Jeffrey Cook

I find with many trailers now you can tell which scenes will be the finale and it sort of spoils everything – comedy trailers are even worse, giving all the best jokes to you already in the trailer, or in the advertising for the movie they pound a particular joke over and over into your head so by the time you actually watch the scene you can recite the entire bit.

Thoroughly enjoyable Read. Perhaps have a section of examples from other “radical” movies of the time that helped changed the shape of american cinema?

Personally I think the advancement in internet speeds brought on the decline of cable television. A look at the demographics concerning the audience of news programs on Television is a reflection of this in my opinion – the majority being of an older age.

Nice Article, perhaps you could cover Bloodbourne a little more? I found that to be the most difficult of the “souls” games, mostly because of the importance of dodging in the face of no shield\block actions. Perhaps aswell you can give your opinion on how to make things more “difficult” for veteran players other than doing SL1 runs, no magic runs and such.

In the late 1990’s and early millennium during the peak of the Pokemon craze I was one of those children who lapped up the merchandise – particularly the trading cards. I was friends with a religious family from down the street and we would frequent the local comic book store every friday to buy a pack of cards. Even then when I was of that young age I pondered on the idea that Pokemon contained a subtle form of animal cruelty, akin to cock fighting or dog fights. I asked the father of this religious family about a similar brand of trading cards, Magic: The Gathering, and he was adamant about not letting his children buy that brand since it advocated “black magic.”

This always stuck with me. Animal cruelty seemed to be a non issue for him, an otherwise good hearted and sensible man, but then he had a peculiar stance on this notion of black magic. It was a lesson to my younger self that everyone has their own set of peculiar beliefs.

Remakes and remasters, like anything, are perfectly fine in moderation. Think of what the highest selling video games are of late – Call of Duty and its innumerable iterations, Grand Theft Auto V, and the yearly release of the FIFA franchise. Think also of Nintendo, who have relied on their established franchises since the 1990s – Mario, Legend of Zelda, Donkey Kong.

Is there an issue with this? I cannot help but see a similar trend in hollywood, where the majority of films being released are either remakes, sequels, or adapted screenplays from video games or comic books. Is the well of originality slowly going dry? Or is this what consumers really want? Is this also a reflection of the unbalanced power that brand names possess?

Another of Cormac McCarthy’s novels “Blood Meridian” is a peculiar piece of literature as it reads very much like a post-apocalyptic tale – yet it is set in the year 1850 in the deep south of America. It chronicles the protagonist’s journey with a group of scalpers who move through the border of Mexico massacring Native Americans and Mexicans alike. Quite a memorable read if you are into the dystopian themes discussed in this article, made even more intriguing due to its setting in a historical time period.