The Walking Dead is Back
Our Holiday Hiatus is over and the Walking Dead is back! Tonight’s episode was a decent example of what the Walking Dead does really well, that slow burn type stuff, where we take a quick break to let the characters simmer on all that’s been going on. Rick looks like a Walker all by himself and spends most of the episode unconscious. Carl was the majority of the episode and spent most of his time trying to prove he didn’t need his dad. The kid is one of those characters the fans seem to hate, yet he never really got on my nerves. Lori and Andrea, possibly two of the most hated characters in television during their run, had a tendency to do stuff that was out of character. This wasn’t the actresses fault by any means, it was bad writing and I’ve already written about that before. Actually…I wrote…
Smaller Stakes, Smaller Villains, Bigger Impact
Like many people, I have the shows I watch on a regular basis. New ones are constantly popping up, American Horror Story: Coven (which crapped out a bit in the last fifteen minutes but otherwise was great) or Almost Human (which I really want to love but am having trouble) are a couple examples. Then there are my standards, the ones I’ve been watching for years. Breaking Bad was one of those, Walking Dead is another. The one that always sneaks up on me though, and probably gives me the most satisfaction when it comes, is Justified. At first, I just didn’t care for it. Its arcs didn’t make any sense, it meandered and rambled all over the place, and just seemed to be about rednecks with single digits of teeth murdering and coniving over small scale matters. Over the years though, it has gotten much better. The second season…
Man Of Steel
Just about every writer I read has had an issue with this movie. They picked it apart for its emphasis on action, lacking the qualities that make Superman, its gritty nature, etc. I really, really wanted to love this movie and be like hah but that just wasn’t meant to be. The movie isn’t terrible, it’s just alright. The action was well done, but has the same problem I’ve always had with Superman, a whole lot of teasing with no payoff. Sure, a whole hell of a lot of buildings got destroyed, but everyone else just walked it off. They didn’t even breathe heavy. When everyone comes out of going through multiples buildings, having a train dropped on them, exploded, etc. and they don’t get scratched at all, it removes the climax of the combat. The only reason anyone stopped hitting each other was seemingly because they got bored or…
On Using Distractions
I was reading through some of my blog posts from the old Story Arcs and I saw one about writers block. In particular, it was about how one of the things I did to work through it, cutting through distractions. First, I’d like to say that a lot of people say there’s no such thing, there are just writers not writing, allowing things to get in the way or too afraid of “messing up” to put words on paper. That’s not important, not to my point anyway. It surprised me because things have changed bit since then. Eliminating distractions is often essential to getting things doen, but for a while now I’ve actually been using them. My favorite way to write at the moment is to put Netflix on one side of the screen and Word (or WordPress at the moment) on the other. Then I burn through some TV…
Iron Man 3
Iron Man 3 was great and there are several reasons why. It’s a great action flick, it has great humor, a fantastic plot, and does what the others have done so well, just better. Everything the second did wrong, it corrected. Everything the first did, it improved upon. I don’t know if I’m willing to say it was better than Avengers, but it was certainly close. And while there is a lot to this movie, what I want to discuss is the twist. It’s not really a review. If you want a review, well, it’s great, go see it. Done. If you don’t want to know anymore, don’t read any further. Really, don’t. Everyone who hasn’t seen it, just to make sure, you’re gone, right? Cool. Anyway, so it turns out the Mandarin is a fake and Guy Pierce’s character is running everything as a puppetmaster behind the scenes, using…