Howdy pardners, welcome to “Western Wednesdays.” My name is Geno Cuddy and I have been studying, analyzing, preserving and discussing classic film for over twenty years. It is my pleasure to join Cinema Crazed and their brilliant team of writers.
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Many years ago my good friend Felix asked me if I’d write about J.K. Rowling for his site, which I gladly obliged. That article is long gone now and, frankly, I’m a much better writer so I proposed taking another swing at it. When I originally wrote it I focused on the most obvious issue with Rowling. Since then, though? Oh my god, the flood gates of negatives regarding her has been opened nonstop.
Reposted from December 31st, 2009
There’s something about shooting fish in a barrel, and if any modern equivalent of a movie which lent itself to post-modern bashing more than Avatar does, you might only have truly smug equivalents of Stepin Fetchit, and those examples are self-aware.
Example: The gold toothed robots in Transformers 2. Clearly, they either knew what they were doing and did it anyway, or they simple didn’t know and it was perceived that way, but there’s no way a rational and cognizant person can not watch those robots and think, ghetto stereotype. But then, that opens me to my own criticism from the straw man who says, “I didn’t see that, you did, you f___ing racist!” Well, I asked my friends, so bite me. I hadn’t actually seen the flick until recently, where my thoughts were confirmed. Too busy watching shit that matters, I suppose.
It’s just been announced that Spider-Man will be involved with the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It seems that Sony is not happy with the current state of the franchise and will reboot it yet again in 2017 in a joint movie with Marvel Studios/Disney. Sony will still have the final say creatively, but surely Disney will have a major influence. With this new development, it’s probably a good time to evaluate the Marvel Cinematic Universe as a whole and consider what might happen in years to come.
While watching “Hunger Games: The Mockingjay, Part One,” my mind wandered. When Katniss Everdeen gets her new set of arrows (this is not a spoiler, is it?), some are explosive – “trick” arrows, similar to the ones used by Oliver Queen on Arrow or Hawkeye in The Avengers.
When these characters came to mind, I started to sense a pattern. In the 21st Century, people love archers: Legolas in the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit films; Green Arrow on both Arrow and Smallville; Hawkeye over at Marvel is experiencing great popularity both on the silver screen and in the pages of his own comic; Neytiri from James Cameron’s Avatar; Sterling Archer; Merida from Pixar’s Brave and Katniss offer girls positive role models, while Hanna maybe not so much. I think there’s also a girl who shoots arrows in the Narnia movies, but I’ve never seen those. I started to think about why these archers are so popular.
We all know zombies; the flesh-hungry reanimated corpses who often shamble towards their prey looking to add them to the ranks. Yes, they’ve become a staple of the horror scene and are generally one of the most popular creatures to crawl out of the ground and into our collective nightmares. I joined up with my good buddy Felix to talk about the unique zombies to fear, and the five zombie slayers that battle them.
Without further ado, here are our ten favorite Zombies.
List some of your own favorites in the comments!
Real depth can come from the most surprising sources, things which at first glance are commercial grabs, but which, when mined, show greater depth. On the one basic hand, Star Wars is ships in space shooting at each other and guys beating on each other with laser swords. On the other hand, the critical hand that studied at a college, it’s an examination of our yearning for a call to adventure lost in the grit of seventies cinema.
Consider Little Shop of Horrors, one of the movies that came out of the well of nostalgia that is the eighties. Many remember it as a musical. Many remember it as a comedy. Many remember it as a horror flick. Few, if any, read much into it.