Every so often, a film will come along that is definitive of its era, an all-encompassing cinematic masterwork that perfectly captures the culture, mood, political climate, and idealism of a society. Need we look further than Stray Dog or Godzilla for a cinematic representation of post-war Japan? Well, in a very, very, similar way… actually,…
Crossover! Does any word fill the common viewer with as much excitement and anticipation? Perhaps spinoff… maybe. Crossovers are fun and mostly extend to hypotheticals like Wolverine vs. Terminator? or Boba Fett vs. Alien? or Gypsy Danger vs. Giant Balrog? or Batman vs. Anyone? Most realized crossovers are for TV and occur when a studio…
Do you know that one movie that for some reason you’ve seen probably five times? You have one of those? It’s not particularly good, or special, or meaningful, and you have no reason to have seen it so many times and to keep watching it, but you do nonetheless. I’ve got a few of those.…
A wise man once asked, “If you aren’t trilling it up once every three years, then what are you doing with your life?” It’s an interesting question, and though it was intended as a joke on How I Met Your Mother, I think I’m going to take it pretty seriously and read into it a…
Part 1, Part 2, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8 So, admittedly, I’m going through a bit of a Shakespeare phase. By that I mean that my current summer project is reading all of his plays that I haven’t yet read. Having completed twenty, I only have seventeen left, so I feel pretty good about that. Along…
Americans like Japanese stuff, but we seem to have weird aversion to the Japanese. It’s not that we don’t like them; we’re just uncomfortable with foreign concepts. It’s easier to ease an audience into a different culture through the filter of a thirty-to-forty-something white North American heterosexual male, or TTFSWNAHM. At least, this is what…
Part 1, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8 Shakespeare! Always fun. Unsurprisingly, more of his plays have been adapted into film than the works of any other writers. Hundreds of movies site Shakespeare for the story. IMDb gives him 955 writing credits and counting. So…why do people keep going back to Shakespeare? It’s all been…
Rooster Illusion 