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Isaac Asimov was well aware of the natural human tendency to fear things that appear kind of human, but aren’t quite. He went out of his way to show that robots wouldn’t be dangerous, simply because the people who made them would ensure that they aren’t. His Three Laws of Robotics aren’t the result of […]
For a while, I was watching a series called Stacked. It was as bad as you would expect a show to be that centered on a character played by Pamela Anderson. It was supposed to be a humorous contradiction that a woman with fake boobs would work at a book store (yeah, check the title […]
I am reading, or rather listening to, The Lying Life of Adults. It is a departure from what I usually read, but I was interested in it because it is read by Marisa Tomei. I’m about two-thirds through it, and I’m enjoying it very much. There is a whole cast of characters, and each one […]
A couple years ago, out of desperation to find something entertaining to watch on Netflix, I watched (the first season of) The New Legends of Monkey. Overall, I didn’t care much for it. However, before I gave up on it, a character appeared who caught my attention: Sandy, played by Emilie Cocquerel. She was hot, […]
Short films are short because they skimp on components that are required in feature-length films, or they cut them out completely. Character Development: This is the most common omission. We often know just enough about the character to be able to tell the story. In a bad short film, we know even less about the […]
N.K. Jemisin is a three-time winner of the Hugo award for best novel. I very much enjoyed The Broken Earth series. I assumed I would like The City We Became, more or less. The blurb hadn’t particularly interested me, but when I saw that it was nominated for this year’s Hugo, I figured I should […]
You have probably heard the assertion that there are really only a few stories, and every story is just a variation on one of them. They will usually list several of them, starting with, “boy meets girl.” One story pattern that is never mentioned is, “protagonist stubbornly sticks to some principle through to the end.” […]
You could say this is the point of reading a story or watching a film. It is not necessarily the climax or resolution of the story, though often it is. It is the emotional feeling that the reader experiences in return for investing in the story. Audiences don’t necessarily understand this. When you ask them […]
I watched the first episode of Shadow and Bone last night. I had to force myself to watch the whole thing, and I have no intention of watching any more. The show made what is becoming a classic mistake of trying to introduce too much too fast. It reminded me of Suicide Squad, which tried […]
I really need to stop watching movies I missed in my youth. They are mostly disappointing. Case in point, The Lost Boys. I was expecting something deep and profound. Instead, it was an R-rated kid movie with Corey Feldman and Corey Haim. On the whole, the direction was nearly adequate. Corey Feldman’s rendition was awful. […]
