How Auteur Theory Protects Abusers
In the midst of the current purge of sexual harassers from Hollywood, a few people have noticed a glaring exception: Why has Woody Allen escaped unscathed? He’s a known abuser […]
film
The Nerd Canon
The new Wonder Woman trailer dropped this week, bringing us that much closer to the first movie out of this generation of superhero film to star a woman. Meanwhile, despite […]
Causal Realism and Jared Leto’s Joker
Ever since those first stills of his character design, Jared Leto’s Joker has left many of us scratching our heads, trying to figure out why the portrayal seems so wrong. […]
The Measure of an Alien
It’s a curiosity that Star Wars and Star Trek are so often grouped together when they’re so patently different in themes, appearance, and format. The differences can be obvious or […]
The Significance of Haircuts
For most of us, a haircut is a periodic necessity, but in fiction, haircuts only happen to make a statement. Being an appearance-related story element, the use and connotations of […]
Maz Kanata
(The following post is based on this Twitter discussion. It contains minor spoilers.) For such a major release, the reception of The Force Awakens has a surprising lack of contention. […]
The Storytelling of Back to the Future
Well, Back to the Future Day is over. From now on, Back to the Future is officially a historical film. Instead of bemoaning the passage of time, let’s take a […]
Tinkering With: Jurassic World
The principle of tinkering with something isn’t to rag on something bad, but to look at something that might have been good but missed the mark, or that we wanted […]
Princesses
I don’t like princess stories. I don’t like princess stories even if the princesses kick ass, even if they reject their princessy obligations and just want to lead normal lives, […]
Nux
So if you follow me on Twitter, you may have picked up some vague hints that I kinda liked Mad Max: Fury Road. And you may have guessed that I […]