Essays, Not Rants! 067: Protagonists, Goals, and Conviction Let’s talk about the characters in The Last of Us. Because I still want to talk about that game. For the sake of direction, we’ll focus on Joel and Ellie, because they’re the protagonists (and arguably each other’s antagonist) and you spend nearly eighteen hours with them. I’m going to try to keep this mostly spoiler-free, but since this’ll be discussing characters and arcs and development, be warned of mentions and implications and
tl;dr: I no longer have a bar in my chest. Longer version: Got into Singapore on the 10th. Spent the intervening time playing video games and eating, Monday morning local time went into surgery to have my bar removed. Since, y'know, it's time. Everything went well; the bar's sitting on a shelf here in the hospital room (along with some chips of bone [my bones]); I can walk and move and stuff. Useful abilities, those. Current signs point to heart being alright. So yes. I did just pull an Iron
Essays Not Rants! 066: With Regards to Capes In Man Of Steel Superman has lost his usual red underwear. Well, more he never has it in the first place in this adaption. It's no wonder why, no one, not even Batman, wears their underwear outside anymore. That said, Superman still has his cape, something that's seemingly as much an artifact as the underwear thing. Yes, Thor and Loki both have capes, but they're demigods. Batman's cape is explained away as serving not only the effect he creates b
I stayed up 'till 2am Tuesday night finishing the game, stayed up another two hours mulling it over, and two days later I'm still processing the game. Here's some initial thoughts I scribbled out: It's just a very different video game. For starters, it's not exactly a terribly 'fun' game. Not that it's not good or a great play, but that it's like Zero Dark Thirty, an incredibly well put together thing that's not easy to watch. Look at the Infected, the zombie-like creatures. Y'know what a co
Essays, Not Rants! 065: A Grownup Video Game Something big came out on Friday. It was produced by a legendary team known for their amazing work. No, not Man of Steel: The Last of Us, the latest game by Naughty Dog, a team most recently known for the Uncharted series. It’s also a video game that will have you in tears after the first half hour. Understand, The Last of Us is a grownup’s video game. No, not because of the gore or language, but adult because it’s not childish. The game does aw
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
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.
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
Hey guys. Yep. It's late. As it happens college is conducive for procrastination. Whodathunk? Welcome To Josh's Fifth 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. Legend: º means did not see it in cinemas Multiple * denotes number of times saw in cinema - — Eh. More or less sucked. -/+ — Meh. See it if you want. + — Fairly good film, worth a watch. ++ — One of the better films of the year. Definitely
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! 062: Arrested Protagonists Pain and Gain is a movie with villain protagonists. Not like Dr. Horrible, more if a couple of the thugs from Taken had a movie about them. This creates a whole host of problems for the film. We shouldn’t like the three main characters, they’re based on real life people guilty of torture, theft, and murder who wind up in jail. The paradox is that we shouldn’t like them but we still need to be invested in the show. For better or worse (mostly worse)
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
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! 060: Becoming Iron Man I hate spoilers. I really do; I swore off social media for the two days in between the Lost finale and when I could watch it. That said, this post deals with an aspect of the ending of Iron Man 3. It’s not one of the huge twists, but it’s a little surprise. It’s been a week since it came out so I feel alright writing about it. S’yeah. Spoilers. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Well, first spoiler, Tony survives. But the main one I’ll be addressing is
Essays, Not Rants! 059: Where It Needs To Go So here’s the deal you make when you tell a story. Actions have consequences. I don’t mean of the physical variety (you destroy a support, the roof caves in), no, I mean emotional consequences. Sometimes you have to deal with those. Well, sometimes you don’t. Look at romances like Star Wars or other more light hearted fare. Han gets frozen in carbonite, Leia’s planet gets destroyed, and Luke blows up the Death Star and everyone on it. But the movi
Essays, Not Rants! 058: With Regards To Motivation I have a research paper I should be writing. I also have a stack of books near me ranging from On Free Choice and The Will by Saint Augustine, Iron Man and Philosophy, Campbell’s The Hero with A Thousand Faces, Finding Serenity, The Existential Joss Whedon, my own annotated copy of Life of Pi, The Philosophy of Joss Whedon, and a few others too. These are what people in academia call ‘sources’. I think I know what I’ll be writing about, but I’
Essays, Not Rants! 057: Change is Good The TV show Chuck begun with a really simple conceit: nerdy, intelligent twenty-something stuck in a lousy deadend job in a BestBuy BuyMore suddenly finds himself with a CIA computer (the Intersect) in his brain and involved with various spy activities with agents from the NSA and CIA. Simple. The show could have very easily fallen into step; keep the perpetual romantic tension between Chuck and Sarah (the CIA agent) with Casey (the NSA one) filling t
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.
