At the start of this year, during the COVID-19 pandemic, I drew a comparison of our situation to the absurdity of a scene at the start of Young Frankenstein. It’s the one in which Dr. Frederick Frankenstein bids a somber but loving farewell to his bride-to-be by putting his elbow to hers. Continue reading
Today is a special day for me worth celebrating. It marks the 10th anniversary of the first article I ever published as the Deja Reviewer, and this is the 600th article I have published on this website. Back on June 16, 2011, I debuted an article entitled “Movie Matchups: Iron Man vs. RoboCop.” But that wasn’t the first movie matchup I had written. In fact, it was the second. However, you’d be hard-pressed to find the first because it can no longer be found via a simple Internet search.
You see, back in February 2010, the day after my first child was born, I was let go from my job along with half the company, and I was forced to try many creative ways to find a job fast. One thing I decided to do was to publish a bunch of articles online wherever I could to see if I could get some attention or notoriety.
A little website called Suite101 seemed like a good option, so I went ahead and published more than a dozen articles on there in just a few weeks. I wrote about all sorts of topics, including proper grammar, a foolproof method for getting rid of hiccups, and various film reviews. I can see now that those articles were my first baby steps into becoming the Deja Reviewer, especially the one entitled “Movie Match-up: Pixar’s Up vs. The Wizard of Oz.”
I credit it as the first Deja Reviewer article before I even came up with that name or the idea for this website. Unfortunately, when I went to look for it, I couldn’t find it at all. The Suite101 website is now devoted exclusively to mattresses, and they have deleted all of the old articles that used to be published on it.
Thankfully, I always save my work. So I was able to pinpoint exactly when I finished writing that article, and I searched for it using the Wayback Machine on the right date to find what I was looking for. You can click this link to confirm that I’m telling the truth about all of this: https://web.archive.org/web/20100425051428/http://hollywood-animated-films.suite101.com/article.cfm/movie-match-up-pixars-up-vs-the-wizard-of-oz
For your reading pleasure (and to ensure this important piece of literary history remains on the Internet), I will now repost my long-lost first Deja Reviewer article here. It’s not as polished as my work would later become, but that makes it all the more interesting to read and compare. Enjoy! Continue reading
Five years ago, Netflix did a short video about my Back to the Future Trilogy chiasmus article. I was thrilled to see it, of course, but I wished that it had included more information about the connections found in the article. As it was, it made my observations come across as superficial and not very detail-oriented.
Last week, one of my sons asked if we could watch the Netflix video about my article, and I was happy to oblige him. I searched for “Back to the Future chiasmus” on YouTube, and I found something I didn’t expect to find. It looked like someone else had used my terminology of “Cinematic Chiasmus,” and I was delighted to find that they were directly referencing my article! Thankfully, that someone took up the torch and made the detailed video that I had wanted the Netflix one to be! A YouTuber named Woven Realities made a video entitled “CINEMATIC CHIASMUS: The Back to the Future Trilogy is Symmetrical!” in February 2021, and it’s quite amazing that I found it at all.
What intrigued me most about this video is that it deviates from what I wrote and adds even more details that I hadn’t expounded upon. I’ll explain all of the differences I noticed as I watched the video unfold, and I’ll share the deep implications of a truly significant change she made near the conclusion of her video, so be sure to read to the end. Continue reading
Star Trek is a Christian TV show in the same way that the United States is a Christian nation. There’s very little explicit reference to Biblical teachings in the show’s scripts and in our country’s founding documents, but they are baked into the core concepts that gave rise to the various aspects found in each product. Continue reading
I’ve noticed something interesting about myself. The times when I feel angry rarely come as the result of outside influences. I can usually deal with stress, rudeness, and even injustice without losing my temper. No, I tend to get angry when I am not doing my best to keep the commandments. When I’m failing to be right with God, I’m on a sandy foundation, and I become angry when even the smallest thing jostles my precious ego. Continue reading
In the final chapter of the final book in The Chronicles of Narnia, The Last Battle, something mysterious happens. I’m not talking about the destruction of the old Narnia, the sudden super-speed of the humans, their ability to run up a waterfall, or any of the other wondrous things that take place on their journey further up and further into Aslan’s country. Continue reading
I make a lot of definitive statements as the Deja Reviewer, judging this and that movie in ways that I think are reasonable and sometimes daring. But doing this leaves me open to the possibility of having to eat humble pie every now and then. Sometimes my errors are so egregious, I feel the need to go back and correct them. In this case, I figured out (nine years too late) that I was wrong about some movies being better if you skip their first half. Continue reading
When it comes to villains, Elliott Marston is among my favorites. During my recent rewatch of Quigley Down Under in preparation for my Cinematic Chiasmus article, I noticed that Marston is surprisingly sympathetic. I’m not saying he’s a paragon of virtue. He does plenty of villainous things. I’m just saying that his vices are outweighed by his virtues. Here are four reasons why the villain of Quigley Down Under isn’t such a bad guy. Continue reading
This isn’t going to be a typical article for me. It’ll be more personal because I’ll delve into my wife’s private life, while also being outside my wheelhouse because I’ll be reviewing a play instead of a movie. But I promise it’ll be fun. And if you stay with me to the end, you might just read something that will forever change the way you think of one of the main characters of Emma. Continue reading
George Lucas famously said that films are never truly finished, only abandoned. I’ve noticed that that is true of basically everything I do, even though I’m not a filmmaker. I’m a writer, and each article I write feels like it has its own life and rhythm. It’s born, matures, and finally gets sent out into the world to fend for itself like a fledgling from the nest. With this in mind, I’d like to share my thoughts on the painful process of writing, rewriting, and perfecting works of art. Continue reading
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