Media Criticism
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The Infinite Fantasy of The Dragon Prince
Happy quarantine, everyone. I hope we’re all staying safe and healthy and managing to keep our sanity. It’s a strange and scary time but at least we still have comforts and escapes to get us through. I, for one, have been re-watching a bunch of shows on my various streaming services these last couple weeks. Shows like Brooklyn Nine Nine, Bojack Horseman, Big Mouth, and Better Call Saul; all great ways to find a laugh or at least get your mind off everything that’s been going on (or you just finished watching all the shows that start with ‘A’). And I know for a fact, that I am not the…
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Avenue 5; or Something to Watch at the End of the World
I’ve been thinking a lot about panic lately. I doubt this will surprise people and I know for sure I am far from the only one. With everything that is going on right now, it feels like almost everyone is operating at this baseline of a low-level buzz of panic. Not enough to cause riots in the street or anything, just enough so everyone’s on edge, just enough that panic-buying toilet paper and hoarding food has become common. It does say something to me that so many American consumer’s response to a health crisis is to shop harder, but I can’t blame anyone for that. I shopped harder myself. I’ve…
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Onward and the Pixar Formula
Is it real heartbreak if you can see it coming from miles away? This was a question I couldn’t quite get out of my mind throughout the near 2 hour running time of Onward, Pixar’s newest film. Real heartbreak, at least in my experience, seems to require an element of surprise, some emotional tragedy that springs up at you from nowhere. Whether fiction or reality, foreknowledge always seems to ease the pain. And in Onward, from nearly the first frame (or at least from the moment the whole shape of the plot comes clear) you can almost hear the clock ticking down to the anguish the movie intends to inflict…
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Superstore; A Love/Hate Affair
Be warned. I’m about to do something a little stupid. I’m going to take a network sitcom very seriously. A few hundred words from now when you go ‘Wow. This dude needs to get outside once in a while.’ just know that I did try to tell you. Superstore started on NBC in November of 2015. While it has never exactly been a ratings smash, it’s always been successful enough to get renewed each season and is currently wrapping up its–very funny–fifth season and has already been scheduled for a sixth. I came into this show fairly late, catching up via Hulu just before the premiere of the fifth season…
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Mafia and Truth; The Irishman and Lies
I Heard You Paint Houses: Frank ‘The Irishman’ Sheeran and Closing the Case on Jimmy Hoffa by: Charles Brandt is an enthralling work of True Crime writing. I read it during this past busy week for myself and sincerely regretted being forced to put the book down every time other work or obligations–this whole trying-to-start-a-writing-career-from-fucking-nothing thing does take work and time–would draw me away. Charles Brandt’s prose is better than adequate, it’s actually quite smooth and readable and is less afraid of real emotion than you are led to expect from the beginning of the book. Frank Sheeran is an endlessly fascinating character who–while clearly a criminal piece of shit…
