Media Criticism
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Bill & Ted Face the Music is the Sequel America Needs Now
Sometimes a movie just turns out better than it should. The premise is tired, or it’s a sequel to a series that everyone (probably rightly) thought was long dead, or it’s made by a director or studio that you have deservedly lost all confidence in. Yet it works. Something about it, the writing, the way all the main actors commit to their roles, the fact that updated effects actually managed to make a difference. It just works. Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle is a great example of this; a pointless cash-grab decades-late sequel that’s somehow hilarious and just plain enjoyable to watch. The first Pirates of the Caribbean; a movie…
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The Bubble is a Metaphor: the Strange Pleasure of Sports in a Pandemic.
Edit: So this article aged hilariously fast, didn’t it? Apologies for how immediately wrongheaded this article proved to be. I stand by the parts that are still both accurate and relevant. I’ve been watching a lot of hockey and basketball lately. That is not my attempt to excuse the utter lack of content I’ve been posting to this site for the last couple months. That gap occurred because all my writing time and thought were dedicated to finishing an agent-ready draft of my novel (which I have now done, so get at me agents!), and I didn’t want to waste your time and mine with some half-assed post neither of…
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The Future is a Little Lonely: Marc Rebillet’s Drive-in Concert
We’re in a strange time right now. I realize that might be the most mind-numbingly obvious thing you’ve ever read but I’m also sure it’s something you’ve said at least once to someone in your life in the last week, or it was said to you. Because it’s an all-over kind of strangeness we’re dealing with right now, it is far more than one thing. It feels as though almost everything about modern American society is in flux. There’s been the COVID-19 pandemic (duh) and the quarantine that followed, bringing nearly everyone’s life to a more noticeable halt than anything in the last fifty years. Unless you’re an essential worker…
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The Great, and Its Many Reflections on Power
So I’m going to begin this article today with a somewhat embarrassing admission. You know that famous Oscar Wilde quote: “Everything in the world is about sex except for sex. Sex is about power“? While I’d always found that quote funny and useful (acknowledging that it may be something Oscar Wilde never said), I don’t believe I ever fully understood what it was getting at until I was most of the way through binge-watching the first season of Hulu’s The Great this weekend. You see, I’d always thought it was about lust as motivation and the way in which lust can transform and curdle. Or, to put it more directly…
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Solar Opposites: Living in the Shadow of Rick and Morty
Orson Welles wrote, directed, and starred in Citizen Kane when he was 25. Despite the fact that its’ box office performance was only considered mediocre at the time (it was eventually re-released and made plenty of money, don’t worry), it was…you know, Citizen Kane. Even now, just the title is considered shorthand for ‘great fucking movie’. The myth is that Orson Welles spent the rest of his career trying to live up to the impossible-to-meet expectations set by Citizen Kane, his debut feature film. Though it is somewhat disproven by the string of successful movies he acted in, or directed throughout his career or just the famous opening sequence in…
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Why Does Star Wars Matter So Much?
I’m exhausted today, as I write this post. Last Monday, on Star Wars Day (May the 4th be with you), my roommates and I re-watched Empire Strikes Back to celebrate. Watching that fantastic movie for the fiftieth time (at least for myself), naturally got us talking about all manner of things related to Star Wars. And then, as seems to be the case recently whenever nerds the world over begin speaking about the storied franchise, we started talking about everything we thought had gone wrong with the sequel trilogy. That conversation just wrapped up half an hour ago. That’s why I didn’t post anything last Wednesday. Nine straight days to…
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Masterpieces in Some Other World: Mac Miller’s Circles and D.F.W.’s The Pale King
I finished reading The Pale King by David Foster Wallace yesterday. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since. For those of you who don’t know, The Pale King is an unfinished novel. David Foster Wallace had been working on it off and on for about ten years, and while he had hundreds of thousands of polished and publish-ready words set aside in a neat stack, it remained incomplete when he succumbed to his depression and killed himself in September of 2008. His longtime editor, Michael Pietsch, was given the task of putting the book together using the stack of manuscript Wallace had set aside, other chapters and…
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Mortal Kombat, Castlevania, and The Last of Us. Solving Video Game Adaptations.
A couple days ago I watched Mortal Kombat (1995) for the first time with my roommates. We’ve been watching a ton of movies during quarantine recently, as I’m sure many of you are as well. It’s been fun. Honestly, one of the small pieces of silver lining from this whole pandemic, for me, is how pleasantly surprised I’ve been by almost everything I’ve watched lately. Even re-watching The Hobbit trilogy for the first time since theaters was more enjoyable than I expected. Mortal Kombat still sucks though. The story has so many plot-holes it might as well be a piece of Swiss Cheese handled by an overeager four-year-old with a…
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How the Artemis Fowl Movie Really Came to Be
One of the first book series I can remember choosing for myself and absolutely falling in love with is Artemis Fowl. I was nine years old when I read the first book in the series and it blew my little fucking mind. I had never read a book with a character like Artemis, essentially an evil genius and yet he was the main character. Kids books didn’t do that before. It was “Die Hard with fairies” but the main character was a young Hans Gruber with a more marketable accent. What’s not to love? Then, a couple weeks ago, I saw the abomination of a trailer for the movie adaptation,…
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The Doors of Stone and Everything Else We Want
You heard it here first, folks! Patrick Rothfuss, acclaimed fantasy writer and full-grown garden gnome, has announced The Doors of Stone will be released in physical and eBook format tomorrow. Apparently, the long-awaited novel has been finished for years, with Rothfuss delaying publication to build up fan anticipation for his work. “Yeah, this book was finished by like 2014,” says Rothfuss, whose gnome beard is now longer than he is tall, in response to questions. “I just didn’t want to be one of those boring writers pushing out books every other year. Who wants that? I figured a nine year wait would be the perfect amount of time to stack…
