Tag: film
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A Different Look at ‘Back to the Future’
For a college class in winter 2008-09, we had to make a “zine” on a topic of our choice. Mine was called The Movies: Take Two. It aimed to “take a different look” at all things movie-related using crowd-sourced haikus, six-word summaries, and some of my own comparative film analyses to cast some of my…
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Why ‘Back To The Future’ Still Rules
To celebrate Back to the Future Week, I’m posting a story I wrote for my school paper in 2008 about my hopeless devotion to the time-bending trilogy. If I were asked to name what I think are the greatest films of all time, I might throw out a few high-brow titles like Rear Window or Casablanca or…
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Love and Illusion in ‘Midnight In Paris’ and ‘Me And Orson Welles’
Is this the real life? / Is this just fantasy? / Caught in a landslide / No escape from reality / Open your eyes / Look up to the skies / And see.—“Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen A few summers ago I was in Guatemala with my sister, staying with an older married couple near the…
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There’s No Felling This Forrest
Can’t say that I’m a big fan of the results of this new poll from The Telegraph, in which voters named Forrest Gump the greatest movie character of all time, with James Bond, Scarlett O’Hara, Hannibal Lecter, and Indiana Jones filling out the top five. While I know some lists are entirely unserious affairs, the…
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The Cove
Save the Whales is so last century. Dolphins, according to the new Academy Award-winning documentary The Cove, are what really need saving now. The film profiles Ric O’Barry, a former dolphin trainer who captured and trained the dolphins for the 1960s show Flipper. It was during that time when O’Barry realized the inherent cruelty of…
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Disney, Pixar, And The Golden Age of Animation
Published in the North Central Chronicle in September 2009. Everyone has a favorite animated movie. I’m a Toy Story man myself. But no matter which film you prefer, it’s clear that our generation—the Millennials, born between 1983 and 2000—has been the most spoiled in history in terms of the animated films we’ve grown up watching.…
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You Should See ‘Up’ Right Now
Yeah, it’s good. Great, even. It’ll be another hit for Pixar, and deservedly so. I thought making a movie about a rat in a kitchen would be a tough sell, but alas, they made Ratatouille. Then came a largely dialogue-less movie about a robot stuck on a trash-riddled Earth in the future. Wall-E was the…
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Twilight Bites: How Dazzling Vampires Distort Masculinity
Published in the North Central Chronicle on April 24, 2009. Let’s pretend I’m a teenage girl and that you’re my best friend. I’ve just told you about this guy I started dating. He’s perfect in every way, I say. He stares at me while I sleep, he alienates me from my friends and, among other…
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Phoebe In Wonderland
Being a kid today has got to be tough. Being a kid with an insatiable creative appetite and a slight case of obsessive compulsive disorder has got to be even tougher. That’s what Phoebe (played by 11-year-old Elle Fanning, Dakota’s younger sister) has to go through in Phoebe in Wonderland, the newest film from director…
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And The Oscar Goes To…
…the most predictable Oscars ever. Every year it seems like the suspense is sucked out of the actual awards ceremony with the months of speculation and campaigning and Oscar ballots. This year, sadly, was even more predicable than previous ones because of the incessant and overrated Slumdog Millionaire cleaned house just as every one predicted…
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Oh, Oscars, How Do I Loathe Thee?
Published in the North Central Chronicle on January 30, 2009. Let me count the ways… 1. You want normal people to like you, but you fail to acknowledge what people like. In the past, you’ve been excused from this because most of the time the highest grossing film of year wasn’t worthy of awards. But…
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Stranger Than Fiction
Originally published in the North Central Chronicle on January 18, 2009, as part of a series called “Chad Picks Classic Flicks.” An artist may not set out to create something that changes the world, but he just might do it by mistake. Marc Forster’s 2006 film Stranger Than Fiction is a movie about fate—or “the…
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Slumdog Millionaire Is Bankrupt
On his blog LookingCloser.org, Christian film critic Jeffrey Overstreet lays out his reasons why Slumdog Millionaire didn’t tickle his fancy as it has for so many other people. I was pleased to see that someone shares my sentiments, however unpopular they may be.
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My Mouth’s Bleedin’!
Today is the day, the only day of the year, when I watch It’s A Wonderful Life. Watching the classic Christmas movie with a bowl of popcorn and a crackling fire on Christmas Eve has become perhaps the longest tradition with my family. Another tradition, getting up at 5 a.m. on Christmas morning and waiting…