Essays, Not Rants 145: 2014 in Review 2014 is a few days from being over. So once again it’s time to go through my rants essays from this year and pick out the special ones. All statistics are based on essaysnotrants.net, since, y'know, I don't wanna count through the views on BZP. Five Most Popular/Viewed Posts #5: Relationship Advice from Scott Pilgrim The thing about Edgar Wright movies is that they work on so many levels. I was… off put the first time I watched Scott Pilgrim vs The Wor
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! 251: Who Is The Everyman? I talk a lot about the concept of the everyman on this blog, though mostly about how they don't have to be white guys. And there's a reason it's such an important thing. Spider-Man shows you don't have to be rich and smart like Iron Man or an alien like Superman to be a superhero, you can just be a nebbish kid from Queens. It's the whole point of the everyman: anyone can be a hero. Especially you, because, after all, the everyman is meant to be you.
My brother's a big fan so I asked her to hold up my notebook so I could send it to him. Which I did. I also saw Andrew Garfield, Daniel Mindel, and Marc Webb. Film sets are cool, man. Anyway. I need to go edit my film now. The one that I shot in Grand Central and stuff.
Essays, Not Rants! 168: Cold War Relevance Alright. Quick one today because it’s my birthday and I have plans. I talk a lot about science fiction and how often it works as a way to commentate on current events and what not. Sometimes, it’s a lot easier to look at the interplay of fiction when it’s something that happened in the past (See: Gojira). The Cold War too, which was also when modern science fiction began to really take shape, has great influence on the stories of its time. Ray Bra
Essays, Not Rants! 288: Don’t Need No Adaptation Your Name is an anime film about a couple teens that randomly wake up in each others bodies. One’s a guy at an elite school in Tokyo, the other a girl who lives in a more traditional, rural town. Naturally, hijinks ensure, and I’m left weepy in the cinema as the credits roll. It’s very much a body swapping love story, but it’s one that holds extra depth due to its intense focus on longing. Much of the romance that blooms between Taki and Mitsu
Essays, Not Rants! 264: Page Feel I read a lot. This is partly a byproduct of having grown up a bookworm and partly having taken a course of studied that meant a lot of reading. Like a lot a lot. Since graduating, I’ve kept it up best I can and I’m sitting at fifteen-odd books in the past eleven months. Like I said, reading a lot. A side effect of this is that I have a wonderful bookshelf. You’ve got Ulysses there and the first volume of Saga there with CS Lewis’ Of Other Worlds. I like it
Now kindly unclaw yourself from my cork and let me at my Inspiration Juice*. Filed under: Creative Uses for Skull Spiders *TMD's Creatively Named Blog does not support the unwarranted use of Inspiration Juice for paper-writing as it is a delicate practice and takes a great deal of skill to arrive at the optimum level of Inspiration.
Essays, Not Rants! 076: A Close Reading of Pentecost's Speech Originally posted August 31st 2013 Time to do something different. In literary criticism a close reading is, according to wikipedia “the careful, sustained interpretation of a brief passage of text.”[1] Usually this is reserved for works of literary consequence (think The Odyssey or Heart of Darkness). But because this is Essays, Not Rants! and I can do whatever the heck what I want so I’m doing a close reading of Marshall Stacker P
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! 113: A Real Swell Guy Let’s talk about Chuck, because it’s a fantastic show that you should watch if you haven’t. And not just ‘cuz Chuck and I are basically the same person, but because it’s a well put together show with a lot of fun stories and great characters. But those characters are a big reason. You’ve got Chuck and his two spy handlers and their dynamic and interactions, but they’re not who this is post is about. This post it about one of the supporting character
Essays, Not Rants! 190: Signs of the Times The Uncharted games are what got me really into gaming as an adult (well, them and Metal Gear Solid). With the release and my subsequent acquisition of the Nathan Drake Collection, I’ve spent the past couple days replaying Drake’s Fortune, the first game in the series, for the first time in a few years. And the game still holds up, because of course it does. Drake’s Fortune still looks great eight years after it came out (due in some part to the Rem
Essays, Not Rants! 061: Breaking Point Let’s talk about Into Darkness. It’s a sequel to a reboot and also has some shades of a remake. Those are all things that seldom bode well for a movie, but, Into Darkness pulls it off magnificently. It simply does everything right. The main thing I want to address is Into Darkness’ existence as a sequel. There’s no getting around that. Amusingly, the main criticism I see in reviews is just that: Into Darkness doesn’t feel as fresh or new as 2009’s Star Tr
After printing an Akaku a couple weeks ago, I decided I had to go bigger. Print! Done, in my hand, and covered in supports: And then some time digging off the supports... Ain't perfect; sword didn't come out right/at all; but, dude, I've got a TMD I made nine years ago. Dude.
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! 163: Masculinity in Age of Ultron I saw Age of Ultron Thursday night and I have thoughts. There’s the obvious nerd-out factor of the film, and it’s really cool and does a lot of things right (and, arguably, does indeed go smaller than the first Avengers), but those are essays rants for another day. So let’s talk about how the movie portrays the idea of masculinity. Because it’s actually really interesting. Age of Ultron, like The Avengers before it and probably every Mar
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! 278: What’s The Point of Movies? I’m replaying Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End (and it is wonderful) and I can’t help but to be reminded that there’s supposed to be a movie adaption of this game happening. Like, it’s been in development since 2010. Every now and then there’ll be some announcement (apparently Tom Holland is playing a young Nathan Drake now?), but then it fizzles out into the background. Kinda like how film adaption of The Last of Us went, there was a bunch of buzz
Y'know how in Parks and Rec it was always fun when Ron and Leslie would leave the office to go do work in a park or in the field or whatnot? I'll have you know it's REALLY frustrating when the manager of a park is out in the field every day you try and get ahold of them about filming in their park.
Essays, Not Rants! 008: The Artificial Family I grew up on a ship. Well, not really grew up exactly, more spent four very key years of my youth onboard a ship. It’s a long story. The thing about living on a ship, though, was that with only two hundred people on board it was a small community. Smaller still were the number of kids on board. I’m not kidding when I say there were a handful. Out of necessity we became more of a family than a group of friends. Life’s changed and gone on, but even t
Essays, Not Rants! 119: Unflinching I finally got a chance to see Fruitvale Station on a flight last week. In short, it’s a movie that definitely deserves upping my Top Nine Movies of 2013 to a list of the Top Ten Movies of 2013 (though which spot it deserves I can’t decide). The initial expectation for why it’s a great movie is obvious: it’s topical! A movie dealing with race and prejudice in the contemporary USA? If you’ll like this you’ll seem cultured, yes! But to describe it as such not
Essays, Not Rants! 118: The Dynamics of the Buddy Movie Im on vacation. As such, heres an essay I wrote for class during my Spring semester. We were assigned seven movies and had to compare the lot of them. Hence writing about The Parent Trap. Enjoy. The buddy movie is one of the most prolific genres in cinema. With movies as diverse as the classic Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, recent blockbusters like The Avengers, and animated films such as Toy Story; chances are everyones seen some
