REVIEW: Madagascar [2005]
“Just smile and wave boys. Smile and wave.” Made as though in opposition to Pixar’s brand of magical storytelling, Dreamworks Animation’s Madagascar ushered in the studio’s want for broader comedy and adolescent appeal. With Shrek, they found a franchise that subverted Disney’s use of fairy tales for cinematic fodder and created a nice hybrid of […]
Posterized Propaganda June 2012: Blockbusters Arrive, Creativity Stays Home
“Don’t Judge a Book by Its Cover” is a proverb whose simple existence proves the fact impressionable souls will do so without fail. This monthly column focuses on the film industry’s willingness to capitalize on this truth, releasing one-sheets to serve as not representations of what audiences are to expect, but as propaganda to fill […]
REVIEW: Snow White and the Huntsman [2012]
“Have I not given you all?” What happens when a fairy tale depicting an innocent princess saved by a litany of characters on her way to the crown turns into an epic battle with heroine in full armor storming the castle herself? Well, we discover just how flimsy a character the titular Snow White actually […]
DESIGN: Rochester Broadway Theatre League 2011/2012 Season
2011/2012 Rochester Broadway Theatre League 2011/2012 Season, published by Buffalo Spree Publishing, Inc. Each performance at the Auditorium Theatre, on behalf of RBTL, has imagery and production notes supplied from the traveling company. The new season programs are based from the previous year without any major design changes.
REVIEW: Los cronocrímenes [Timecrimes] [2008]
“No one knows our phone number” All he had to do was stay hidden for an hour, biding time away from sight as his impossible doppelganger went through the same motions of an hour earlier. The ramifications of time travel would have been erased; the insane crippling fear of seeing another man identical to him […]
DESIGN: Twin Peaks – The Black Lodge
Titled “The Birds Sing a Pretty Song”, any fan of the show “Twin Peaks” should be intimately familiar with the Black Lodge. Looking to create an identity/logo that mimicked hotel/lodging locales, I took the obvious jagged striped pattern from the Man From Another Place’s room and attached it to one of the unique lamps bookending […]
REVIEW: 7:35 de la mañana [7:35 in the Morning] [2004]
“Always in a hurry; always at the same time” An Oscar nominee for Best Live Action Short with his debut work, writer/director Nacho Vigalondo has gone on to make a couple features with festival appeal in the almost decade since. But there is something peculiar, unique, and a bit demented about 7:35 de la mañana […]
REVIEW: Men in Black 3 [2012]
“He didn’t say please” While strange for a Men in Black film to open with something other than a crashing spaceship, I’ll admit to being ecstatic for the alternative. Having the sexy Nicole Scherzinger lead us into the maximum-security prison housing one of the universe’s most notorious criminals definitely didn’t hurt either. What I really […]
REVIEW: Men in Black II [2002]
“I see you neuralyzed another partner” There’s nothing like a lost memory trope to allow lazy screenwriters the opportunity to explain their film within the construct of its plot. Despite an inventive, tongue-in-cheek reenactment program hosted by Peter Graves about mysterious conspiracy stories ushering us back into the Men in Black universe, Robert Gordon and […]
REVIEW: Men in Black [1997]
“May I ask why you felt little Tiffany had to die?” Fresh off the success of Get Shorty two years prior, director Barry Sonnenfeld‘s still young but effective career found it’s biggest hit in the rollicking science fiction comedy Men in Black. Unfortunately for him, the film also proved to be his last cinematic work […]
REVIEW: Battleship [2012]
“It’s the North Koreans—I’m tellin’ ya” Screenwriters Erich and Jon Hoeber actually made paying Hasbro a boatload of cash for their seemingly unnecessary board game property a relevant story point in their big budget, science fiction actioner Battleship. The fact they had to conjure up a humanoid alien race with reptilian characteristics and cloaking technology […]
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