Essays, Not Rants! 052: One Year Holy ow. This is my fifty-second post. That means I’ve been keeping up this blog for one year. One post a week for a whole year. Dang. I’m actually quite impressed I’ve managed to keep this up. My last attempt at a weekly blog wound up becoming bi-weekly, then monthly, then wheneverly. The fact that I’ve been keeping Essays, Not Rants! going for the past year with weekly posts of at 600-800ish words makes me want to give myself a self-five. Which I’ve done.
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)
This happened a couple days ago, but didn't post about it 'til now. The Conduits got into a festival, the Urban Action Showcase Expo. Meant I got to go to the launch gala. Also meant it got screened at the AMC in Times Square. Pretty sure this means I've peaked.
Essays, Not Rants! 293: Violence in Video Games The first trailer for The Last of Us Part II is haunting in its tranquility. We’re treated to shots of the desolated post-apocalyptic world where nature’s reclaimed a neighborhood. Inside a house, Ellie strums a guitar, singing "Through The Valley," a take Psalm 23. Recently killed bodies lie around the house and Ellie herself is splattered with blood. Joel confronts her at the end, asking if she still wants to go through with it. Ellie’s answer?
Essays, Not Rants! 014: Why Science Fiction Science Fiction is a setting (not a genre) that frequently gets written off and ignored because it’s deemed inept to deal with more serious topics. But science fiction has leave to deal with heavy subjects in a way ‘regular’ fiction only wishes it could. Science fiction - good science fiction - has and will always be about people. The world will change, but people will always stay the same. People will always want to control, people will always wan
Perks of being an NYU student? $5 tickets to see the opera Aida at the Met. Yeah. It was really cool. And in Italian. But cool. Reeaaal cool. +12 Culture! And yeah, of course we suited up. (this photo was taken while we were lining up for a proper one, figured it deserved to be spiffed up)
Essays, Not Rants! 096: Playing with Expectations In celebration of the wonder of Netflix, I decided to watch Drinking Buddies the other night. The premise is nothing new, Luke and Kate are coworkers with incredible chemistry who are, unfortunately, in relationships with other people. What makes the movie such a joy is how the film plays with this idea. All the building blocks are in place, but the plot dances around them and subverts them. The scene where the Luke and Kate would/should kiss
Essays, Not Rants! 328: Global Vessel I’m not really a sports person. But once every four years I get really hardcore into a sport. I am, of course, talking about the World Cup. Which should really come as no surprise. For starters, it’s got my mostest favoritest trope; the ragtag multinational team. They may be in competition, but there remains the fun of watching countries as disparate as Belgium and Japan share a stage. Then of course there’s the fact that soccer/football is the sp
I'm not sure why there's this vague sense of anger/disappointment I get emanating from the internet (besides the fact that it's, yanno, the internet). I understand that some things remain consistent no matter your choices, and to that, well, it's certainly different. But it's an ending and, well, I guess it ended the way it had/ought to. And now, a rant on why the ending made sense Control is a big theme of the third game. The Illusive Man trying to gain control, Reapers trying to ga
Essays, Not Rants! 012: Unawarded Merit I love The Avengers. I’ve seen it five times (no regrets) and it’s probably my favorite movie in the last few years. If you follow this blog you’ve heard over and over again why I love it (great script, excellent direction, etc). The Avengers is a movie that shows how good not only a superhero movie can be, but a summer blockbuster. Yet for all that it won’t get an Oscar or any serious recognition. Okay, so it may get an Oscar for Sound Editing or Visu
Essays, Not Rants! 054: I Got You Did you see that new Iron Man 3 tv spot that dropped earlier this week? You should. Because this blog post is about it. If you haven’t seen it go watch it. See that bit at the end? When Pepper has the suit on and saves Tony? That’s crucial. You see, Tony Stark saves people. He’s a hero. That’s his job. But sometimes even the savior needs saving. Y’know what makes Tony Stark so special as a hero? He’s incredible vulnerable. He doesn’t have super-strength or
Essays, Not Rants! 379: Delicious Stakes There’s a common maxim in storytelling stating something to the effect of how you should always raise the stakes. Don’t make it just a friend at risk, make it a sibling. Instead of it just being the neighborhood affected, have it be the town. If you’re gonna have to save a city, it oughta be a major metropolis like New York. And why stop at saving the city when you can save the world? High stakes usually mean high thrills. The Battle of New York at th
Essays, Not Rants! 082: Science Fiction, Parables, and Gravity Originally published October 11th 2013 Yes, I’m still on my science fiction apologetics kick. As I’ve established over and over again, as a genre, science fiction can say a lot that normal fiction can’t, or say it in ways it can’t. Gravity is a fine example of this. Because like it or not, Alfonso Cuarón’s masterpiece is science fiction. If Super 8 and Moon are science fiction, then so is Gravity. Super 8, like E.T. before it, is
As promised, here are a few more shots from the midnight showing. Looking important Pepper helping adjust the repulsor arm Just plain cool So hard to resist
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
So I need to write a short story for my Creative Writing class. It's due by mid-October. What to write? Well, I could write another episode/chapter of my science fiction serial. Thing is, I will for my science fiction class anyway (and yes, that is a thing. I'm studying science fiction for college credit. Current reading assignment is Ender's Game.). Alternately, I could brush off this old story about a couple running away that I never finished and actually finish it. Probably rewrite it. It
Essays, Not Rants 021: Shawarma So the other day I was looking for lunch and ended up ordering shawarma at a falafel joint. As such there is a picture of me taking a Thor-sized bite out of it on Twitter. To those curious, it tastes more like a doner kebab than a gyro, just different toppings and stuff. And more Middle-Easty. But why shawarma? I was hungry, but why'd I pick some middle-eastern delicacy over barbecue, burgers or brisket? It wasn't cheaper and I wasn't even sure if I liked it (
Essays, Not Rants! 274: Andromeda After The Fact I finally finished my first playthrough of Mass Effect: Andromeda and dutifully started my second (this time as Sara instead of Scott). Ramping up the difficulty to Insanity makes combat much more frantic (and thereby makes the brilliant combat systems that much more fun), but we’ll see how far I get through it before I decide to finally replay Uncharted 4 because a) it’s a better game, 2) I haven’t replayed it, and iii) my god I want to play a
Essays, Not Rants! 355: War Games But Without The War I’m playing Mass Effect: Andromeda again, trying to polish off my second playthrough and nab that elusive Platinum trophy. With the sheen of "Oooh, it’s new" worn off, the game is decidedly a buggy mess, UI popups stay on screen long after they should have disappeared and I’ve spent an entire cutscene viewing my character as a party member blocked the camera (after we walked through a door whose opening animation didn’t happen). It’s a bu
