Ian Bogost has a theory about Every Computer Animated Film Ever that boils down every plot into a universal structure, not too dissimilar from the monomythic Hero's Journey. I don't have much to add about the narrative conventions of the genre, other than to seize upon one point Bogost makes in passing and to expand… Continue reading Where Have All the Princesses Gone?
Tag: Film
What Can Psychics Tell Us about the Present?
A friend wondered aloud why psychics always seemed to be women. It's not a question I had ever considered, but it made sense once I paused to think about all the psychics I had ever seen in pop culture. They were all women. The archetype for me is the gypsy fortuneteller in "The Wolf Man,"… Continue reading What Can Psychics Tell Us about the Present?
Review of Shyamalan’s “The Happening”
The Happening is possibly the worst movie I've seen in years, and I'm just desperate to find some inkling of redeeming value in Shyamalan's mess. But I can't. Just a collection of loose thoughts that may help somebody else also trying to justify to themselves their rationale for sitting through this movie: There is the… Continue reading Review of Shyamalan’s “The Happening”
The Heart of Iron Man
Something about David Denby's review of Iron Man in The New Yorker has been bothering me ever since I saw the film for myself. I've finally figured out it has to do with Denby's misreading of the superhero genre, rooted in a disregard -- shared by many critics and moviegoers -- of the source material… Continue reading The Heart of Iron Man
Raiders of the Lost Ark Comic Book
In anticipation of the upcoming Indiana Jones movie, I dug through the old comic book box and came up with this, Marvel's "Official Comics Adaptation of the Hit Title" -- the original Raiders of the Lost Ark in comic book form (larger image). You'd think this would be worth some money on eBay, but it… Continue reading Raiders of the Lost Ark Comic Book
The Death of a Legend: Charlton Heston
Anyone who knows is me is expecting a flurry of posts about the sad news of Charlton Heston's death. For a while, back in the late nineties, I was single-handedly trying to forge the field of Heston Studies. My work focused on Heston's informal sci-fi trilogy from the late sixties and early seventies: Planet of… Continue reading The Death of a Legend: Charlton Heston
Puzzling over the flight home
How many passengers on a transatlantic flight play Sudoku? Apparently all of them. Another observation from the flight...One of the in-flight movies was The Dukes of Hazzard. I assume this movie was supposed to appeal somehow to the retro-seeking, nostalgia-desperate Gen Xers like myself, who spent many Friday nights in the eighties watching The Dukes… Continue reading Puzzling over the flight home
The World Trade Center (from the archives)
Lately I've been reading up on the history of the World Trade Center. It's easy to forget, in this post-9/11 world, that for most of their life the Twin Towers were reviled. One of the most prominent critics was Wolf Von Eckardt, the Washington Post's eminent architectural critic. Upon seeing Minoru Yamasaki's model for the… Continue reading The World Trade Center (from the archives)
Some notes on the Last Samurai
Some notes on The Last Samurai: first, beware of any work of popular culture that has "Last" in the title. It is usually used to conjure up a mythic past, and it signals a strong nostalgic longing for "the good old days" or "the way things used to be." Any such cultural production is bound… Continue reading Some notes on the Last Samurai