Last June when my wife suggested we see a documentary about filmmaker Hal Ashby I was curious but not excited. I knew the name and remember him making a few films like Shampoo, Being There, and the truly awful 8 Million Ways to Die. Then before the doc started, a helpful representative from Cinetopia (the annual Michigan film festival) started mentioning the truly astonishing film resume of Hal Ashby which includes: The Landlord, Harold and Maude, The Last Detail, Shampoo, Bo

In less than one week, we will be kicking off the 2019 Pop Culture Conference: "Telling & Retelling Stories: (Re)imagining Popular Culture" (happening March 1-3 in the WSU Student Center and Undergrad Library). This year's conference is co-hosted by Kino Club 313, the Wayne State Comics Collective, the Video Game Scholarly Interest Group, Knit/Lit, the Wayne English Grad Organization (WEGO), and the Humanities Center Pop Culture Working Group. We've also received financial su

Title: Alita: Battle Angel Genre: Action/Manga/Sci-Fi Stars: Rosa Salazar, Christoph Waltz, Keean Johnson, Jennifer Connelly, Mahershala Ali, Ed Skrein Director: Robert Rodriguez Bias: I've never read the manga on which the film is based, and (generally) I haven't read a lot of manga. Grade: C+ In A Nutshell: 500 years in the future, a scientist discovers the remains of a robot. He brings her home and rebuilds her, only to discover she has a past she doesn't remember, and who

I originally embarked on this journey because of the (unintentionally comedic) way that anime characters explicitly state everything that they’re doing. Then, I found out there’s a reason for it. Then, I found an 88-page Bachelor’s Thesis on it. First, What’s the Same? This article will focus only on traditional animation and does not include 3D or stop-motion animation. Traditional animation is done by ink or paint, in which the illustrator draws every frame on tracing paper

The film career of Barry Levinson is actually two film careers. He has made his fair share of high profile classic Hollywood films which would include the sprawling baseball epic The Natural (easily the most beautifully cinematic ending of any baseball film), the insightful comedy-drama Good Morning, Vietnam, the glamorous crime biopic Bugsy, as well as his Oscar winning work in 1988’s Best Picture Rain Man. On the other hand, he has always found a way to cull inspiration fro

I started recommending Jhumpa Lahiri’s 2008 novel, Unaccustomed Earth, after I finished its first chapter. It begins slowly with deceptively banal descriptions of domestic surroundings. Each chapter focuses on a different character and much of the plot development takes place in their homes. Lahiri’s detailing of these spaces is almost pragmatic--she outlines modern kitchens and lists the contents of their cupboards. However, hidden in the margins is an emotional richness th

James Caan has made a career out of playing tough guys. Best known for his Oscar-nominated breakthrough performance as the hot-headed/ill-fated Sonny Corleone in The Godfather, Caan’s career has also been surprisingly multi-faceted. In addition to playing other notable tough guys in Rollerball and The Killer Elite, he is equally adept at showing a softer side in films like Chapter Two and For The Boys. But even when he is playing “nice,” I have no doubt he’d rather have a gun

Cover art: Resident Evil 2 Remake (Capcom) Available on: PS4, Xbox One, and PC Release Date: January 25, 2019 Publisher: Capcom Review: Resident Evil 2 Remake (2019) is, plainly enough, a remake of Capcom’s survival-horror PlayStation classic, Resident Evil 2 (1998). My introduction to the Resident Evil series was 2005’s Resident Evil 4, so this fresh take on RE2 is my first trek through the zombie-ridden, nocturnally fixed streets of Raccoon City. The premise is simple: a ph

Title: Bandersnatch Genre: Interactive Media/Psych Thriller Director: Charlie Brooker Stars: Fionne Whitehead, Will Poulter, Alice Poulter Aesthetic Distance: The gap between the viewer’s conscious reality and the fictional reality presented. The Distancing Effect: The intentional violation of aesthetic distance — also known as “breaking the fourth wall” I grew up watching The Twilight Zone, so when Black Mirror was first introduced to me, I instantly fell in love with Charl

Title: Mary Poppins Returns Genre: Fantasy/Adventure Director: Rob Marshall Stars: Emily Blunt, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Ben Wishaw, Emily Mortimer Grade: B In a Nutshell: Mary Poppins Returns was not necessarily a remake of the original, but a *sort of* sequel. The Critique: I don’t think there was anything fundamentally wrong with the remake — sorry, sequel — there were just a lot of things that could have been done better, and some things that were just plain silly. I made a c