I abhor the platitude "this film is a love letter to cinema" because it's almost always a lazy shorthand to describe a movie that is about movies and references a lot of other—usually better—movies. It's often a form of cinematic stolen valor,
There's a sequence in the Frank Oz-directed Hollywood satire Bowfinger that I think about a lot, especially in relation to Christopher Nolan movies. In Bowfinger, Eddie Murphy co-stars as an absurd and paranoid action film star named Kit Ramsey, who is the unwitting star of sleazy
Nine-ish years ago when Twin Peaks: The Return was first airing, a friend of mine who had recently opened an art theater in Santa Ana announced that he was screening the first set of episodes in one of the theaters as they aired on Showtime. I have no idea
If you're on social media, you, like me, undoubtedly saw dozens of tributes pouring out for the recently departed actor Sam Neill. I got multiple texts early in the morning from people upset in a way that is rare even for celebrity deaths, but it probably helps that
A little while ago, I forget exactly when, I was backing up my laptop's hard drive and had to format an external SSD in order to do it. When I finished, I thought, "Huh, this is a pretty cool drive, I should get another one," and
There are things about every season that I like and dislike. Summer, being my least favorite season overall, still holds a heavy psychic sway over me, in part because I live in Southern California, and seasons only exist tangentially here, so it's always kinda summer. At least, sometimes
I toyed with writing about a lot of things this week: Backrooms (which is good, go see Backrooms); my upcoming trip to Vegas to visit my ailing* father for what might be the last time; feeling good about my mental and physical health after a week of really great social
Mystery Date
I've been struggling to write one of these because every time I find a topic, I end up getting too far in the weeds with it and by the time it comes to sit down and type it out, I'm bored of the subject. I'
I decided earlier this year that I was going to go back and actually finish Red Dead Redemption 2, a game I have always appreciated more than I really liked. Wonderful writing, gorgeous graphics, incredible depth and breadth, and really unsatisfying gameplay. I got about halfway through the story when
While the long (and thankfully nearly over) moving process has been helpful logistically, it's stretched out what would normally be a pretty concentrated period of stress to the point where I feel at the end of my tether at least once a week. I hate feeling angry and
We're deep in the middle of moving, with most of our media at the new place while we pack and stage stuff here, so we were somewhat ill-prepared for the internet to have trouble connecting to our streaming box in the bedroom, necessitating retrieving a disc player
I love horror in all of its (fictional) forms: movies, books, internet creepypastas—you name it, I'm interested. That said, while my threshold for what is enjoyable is pretty low, the bar for stuff that actually scares, disturbs, or causes me to ponder its mysteries is extremely high.
I was trying to come up with what to type up this week; a week in which I am feeling particularly uninspired, and wondered if I'd ever written about my feelings about the Resident Evil games, the latest of which I just finished. It turns out I had,
We have to move in two months and myself, my partner, and both dogs are trying not to fill our apartment with the collective anxiety that has been accumulating since we got the notice earlier this week. We've known for a little over a year that this was
At some point in every phone conversation with my 85 year-old father, the following exchange takes place: Him: Let me ask you something...what do you think about this...1-A? A-1? Me: AI? I fucking hate it. Him: Yeah, that's it...I can't
On this morning's early dog walk, I was looking at the dawn-lit clouds slowly drifting across the brightening sky. "There's a flood warning," my partner said as I pulled myself back from admiring the majesty of the firmament and tried to recalibrate my
My favorite media analysis podcast (favorite one I don't work on, at any rate) is Just King Things, a podcast where the books of Stephen King are discussed in publication order. It's part of a network of podcasts that consist of shows dedicated to various different
I've been trying to get my thoughts on my favorite games this year in order, and in so doing I have been thinking about how tricky it is to have favorites at all in these days of decrepitude. While I think everyone gets to draw the line on
For years now my go-to New Year's Eve ritual has been to throw on some loud movies and try to soothe the nerves of whichever dog is most bothered by the insane barrage of fireworks Southern Californians love to set off throughout the night and next morning.