Essays, Not Rants 063: Heroic Motivation I'm gonna do something a little different this week. A few weeks ago I wrote a post as a sounding board for a Research Paper I had to write for a class. Now I figured "hey, why don't I post that research paper?" So I am. Its much longer than a usual post (nearly 5 times as long), but I feel like it's one of the best things I've written. So here it is, in all its A-, MLA-ish glory: “Heroes. There’s no such thing.” So says Ben Kingsley’s Mandarin in I
Essays, Not Rants! 259: Okay, Seriously, What Is A Superhero Movie? A couple weeks ago I was at The Strand looking for a copy of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Because it’s on my personal reading list and I figured it’s as good a book as any to pick up at The Strand. Anyway, after scouring the A’s in the science fiction section, I was directed to check in general fiction. And there it was. Which, alright, fine. I mean, it’s vaguely science fiction – though Atwood prefers describing i
Essays, Not Rants! 325: Adaptation By Someone Else One game that got some press at last week’s E3, the game industry’s annual event where games are announced and/or demo’d, was the upcoming Total War: Three Kingdoms. Apparently it was announced back in January, but I hadn’t heard of it until now. And I am intrigued. The Total War series are strategy games that unlike, say, StarCraft or Red Alert, tend to focus on real wars, be they Roman, Napoleonic, or set in Feudal Japan. They’ve been on
Essays, Not Rants! 121: Of Dragon Training Sequels So I finally got around to see How To Train Your Dragon 2 this week. I’d enjoyed the first one well enough, but it didn’t stick out as something with a must see follow up. Figured, eh, it’s just another sequel. I was wrong. How To Train Your Dragon 2 is arguably one of the most important modern animated films. It deserves this title for the reasons you’d expect: beautiful animation and technical brilliance along with a great story; but the
Essays, Not Rants! 092: In Defense of Escapist Fiction A term that I see thrown around a lot regarding my preferred fictions is “escapist fiction.” You might have seen it before; films like The Avengers and Pacific Rim are just escapist fantasies, especially when compared to ‘real cinema.’ Or video games are just ways to live out a fantasy and science fiction a way to avoid problems and reality. It’s an interesting criticism, to say the least, one that sometimes culminates in me giving up an
Essays, Not Rants! 243: Of Hope in Stories I've never been a huge fan of tragedies. Don't get me wrong, I love stories like Othello, Whiplash, and Sicario; but those aren't the ones I count my favorite stories. I sometimes joke that I tell hopeful stories because if I want stories of injustice and despair, I can just read the news. I skim headlines and it’s not hard to see Othello and Chinatown being reenacted in current events. There is, of course, a greatness to using tragedy to comment o
Essays, Not Rants! 372: The Wickiness John Wick has a delightfully simple premise: Retired assassin lives okay life. Punk kid steals retired assassin’s car and kills his puppy (that was given to him by his recently deceased wife). Retired assassin un-retires and goes on a brutal rampage of revenge. Simple, effective. And honestly, when so many action movies are trying to be super smart with overly complex plots and schemes, "dude gets revenge for dead dog" is wonderfully simple. It harken
Essays, Not Rants! 198: Diversity: It’s That Easy! Claire Temple, played by Rosario Dawson, shows up in the last episode of Jessica Jones, providing a quiet link between that show and Daredevil. She tends to a wounded Luke Cage, because it takes a special kind of doctor to treat an (incredibly hot) man with unbreakable skin. Malcolm, Jessica’s neighbor, shows up too and the three share a scene. And suddenly there are more (important) people of color interacting on screen than in any other M
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
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.
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
I'm gonna be upfront with all of you: my mom is way cooler than yours. I'm not going to detail history (years in India, on a ship, etc) or the fact that she's someone I can have long Skype calls with. Nah, instead I'm gonna do a quote compilation. I'm fully aware this puts me in a fairly dorkish category. But honestly, I don't mind. =P
Practicing tossing a(n American) football around with Zarai a while ago I realized something, I can't throw one properly to save my life...
TMD stared down the rows of armed executionors. Here he was destined to be executed for reasons that he himself did not know. He had been told that his sole bid for freedom would be based on his failure. The minutes tick by. A sole bead of pespiration slips slowly down his neck. On the far side of the chamber a door slides open - slowly TMD notes. Out wal
Essays, Not Rants! 377: Shoes My favorite part of Netflix’s Always Be My Maybe might just be a tiny beat that happens part way through the movie. It’s hardly a big moment, just a bit of table setting that, for someone like me, holds all the more import. There’s a party, and a couple kids are chasing each other. They run up the steps to the house and, without pausing to think, slip off their shoes before entering. The camera follows them as they run through the house and to the back door wher
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
Essays, Not Rants! 378: Menu-Assisted Narrative Mega Man Zero ends with Zero facing down a hoard of Pantheons, his saber ready and his will resolved to fight every last enemy that crosses his path. The music swells and he charges off into battle. The sequel picks up a year later and the opening stage is you, as Zero, still fighting the fight. The implication is clear: Zero’s been at it for the entire year since the first installment. It offers a neat sense of continuity between the two games
Essays, Not Rants! 306: Rey and Luke I liked a lot of things about the The Force Awakens, but easily my favorite addition was Rey, who is undeniably the best. Sure, she's basically Luke Skywalker in the original, except she's someone who's grown up with those same stories and now gets to live them out. It's cool, and she gets a lightsaber and that's awesome. But The Last Jedi doesn't give Rey some grand adventure. Rey doesn't actually do a whole lot over the course of the film. While Poe’s
Essays, Not Rants! 331: Good Bad Movies I like bad movies. I really do. Take Outcast as an example; its plot is pretty simple: Former crusader Hayden Christensen winds up in China where he’s protecting the rightful prince from said prince’s vengeful older brother. Also, Nic Cage is in it as Hayden Christensen’s old mentor-turned-hermit who’s acting in a very different movie from everyone else. All this to say, it’s an utter delight. Not that it’s a good movie; Outcast has a host of issues, ran
Essays, Not Rants! 124: Leslie Knope: Friends, Family, Feminism I’ve recently begun watching Parks and Recreation, and by recently begun I mean about five seasons in two weeks. The miracle of Netflix. In any case, the show’s fantastic and I lack any sort of Netflix Binger’s Remorse (and wanna get caught up as soon as I can). One of the reasons it’s so great is its bucking of typical sitcom trends.Parks and Rec isn’t a mean show. Whereas a lot of other sitcoms, including the prior one with Gr
LET ME BUY MY TICKETS. Seriously though. Looks fantastic; seems to be what oughta be the next step for the story (and character) to take. And, yeah. Well. Time to wait. ...nooooooo
