It’s March, which means it’s time for St. Patrick’s Day, the annual celebration of all things Irish. It also means that spring is in the air, and as Alfred Lord Tennyson (or was it Lord Alfred Hayes…I can never remember) taught us, that’s the time when a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love. So as a way […]
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I’ll admit it. I liked Joss Whedon’s 1992 Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie. I did not see the movie when it first premiered: I saw it a couple years later. When, I do not recall completely. What I do recall is that I had already been watching The X-Files and had fallen completely in love with the series. For me, […]
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When most people think of comic book movies, they tend to think of muscle bound men and sexy women strutting around in revealing spandex costumes, striking poses and pummeling one another within an inch of their lives. However, there is another side to comic books, one that looks at the human condition through the lens of ordinary, everyday folks who […]
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In honor of Valentine’s Day, I decided to use this month’s column to focus on one of the most touching and heartfelt love stories ever put to film. No, I’m not talking about Twilight (sorry, kids). I figure I’ll hold off on that one until I feel like focusing on the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre. Of course, I can only […]
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You’re in the middle of Hyderabad, India, on the hottest day of the year. You’re there for a business / pleasure trip, researching Bollywood culture for your book on globalized fandom. You’re looking for the easiest way to get to Ramoji Film City, a Bollywood response to Disneyland. You would ask someone, but your previous attempts at handling the region’s […]
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On the morning of Tuesday, January 24th, the nominations for the 84th Annual Academy Awards were released. If you listened carefully, you likely heard the sound of mass disappointment. Not just regarding DRIVE, but for me, that was the big one. First of all, why 9 Best Picture nominees? Because they just HAD to get EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE […]
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Violence has been a part of human nature since the beginning of time, and while we like to think we have evolved beyond it, the fact of the matter is that it is still very much alive within all of us. Some of us are better at controlling it than others, but one simply needs to look at the media […]
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Remember when everyone loved THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT? Everyone said it was fantastic and amazing and such a beautiful film? Yeah? Well I didn’t care for it one bit. I thought it was way overrated and annoying. THE DESCENDANTS is that movie this year. Everybody loves it. Why? I couldn’t tell you. My best guess is that it has […]
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From the start, I have used this column to focus on moments, scenes, or sequences that tend to sum up the themes and subtext of any given film. They are moments that boil the entire film down to its very essence, encapsulating every idea the director wants to convey in a single short burst. But I realized that by doing […]
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Since the dawn of Man, we have used stories as a way of understanding both ourselves and the world around us. Many of the best stories are about journeys, both metaphorical and actual. Some follow a character or characters from one location to another, and others serve as a chronicle of the progression from one stage of a character’s life […]
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