Something has been on my mind this week concerning food. Perhaps it’s a luxury to even have this problem, but I still wonder if it’s either a virtue or a vice. And I think, even though it’s about food, it hints at a larger issue with my character. Continue reading
Cinematic Chiasmus is no longer my sole domain. I’ve had help from my wonderful readers to complete my Spider-Man chiasmus and to see the chiasmus of Alien and Alien3. In those cases, I had abandoned my Spider-Man chiasmus, and I had already unveiled the symmetry of Aliens. So they were more about completing what I had started.
However, this time I have something wholly original. Out of the blue, I recently got a fantastic email from a reader named Jordan who’s been with me since 2011! He suggested I look at three films to see if they might have a chiastic story structure. The easiest one for me to look at first was Tron.
I had a good feeling about Tron, and it was surprisingly easy to discover the chiasmus in it. Sometimes I struggle to figure out the turning point. But this one came naturally. So let’s go to the laser bay and get an inside look at the symmetrical story structure of Tron. Continue reading
I recently rewatched 2006’s Casino Royale. I hadn’t seen it in many years, and I really liked returning to it. It feels so simple and quaint in some ways. And yet something was nagging at my mind the whole time I watched it. That movie is a brilliant achievement in the James Bond franchise, restoring it to its former greatness. But I don’t really enjoy most of the Daniel Craig Bond films. The series has kind of gone all over the place in its tone over the past decade.
Watching Casino Royale, I asked myself, “Do rotten sequels spoil great previous films?” After all, I know that what I’m watching will eventually lead to misery down the line, even though it’s an enjoyable ride at the moment. So what’s the point of starting down that road?
As I see it, there are three ways to deal with sequels that could ruin their previous films:
There are merits to each of these approaches. Continue reading
I remember hearing about The Road to El Dorado in 2000 during my senior year of high school. It looked too juvenile for me. However, I did hear that it had some adult stuff in it, like characters getting naked and using swear words. Still, it was a cartoon. I know, animation isn’t purely the realm of children’s stories. But the animation style seemed deliberately aimed at a younger Disney audience. So I avoided it for many years.
My wife recently wanted to watch old DreamWorks movies she had seen long ago. So we found a copy of The Road to El Dorado and sat down and watched the thing. I was right about what I had expected to find in it. But at the end, I was left with a burning question. Who was this movie made for? Continue reading
Watchmen and 2010: The Year We Make Contact have quite a bit in common. I didn’t realize that until my eldest brother pointed out some of the connections to me. And then it dawned on me. They both tell the story of averting a nuclear holocaust. Plus, they’re based on famous novels. A graphic novel in one case.
So I credit my brother for this particular Movie Matchup. Having said that, on with the show! Continue reading
The first short story I shared was a little on the dark side. That one was entitled “The Strange Fruit.” Not all of them will be like that, though. This one has a much more upbeat tone and ending. I call it “The Magic Ring,” and I hope you enjoy it. Continue reading
Have you ever listened to a piece of classical music and thought to yourself, “This sounds awfully familiar?” Plenty of people have dissected the main Star Wars theme to discover its classical roots, for example. But I recently found something a bit more obscure. Continue reading
A few months ago, I forced myself to sit through a Netflix movie called Red Notice. I had heard it was great fun from one of my brothers, so I wanted to give it a fair chance. Unfortunately, I had just watched a truly amazing action movie called RED. Now that was a masterpiece of quirky humor mixed with breathtaking action sequences.
Red Notice, on the other hand, was a hollow movie. Watching it back-to-back with RED ensured I’d see the contrast instantly. It’s supposed to rest on three things:
After watching Red Notice, I didn’t care to take it to task in an article. It felt beside the point. The movie is awful, boring, and a waste of time. Sure, I could expand on those points, but what for? In this case, I didn’t think the movie deserved any more thought. Why am I writing about it now? Because someone else took on the challenge and succeeded in spades. I’ll get to that in a moment. Continue reading
Until recently, I had only ever known a world of smells and tastes. Flavors. Spices. Sweets. Sours. Richness. Bitterness. The whole spectrum. But a few weeks ago, all that went away. On January 11, 2022, my sense of smell and taste faded. For one week after that, I couldn’t taste anything. I couldn’t enjoy food. It was scary.
Eating suddenly became a burden. Before that, I had no idea how important smell and taste are to my enjoyment of life. Of course, I had lost them during colds, but that was always such a temporary issue. My smell and taste always returned quickly. They seemed like such small things. Such unimportant things. I took them for granted. After all, I never thought of them as things until I suddenly couldn’t do them anymore.
Like many unexpected aspects of life, this is not without its element of humor. It reminds me of the Michael McIntyre standup routine where he talks about things you don’t even think of as things suddenly becoming impossible when you’re a parent. Continue reading
Holidays are meant to be special. Under other circumstances, they might be considered regular days. Like when Rocky Balboa tells Adrien, “To you, it’s Thanksgiving. But to me, it’s Thursday.” However, what gives holidays a touch of magic is the respect we give them.
Similarly, superheroes are usually regular people thrust into extraordinary situations. Sometimes they are granted godlike superpowers by chance, and other times they simply use what they were born with for the benefit of mankind.
Whatever the case may be, I had an interesting idea to compare the two. If holidays were superheroes, which ones would they be? Here is my list of what that might look like. Continue reading
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