I’ve watched a lot of movies this summer and many of them were interesting enough for me to write full articles on. Unfortunately, since I have no desire to write that much, I’d like to just put out my quick thoughts for each of the movies I saw in the order that I watched them. Voice your disagreements if you’d like, but these thoughts of mine have to be known!
Having completed my first VLog about a week ago, I feel like a man whose gained a new understanding of himself and I’m finally ready to write about it. In the process I’ve discovered that VLogging is a lot harder than it looks, so to properly convey the experience of learning these things, here’s a list of reasons why that is:
My First VLog:
Was a lot harder to make than I thought, but if all goes well, I may do more. There’s one thing I must say though, you learn a lot of hard truths about yourself when you star VLogging…
Today I’m here to levy serious accusations of plagiarism and thievery at Joss Whedon, David Greenwalt, and company. In the midst of taking a shower, I was struck with a horrifying truth, almost as if I were a tree in the middle of a thunderstorm. This truth is burning away at me right now just as this hypothetical tree would be. The truth of Winifred “Fred” Burkle from Angel being a direct rip-off of the Library Kid from Recess. I mean, it’s so obvious once you think about it, and because the team behind Angel was able to get away with this creative theft for so long, I am as frustrated as I am baffled. How dare they try to pass off Disney’s work as their own? I’m getting ahead of myself here, but hear me out.
Continue reading “Fred From Angel Was Basically The Library Kid From Recess”
iZombie, the newest serial and procedural drama hybrid from Rob Thomas (the mind that brought us Veronica Mars) and Diane Ruggiero, is a very well crafted TV-Show. It is clearly one that has taken cues from other notable shows with procedural elements and has either refined them or done away with the ones that are less conducive to a show’s success. To illustrate what I’m talking about, here are 5 elements iZombie nails really well.
Rick and Morty is funny. It’s really a show that can be anything, with characters that can go anywhere, and be in any story, but at its core it is really, really funny. It’s science fiction comedy pushed to its very limit, all fueled by the (probably unhinged) mind of Justin Roiland and tempered by the steady hand and experience of Dan Harmon (the man behind Community). The result is a half hour of insanity, hilarity, darkness, and a surprising amount of heart starring a brilliant and amoral scientist and his painfully average grandson. Even though it borrows and pays homage to so many other pieces of pop-culture history, Rick and Morty is a show like no other, and is currently my favourite one airing on TV. Here are 5 hilarious moments from the show that help illustrate the brilliance of its humour.
*Be warned, there are some “joke spoilers” here*
In just about any discussion about the highly illegal killing of Cecil the Lion, you’ll always find that one guy who feels the need to express the “Who Cares?” sentiment. Not here to take anyone down a peg for it, I mean I get their logic (as they love to go over it in great detail whenever they are explaining how much they don’t care about this lion). They argue that it was really just one animal’s life, that a ton of other animals are being illegally hunted and killed every day, and that we only care about this one because it happened to be a bit of a local celebrity. Hell, even Zimbabwe itself doesn’t really care all that much about Cecil, so why does the West? I would argue that this whole situation represents more than that. Cecil’s death is symbolic of a greater issue that goes beyond the illegal hunting of animals, and the timing of it is what struck a cord with the world.
Continue reading “The Main Reason Cecil the Lion’s Death is So Upsetting for People”
The simplest way to describe the Netflix original, BoJack Horseman, is as an animated sitcom that deals with the subject of depression. Its lead, the titular Bojack Horseman, is a washed up 90’s sitcom star with way too much money and time, but is listless and eternally unsatisfied with his state of being. The main question the series asks is “How can I be happy?”, and the way it addresses that question is perhaps more raw and honest than any other show that came before it. Why that is the case is something that stumped me for quite a while. Why is this show about a talking horse and his wacky friends able to hit such a raw nerve in the discussion of depression? My take on this after a lot of thought is that we are able to connect with BoJack because of how thoroughly unlikable he is. I don’t mean that we as an audience can’t like him, because people will always be able to love terrible fictional characters no matter what, but he’s certainly not someone with typical likable qualities like basic human decency. He isn’t just flawed, he’s the kind of person that continues to make terrible decisions that hurt the people around him with full awareness that what he is doing could be harmful to others. Make no mistake however, we are supposed to be rooting for him, but we definitely aren’t supposed to like him either.
Continue reading “BoJack Horseman Proves Television Leads Don’t Need to be Likable to be Compelling”
Bones, the first drama I really got invested in, and the first seemingly endless procedural I ever outgrew. Unlike with The Mentalist and the disastrous end it had with me, my break up with Bones was civil and clean. I just grew to understand that the show and I wanted different things in life, and that our continued commitment to one another would be to both our detriment. I basically wanted to settle down with a more serialized show that took more chances and had something to say, while Bones was content with falling into a routine and doing mostly the same thing over and over again. We realized we were in different places in our relationship and moved on, although it is fun to revisit and reminisce about the old days with a fresh pair of eyes.
Continue reading “Remember When Bones was Hilariously Weird About BDSM?”
Just the other day, my little brother dragged me to see the Minions movie and that got me thinking about the franchise in general. As someone who has seen and enjoyed both Despicable Me films (the first a lot more than its sequel), Minions felt like a significant (yet wholly expected) step down in terms of quality. This certainly wasn’t the case when it came to box office draw as it easily outperformed the previous films in the franchise and smashed some records of its own. This is a movie that was destined to make a lot of money mostly due to how insanely marketable the Minions have become, and its clear from the progression of their role in these movies that the creators know this. At first they were fun side characters that remained peripheral to the plot, then they became central to the plot of the second film as the villain’s plan revolved around them, and then they finally received their own movie. With steadily increasing box-office numbers to coincide with this shift, this is what I’d characterize as a “Hostile Franchise Take-Over” (or an HFT for short), and in this article I’m going to look at how this has affected the movies in the franchise.
Continue reading “The Minions and the Hostile Franchise Take-Over they Initiated”
The Kenpire 