If you’ve never talked to me about movies you should know one thing: I believe the most compelling movies is a great villain. Oh yeah, good heroes are great but they are only astounding with great villains. Luke Skywalker is not as good without Vader, Indiana Jones isn’t as compelling without Nazis, Atticus Finch just doesn’t have that same punch without racism (okay maybe not the last example). So… I’m curious. What makes your favorite villain? I figured I’d go over a few and why I think they work really well. Darth Vader Vader is 100% the top villain in pop culture. I don’t think anybody could even counter that someone outside of real life people like Hitler could top Vader. The thing about Vader though is his entire back story is so well known that it’s hard to divorce him away from that. So let’s take two Vaders: Pre-Empire ...(Read More)

If you’ve never seen the show Avatar: The Last Airbender, go watch it. It’s an excellent overall show that has amazing set of characters, fun action, a cool world, and compelling storyline. I’m going to spoil the fuck out of it. I just recently watched the show with my girlfriend Mel. We watched it slowly but with a regular cadence. This is pretty different from the first time I saw it when it was coming out episode by episode with long (almost +1 year) hiatuses between episodes. What did it do so well Characters Avatar has real arcs for many of it’s characters, especially in season 3. Zuko goes from evil villain to a penitent hero. His story evolve with betrayals, angst and coming to his own realization that what he wants to do and what he needs to do his father are different things. Sokka and Katara both grow ...(Read More)

Star Wars is a hard franchise to take over for anybody. It’s been in the heart and minds of the general populace. Comic book movies and fantasy series are just as big blockbusters but doesn’t have that have fan base that crosses many swaths of people. The movie was entertaining, I laughed a few times, not as boisterously as the high school kids behind me but more than once. The new characters were excellent. Ridley and Boyega had amazing on screen presence. You can see the sparkle in Rey’s eyes as she talks about the Jedi. Their on screen presence as a possibly romantic couple is touching and while Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher come back they always play a second fiddle to the new cast. The transition from the old set to the new set was masterfully done, with enough on screen time and presence to make an impact ...(Read More)

A friend of mine commented about how Hollywood only produces sequels nowadays, we’ve all had the thought but impressions can be wrong so let’s get some real data behind this. I’m going to look at the top 100 domestic grossing movies from 1980 to 2014, not including the year of this post 2015. This should cover a large spectrum of movie going in the past 35 years. As you can see from this first chart that there is a general progressing toward more sequels with a peak in 2013 where 23% of the top 100 movies that year were sequels. This rise of sequels seems to start around 2002 and except for the outlier in 2005 continues at higher levels than ever before. But the most interesting point that I think is that during the 90s there was some golden age of original movies. Where you have in 1999 only ...(Read More)

One of the more interesting series that I’ve seen recently is Black Mirror. A BBC show that recently got attention in the United States as it arrived on Netflix, I personally heard about it recommended from a friend at a party. The show reference’s the Black Mirror, the black screen that we all pay attention to. A slightly modified Twilight Zone without as much camp or humor, the show does well in it’s first watching. The episodes are all distinct and separate from each other, some of the highest quality and others falling short. If you haven’t seen the series, I don’t recommend reading this but watching it yourself. It’s one of my favorite shows that I learned in 2014 and eagerly wait for a Season 3 if it will ever come out. The recently launched hour long Christmas Special was well timed (timed as of this post). Episode 01 ...(Read More)