Yesterday the Oscar nomination were announced; to no surprise, Heath Ledger has a spot on the list of Best Supporting Actors (and will certainly win) for his performance as the Joker in The Dark Knight; to much outcry, The Dark Knight failed to recieve any other major nominations, such as Best Director or even Best [...]
Archive for the ‘Analyses’ Category
Defending Gotham in Hockey Pads: The Lie of the Hero
Posted in Analyses, Movies, Theory, tagged Batman on January 23, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Mass Effect & the authored protagonist
Posted in Analyses, Video games, tagged Baldur's Gate, Bioshock, Knights of the Old Republic, Mass Effect, Neverwinter Nights on January 9, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
I chose my eyes and my hair and my face. I chose where I’m from and what I’ve done. I chose my name.
Despite its cinematic presentation (and what cinematic presentation it is!), Mass Effect is rooted in the Western RPG tradition (whether or not it actually is a Western RPG first and not a third-person [...]
Inhumanity (Looking towards Battlestar Galactica’s final episodes)
Posted in Analyses, Television, tagged Battlestar Galactica on January 8, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Battlestar Galactica has featured assassinations, coup d’etat, martial law, suicide bombing, torture, forced abortion, gang rape. It’s a dark show. But to my mind, one of the most horrible moments of the show was not anything so conventionally terrible as the above, but a speech sometimes hailed as one of the triumphant turning points of [...]
Are you not entertained? Empty spectacle in Quantum of Solace
Posted in Analyses, Movies, tagged Casino Royale, Die Hard, Gladiator, Indiana Jones, Quantum of Solace on November 29, 2008 | 2 Comments »
I really should have seen this the first time. (Spoilers for Quantum of Solace below.)
Having watched Quantum of Solace for the second time today, it seems so obvious to me. Hindsight, of course. The first big action sequence–Bond’s chase after traitorous MI6 agent Mitchell–is intercut against shots of a horse race. I noticed this the [...]
Why you should be watching The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Posted in Analyses, Movies, Television, tagged Asimov, Blade Runner, Terminator, The Sarah Connor Chronicles on September 9, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
The Sarah Connor Chronicles is a fascinating show. It’s a show on a major network (and one notorious for canning potentially brilliant but niche shows befor giving them any real chance to establish an audience) that manages to get away with many things you wouldn’t expect possible on a major network (and especially on FOX). [...]
Gender in Wall-E
Posted in Analyses, Movies, tagged Joseph Campbell, Wall-E on August 16, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
I don’t really have much to say about this, but it struck me when I finally saw Wall-E (which is brilliant and deserves every accolade it can get):
Wall-E, the masculine protagonist, is a robot whose job is to literally clean up the mess left behind by humans. More figuratively, it is a care-taker, protector, preserver, [...]
“The tragedy of verisimilitude”
Posted in Analyses, Politic, Television, Theory, tagged Battlestar Galactica, Bush, Generation Kill, The Wire on August 5, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
This post is something of a sequel to this one.
I’m halfway through season two of The Wire (just finished “All Prologue”) and I’ve got some more thoughts on it and David Simon’s other HBO production, Generation Kill (thoughts which of course apply to television and to some extent narratives in general as well).
What strikes me [...]
“It’s about the characters, stupid”
Posted in Analyses, Television, Theory, tagged Doctor Who, The Wire on July 30, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Having finished the first season of The Wire (and the first episode of season two), I think I’ve figured out what my problem with it is: I’m not engaged by the characters. I don’t mean to say that I don’t like The Wire; I think it is brilliant, and great, and powerful, but so far [...]
Episodic and Seasonal Pacing on Television
Posted in Analyses, Television, Theory, tagged Battlestar Galactica, Mad Men, The Wire, Veronica Mars on July 28, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
If you somehow weren’t aware, season two of Mad Men premiered last night. The episode was everything I expected and hoped for and more, with a couple of surprises along with the general thoughtful evolution of characters that have aged more than a year since we last saw them. (Season two begins in February 1962; [...]
Nuking the Fridge: A Reexamination of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
Posted in Analyses, Movies, tagged Indiana Jones, nuclear era on July 26, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Recently I saw Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull in theaters for the second time. I’m a true Indiana Jones fanatic–hung above my desk, right next to my computer, are all four movie posters, framed–so when I saw the film for the first time, most of my response to it was as [...]
