If you define fantasy as “a story that cannot occur in the real world”, as this web site does, then you can include sci-fi in that, as sci-fi takes places in worlds unseen and with technology uninvented, and any technology sufficiently advanced functions more or less like magic in the minds of many people. But… Read More Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and Space Opera
First, the rumor mill: reshoots, secret cameos, six different endings, a bunch of “sources say” folderol. Maybe it’s true, maybe it’s not. There’s really no way to know. Even after the movie’s out, we don’t get a lot of facts about what actually goes on in a movie shoot. Until the last Blu-Ray sale, no one… Read More And Now, More Mindlessly Speculative Guff about Star Wars
I find it interesting how “podcast” has evolved from “micro-radio show on your iPhone” to “people talking into a microphone on YouTube”. Now this is a satrical podcast, but what it’s satirizing is very real. There are in fact, entire YouTube channels that exist for 30-year-olds to talk like children about popcorn movies under the… Read More Merry Podcasting
Unless the story is already told… Holt McCallany makes a strong point: most TV is writer/producer-driven. You gotta grind out the script, then grind out the shoot. Rehearsal is a minimum and re-shoots are not a thing. How then, to square this with my disappointment with the new season, which felt exactly like a selection… Read More TV is Contrary to Good Storytelling
They’re gonna do a Fourth Matrix movie. I predict it sucks so hard, it makes Revolutions look good. Now that’s an easy prediction to make, because if I’m wrong, I’ll have something mildly decent to watch whenever it shows upon Amazon Prime. But odd are I’m right, because… No one cares about this series. It’s just… Read More The Flop Sweat is Real: Hollywood’s Death March Continues
Woody Allen’s ‘A Rainy Day in New York’ to Open Deauville Film Festival https://variety.com/2019/film/global/woody-allens-a-rainy-day-in-new-york-deauville-film-festival-1203309106/ — Read on variety.com/2019/film/global/woody-allens-a-rainy-day-in-new-york-deauville-film-festival-1203309106/ I’ve tried to like Woody Allen movies, but I can’t, because they usually involve having to like Woody Allen. And I have never managed to pull that off. Woody Allen is what happens when someone takes Mel… Read More Woody Allen is Still Making Movies
TV tropes are a double-edged sword. On the one hand, they exist because they work: they create a kind of structural shorthand that writers can use to keep producing content reliably. On the other hand, used at the wrong time, or in the wrong show, they can smother any unique voices or angles. I believe… Read More Quick Review: Mindhunter Season 2
Quentin Tarantino has a new movie out, which has the Tate-LaBianca killings in its backdrop, and I both do and don’t want to see it. I want to see it because I’m a fan of Tarantino’s work and have been since I first saw Pulp Fiction as a college freshman. Then as now, no one makes… Read More Thoughts on Charles Manson
There’s apparently a trailer, or a teaser, or whatever, for the new Amazon series, but I’ll be damned if I can find it. The important fact is, Amazon doesn’t get to hose this the way everyone expects they will. Amazon has a relatively free hand when it comes to adding something, since, as I said,… Read More The Tolkien Estate Gets to Veto Amazon
Weird little quirk of a film that somehow manages to condemn the age we live in, and the Matrix that we detest and fear and and cannot bear to be apart from (there’s no paradox there, the second thing leads inevitably to the first). Meet Ingrid. Ingrid is unhealthy. Ingrid obsesses with people she only… Read More Quick Review: Ingrid Goes West
