 103: Why The Last of Us Should and Shouldn’t Be A Movie Big news broke on Thursday: The Last of Us is becoming a live action movie. Now, you have to understand, I love The Last of Us. I wrote a final paper on it (see notes here), I wrote about its characters and convictions, and I wrote on how it’s a grownup video game. I’ve said before that The Last of Us is an incredible game that deserves to be seen in a more literary light. And now it is, it’s being made into a movie s
Essays, Not Rants! 107: Mother Met I wasn’t a fan of the How I Met Your Mother finale that aired on Monday. Now, I usually like finales; I love the ending of Lost and I do like how Chuck ended. Though both are controversial in their own right, they felt emotionally honest and true to the show. The problem with How I Met Your Mother’s “Last Forever” was that for what it was trying to do, it felt unearned. And if you haven’t seen it yet: SPOILERS My main complaint is, of course, Ted and Robi
I'm taking Games 101 this semester and a lot of people laugh or are jealous because sometimes my homework is playing Halo, Settlers of Catan, or Mega Man 2 (or this week: Civilization V, Advance Wars, or StarCraft II). Thing is, my midterm is tomorrow (Monday) and I'm cramming. People, I will have to see a picture of a game in play and write down the name, date, developer, platform, and country of origin. AND THAT IS JUST THE FIRST PART OF THE TEST. I HAVE NOTE CARDS. I HAVE NEVER NEEDED NOT
Essays, Not Rants! 196: An Actual New Hope One of my earliest memories involves, unsurprisingly, Star Wars. I, and another kid, were talking about Empire and how Luke loses his hand and gets a robot one. I’m sure in there was talk of Darth Vader being Luke’s father and all that. Now, I couldn’t have been that old; based on where we were I doubt I was more than four. Which shows just how inborn my Star Wars nerd is, but also, wait, I was four and talking about Empire? The darkest of the origina
So there's a yearlong class at NYU Tisch where you make movies. But unlike other classes, only half the class's projects will be greenlit. You spend the Fall working on preproduction, refining your script, and preparing a pitch. I'm the first non-Film Major to be in this class with the chance to compete for the greenlight. I pitch today. Here we go.
Essays, Not Rants! 064: Shakespearean Gateway Drug Like most everyone who’s taken an English class, I’ve had my share of Shakespeare. I’ve read a handful of his plays, know the plots to a few more, and think I mostly understand what’s kinda going on (but clearly still miss a lot of it). That said, I’ve also seen Kenneth Branagh’s Henry V and Hamlet, and enjoyed both, so hey: Shakespeare. Thanks to Branagh’s films, though, I’ve had this appreciation for those long monologues and weird words wit
Essays, Not Rants! 129: Becoming Legend On Thursday a new trailer dropped for Bungie’s Destiny. In the vein of trailers for Bungie’s prior games (like Halo 3: ODST’s
which remains one of my favorite pieces of marketing ever), it doesn’t really tell you much about what the game is like. It’s live action, for crying out loud, not a cutscene, or let alone actual gameplay. Which almost begs the question, how does the game even play? Only, no, the trailer actually does an impressive job of summ
Essays, Not Rants! 047: The Unnecessity of Dialogue I’m in a filmmaking class here at NYU that focuses on visual storytelling. That is, no dialogue. At first that sounds like quite a challenge since it’s the script and speaking that tend to carry a story. So that got me thinking: what’re the benefits when we don’t have dialogue? Anyone remember the video game LEGO Star Wars that came out several years ago? It’s a retelling of (obviously) the Star Wars movies only with LEGO. There’s no dialog
Essays, Not Rants! 246: But For Different Reasons I first saw (500) Days of Summer when I was eighteen. Fresh outta high school, I was one of five people in the theater. I loved it, and would go on to watch it in theaters two more times when I moved to Singapore a month later, and then again when I bought it on BluRay. I loved it for its emotional honesty, for the way the film depicted Tom’s thought process on screen. But like Tom’s own relationship with The Graduate, my own love of (500) Days
Essays, Not Rants! 088: Little Things The biggest difference between fiction and reality is that the former is not real. Duh. Ergo, one of the greatest challenges of fiction is making it seem real. Doesn’t matter if it’s Star Wars, Pacific Rim, or Chuck; it’s gotta feel realistic. Lived in, real. The crew behind Star Wars, Pacific Rim, and the film adaption of The Lord of the Rings achieved this through set design. There are tiny, almost unnoticeable details all over the movie. The ships in
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! 115: Merited Futility I like playing video games, I really do. I write about them a lot too. Gaming is great: it’s a great form of catharsis, sometimes carries unique stories, and it’s just plain fun. Which then makes it odd when I say I have trouble justifying gaming. See, it sometimes feels like a waste of time. After all, outside of the magic circle in which gaming takes place, it has no effect on, well, anything. That’s what a game is, isn’t it? This applies more so
I recently learned that I have access to a 3D printer through NYU. That I can use. For free. Because I don't have the time yet to find the plans for an Iron Man gauntlet, I decided to do some digging. Despite losing all my files, I managed to find some old
that I'd emailed Motago so he could render something. Then I decided to start small. Folks. I have a PHYSICAL VERSION of a model I made OVER NINE YEARS AGO. THIS IS THE FRIGGING FUTURE
Essays, Not Rants! 257: Stuff From 2016 I Wanna Talk About Every year I do a thing on this blog where I list my top nine movies. Thing is, movies aren’t the only things that come out in a year. So here’s a list of a bunch of stuff in a bunch of different mediums that came out last year that I really liked that I wanna talk about. They may not be the best thing to come out of the year, but it’s stuff I want to talk about. Book: Homegoing, by Yaa Gyasi I talked about this book when I first fin
Essays, Not Rants! 122: The Internet, Neutrality and Me Ender’s Game has this wonderful side plot (that didn’t make it to the film) where Peter and Valentine, Ender’s siblings, take to the Nets as Demosthenes and Locke. The anonymity of the Nets allows them, despite their young age, to garner an audience and political influence. Their machinations help prepare Earth for after the war as well as save Ender’s life. It sounds a little farcical now, since, as xkcd pointed out, they’d essentially
In the post right below this one I mentioned looking to shoot in a street where Jessica Jones shot (y'know, the street outside where they held Kilgrave). After much contact with the folks in charged, I could shut down stuff to work there... ...but it'd cost more than my entire budget for a single day. Man. Must be nice to have Marvel/Netflix money.
Essays, Not Rants! 155: Twisted Echos I’ve actually got a bunch of half-written posts I wanna post. Stuff on Birdman and the Oscars, or one on the Parks and Rec finale. However something came out, and, well, I can’t help myself. I’m talking about the new Age of Ultron
. There’s a lot to nerd out about. You’ve got the Vision teaser at the end, all the hints of the Avengers falling apart, Ultron being deliciously evil, and the glorious shot of the Avengers soaring into battle. I’m getting e
Essays, Not Rants! 032: Storytelling and Parables Remember: This post is about storytelling, not the veracity of any religion Doesn’t matter what you think of Jesus, gotta admit the guy could tell a story. Or the people who recorded them spiffed them up. Either way, Jesus often communicated (religious and otherwise) points through stories in ways that were not heavy handed yet still managed to tell a good story. See, Jesus knew his audience. He knew that some people were inherently opposed t
Essays, Not Rants! 056: Great Artists Steal When explaining what make the Mac so good, Steve Jobs quoted Picasso saying “Good artists copy, great ones steal.” In an interesting twist of fate, that quote often gets attributed to Jobs now instead of Picasso (who may or may not have said it first). It’s a fun quote that definitely is the background for the Mac, it’s also very applicable to, y’know, art. And here that means everything. Especially Neill Blomkamp’s filmography. Who, you ask? You m
Essays, Not Rants! 123: Why Guardians of the Galaxy Will Be Awesome Guardians of the Galaxy is not a Marvel movie I expected to ever happen. Not because they’re so, well, out there, but because prior to the announcement of the film I had no idea who they were. Unlike Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America, these guys had missed the general cultural osmosis that many superheroes enjoy. So I read the comics; with the ‘new’ lineup from 2008, not from 1969. Simply put, the comics were weird. There’
So I turned 22 today (er, yesterday). Was fun here in South Carolina, shenanigans, dinner with Mom, that sort of thing. Hanging out with some friends playing Smash till 2am. Yeah. Now I'm enjoying a couple beers and some writing before I have to wake up and start preparing stuff for my trip to Singapore for the rest of the summer. Friends, I am an adult.
Essays, Not Rants! 375: Obsolescence I have a floppy disk lying around somewhere with stuff on it I must have written when I was around eight or ten years old. I don’t know exactly what’s on it and I’m not sure where it is at any given moment; it’s one of those things that I’ll happen on occasion and think to myself “hey, I should get the files off of this some time.” Of course, there is the whole issue of finding a floppy disk reader. My laptop doesn’t even have a CD drive anymore and what
