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Problems With The Redemption Story
According to Hayden White (American historian), The Redemption Story is one of the Four Grand Narratives of the West. (The others are Greek fatalism, bourgeois progressivism and Marxist utopianism.)
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Gilmore Girls and Modern Feminism
Why Fans Love Gilmore Girls A Fan’s Notes On Gilmore Girls from The Awl. Is it an UNDERRATED CLASSIC or did you see it when you were 14? Chris Schleicher (@cschleichsrun) November 18, 2020 Watching With Your Kids Here’s a good argument for watching Gilmore girls with your daughter even if you see problems with it.
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Million Dollar Baby Film Study
Today is Curmudgeon’s Day, according to Twitter. (Un)happy Curmudgeon’s Day! In that spirit I will take a close look at a film in which a curmudgeonly old man learns to soften up with the help of an earnest and humble young woman. I first saw this film around the time Million Dollar Baby come out and
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The Problem With The ‘One Big Lie Per Story’ Advice
There’s a rule of writing fantasy which all professional writers are familiar with. (No, I’m not talking about the dangling preposition.) Fantasy writers are allowed one big lie per story. As Michael Hauge writes at his Story Mastery website: The quality that gives every movie its emotional appeal: It isn’t the fantasy element of a
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Little Miss Sunshine Film Study
Little Miss Sunshine is a good example of a ‘comic journey’ story structure. For fans of another well-known drama set in Albuquerque, fans of Breaking Bad may be interested to know that both Bryan Cranston and Dean Norris have small roles in Little Miss Sunshine. There’s a ticking clock in this film because the pageant
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The Female Maturity Formula Of Modern Storytelling
When it comes to modern storytelling in Hollywood animated films for children, Pixar is at the top of the field. In fact, The Good Dinosaur, released late 2015, might have been their very first lemon, depending on what you’re looking for in a film for children.
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Gravity (2013) Film Study
Gravity is a science fiction film from 2013, with a strong mythological, Christian influence.
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Rare Interview With Author Janet Frame
This is a radio interview, transcribed and published in Landfall 178 (Volume forty-five, June 1991) between Janet Frame and Elizabeth Alley.
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Film Study: Contact (1997)
I recently found a copy of Carl Sagan’s 1985 novel Contact at the second-hand store. I already knew that Carl Sagan was a brilliant thinker and that he wrote this book of fiction as a way of playing with some ideas he had about what might happen if humans were to make contact with an extra-terrestrial intelligent life
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Planes Trains and Automobiles
Planes, Trains & Automobiles is a thanksgiving comedy from 1987. The film has been given an R rating — not, as I expected, because of the pillow scene, but because of the cussy airport scene. [Hughes] is not often cited for greatness, although some of his titles, like “The Breakfast Club,” “Weird Science,” “Ferris Bueller’s
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Waitress Film Study (2007)
Waitress is a 2007 film with a tragic real life story behind the movie. It is also a good storytelling case study, as it changes mood part way through. Though I don’t like Waitress nearly as much as I like Juno, it’s worth a brief compare and contrast as a way of understanding the way
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The Others Film Study
Written by Alejandro Amenábar, The Others is an old-fashioned melodramatic ghost story but done very well. If you haven’t seen it yet, it’s one of those films that can be ruined in one fell swoop (like Sixth Sense), so leave the building now!
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Black Books Pilot (2000) TV Study
The pilot episode of Black Books is called “Cooking The Books”. One thing Cooking The Books does really well is introducing the audience very quickly to the three main characters (all of them transcending stock characters, though based on stock), and weaving them together for gags at the climax. When broken down, we can see that each
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Everyday Words With Different Academic Meanings
ASEXUAL The queer community uses ‘asexual’ in a very specific way to refer to orientation (low-to-no- sexual attraction). Some people are homosexual, some people are bisexual, heterosexual, pansexual and… asexual. In non-queer spaces, the word ‘asexual’ is used in various different ways independent from the central contemporary meaning of orientation. Even within academic literature, there
