Reviews

Random reviews of movies, television shows, comic books, and other creative expressions in popular culture.

“It’s Not about You!” : A Moral Lesson in Doctor Strange

Does Stephen Strange Grow into a Virtuous Person? Dr. Strange is another enjoyable entry in the Marvel Studios master plan. Of course, this film is another superhero adventure with the obligatory origin story. Familiar tropes fill the screen, with numerous parallels to another goatee-sporting narcissist (Tony Stark); though, here we trade technology for magic–yet the occult-inspired …

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Fear or Change? : The Message in Zootopia

Disney’s Zootopia is a masterpiece of quirky characters, thoughtful plot twists, and brilliant spectacle. Imagination abounds in the film’s portrait of a city containing multiple habitats and species living right next to each other. Otters, mice, polar bears, water buffalo, lions, sheep, and other animals all live and interact in a variety of spheres. I’m …

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Harold and the Ultimate Good: Ethics in Person of Interest’s Season 5

After the action-packed premiere (picking up with last season’s cliffhanger), the Person of Interest writing team take time for a more cerebral episode. Harold and company have risked their lives to carry the downsized Machine (literally trapped in a briefcase) to safety. At the end of the premiere, they had reconstructed the Machine in a make-shift …

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How Robert Redford Influenced Wolf Code (And Jim and Jamie Dutcher Too)

So where did you get the idea for your book? Authors hear this question frequently. It is a good conversation starter because it asks the writer to punctuate the highlights in the long journey to bring the story to the readers. Though some novelists can crank out books in several weeks, most of us spend months …

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How To Find the Perfect Writing App: An Idiosyncratic Quest from Typewriter to Scrivener

Now that I’m in the production stage with Wolf Code, I finally took a moment to re-evaluate my “workflow,” as a number of writers call the process by which we fashion words into stories. I’m not talking about the creative side to writing, but the physical side. Thirty plus years ago, a writer would answer this …

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Of Magic Mules, One-Headed Monkeys, and Swamp Pirates: A Review of Jeff Sartini’s The Adventures of Shamis and Larry

  If you appreciate dry humor, wry wit, and satirical fantasy, then you are in the right place. If you love The Princess Bride or The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy or A. A. Milne’s lesser known Once on a Time, then you will appreciate the wordplay in Jeff Sartini’s The Adventures of Shamis and …

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An Environmentalist Message from Pixie Hollow: A Review of Tinker Bell and the Legend of the Neverbeast

After seven adventures (including the much shorter Pixie Hollow Games), who’s your favorite fairy? From the start, when I was drawn into this world for my daughter, mine has been Fawn. Since the previous films only hinted at the possibilities for her character, I was delighted to see the Disney team has finally turned the …

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