REVIEW: Big Hero 6 [2014]

“One a scale of 1 to 10: how would you rate your pain?” Many parents aren’t going to allow their young children to watch Marvel Cinematic Universe films—they skew older with dark underlying themes and comic book violence that leaves beloved characters dead. So while Disney’s purchase of Marvel gave them boundless raw material to use in order to capture the attention of teens and everyone older, the question remained whether Mickey and friends could find something in the extensive catalog that would be suitable for their target audience. On…

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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 seats. Oftentimes they fail miserably. Summer is here and the marketing materials look as vapid as the films. Not to say there isn’t a couple gems coming to multiplexes with blockbuster budgets; there simply aren’t…

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Posterized Propaganda March 2012: Gimmicks and Blurs

“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 seats. Oftentimes they fail miserably. We’ve come to March and still no posters to really write home about. The season of blockbuster tent poles and their litany of character posters begins, proving once more that…

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REVIEW: TRON: Legacy [2010]

“Like bio-digital jazz, man” It’s twenty years later and I’m still not quite sure how anyone would think a big budget blockbuster taking place inside a computer mainframe could feasibly be seen as profitable, yet Disney has done it once more. 1982 saw TRON unleashed upon the world with an aesthetic way ahead of its time and confounding language for anyone not a computer programmer. Somehow it gained a huge cult following and the studio held tight, always rumoring a sequel, until they could blow audience minds again. TRON: Legacy…

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REVIEW: TRON [1982]

“On the other side of the screen, it all looks so easy” How can the sheer fact that TRON was made not impress you? Three-quarters of the entire work takes place inside the construct of a super computer, the characters roaming around everything from coded programs to single bits that can only speak in 1s or 0s—yes and no. The detail is so exact that these manifested algorithms talk as though religion consists of the users that have created them, fracturing their ranks into those that follow their creator and…

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