Soul: Innovating Animation in a Year of Creative Struggle

A lot of Disney/Pixar movies are entertaining but they don’t really have that much depth, they don’t have what Soul has. Animated movies are usually made for kids to watch, but this film was made with a more mature audience in mind. At its core, this movie is about someone who doesn’t want to die and someone who doesn’t want to live. These are heavy topics for a Disney movie, and what’s even more complicated is that Soul is like two movies in one. This movie takes place in two very different aesthetic worlds and tells the story of two diametrically opposed characters. This duality isn’t a flaw, it works to show the themes in the movie.

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Part of what makes Soul great is the contrast between the real world and the dreamy Great Before. These two worlds are represented with different aesthetic choices, both sonically and visually. The beginning of the movie is set in a realistic, vibrant, and chaotic New York City. When Joe Gardener is alive and on earth the animation looks semi photo-realistic and the imagery is grounded in day-to-day life: peeling paint, public school classrooms with beat-up musical instruments, the local pizza spot, concrete sidewalks, and the brick wall outside a jazz club. All of these work together to create a detailed New York that feels alive. Then Joe Gardener falls down a manhole and dies, he is transported into The Great Beyond/Before. The contrast between The Great Before and New York City is both jarring and spectacular to view. The Great Before feels very surreal and ethereal. The characters are glowing cartoonish blue/green blobs. The landscape is rendered in pastel purples, blues, greens, and pinks. It is spare, dreamy, and supernatural. This is how the filmmakers show the difference between the human world and the metaphysical dimension. It’s like we are being transported into these two different worlds with the characters, it is very immersive.

It is hard to write about this movie because the themes and ideas are so existential, but one constant that helps ground our understanding is its use of music. The music sets the stage for each place: New York City and the Great Before. The theme of the film is a chaotic beautiful jazz track called “Born To Play”. It’s very jazzy and sets the tone for the human side of the film. “Born To Play” plays when Joe has an emotional, human feeling. This works with the main idea of the movie: being human is hard but it is worth it. That last piano key at the end of each jazz track is so satisfying that the whole song was worth it, and when Joe died that was the last piano key, he realized what he took for granted while living and wants to continue. When we are transported to the Great Before the music becomes minimalistic, synth-heavy, and ambient. These psychedelic and ethereal tracks convey the feeling of existence without being alive, without being human. Like the Great Before

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The place where these two sonic landscapes meet is “in the zone.” The zone is the realm between “the physical and spiritual.” Human beings can enter the zone when they are doing something they love and are caught in a state of creative flow. Once you’re in the zone and get a taste of what that’s like, you go chasing that feeling, that spark. The only big criticism I have of this film is the concept of the zone. It is unexplained why the zone is also on the plane where the lost souls live. This is a very confusing aspect of a nearly perfect film that sticks out like a sore thumb when thinking about Soul.

Soul takes the Disney formula and brings it into a more complex world. The film is about a man taken out of the context of his existence for a day. Once Joe Gardner his life, he finds happiness. Soul tells a very human story in a completely original way by separating it into two worlds with two completely different styles.

The Verdict: Soul is a 9/10 film and a perfect example of animation in the 21st century.

The Most Horror-ful Time of the Year: an analysis of Christmas horror

For me, Christmas is scarier than Halloween. Everyone knows that Halloween is scary, but Christmas we’re told is the jolly, which, of course, inspires the most twisted minds….

There is something terrifying about the prospect of Christmas because it is a time in which everything is supposed to be good. It is a time of happiness, togetherness, gifts, merriment. It’s one of the best holidays in that sense. The way Christmas horror movies get you is through the distortion of purity. You don’t expect something bad to happen in that context. That’s why Christmas horror movies are especially effective and unique.

Christmas Horror Aesthetic

Filmmakers know that sound design can make or break a movie.  Directors can take something—like “Carol of the Bells”—and contort it until it’s something out of your nightmares.

They also know that the absence of sound is as powerful as the use of sound, and they can use silence as negative space. On a normal winter night, the only noise you’ll hear is the crunch of snow, but the filmmaker knows the scariest part is not hearing a crunch, so you don’t know where the danger is coming from.

 One of the best examples of this is the original Black Christmas. Before Bob Clark directed A Christmas Story, the classic Christmas coming of age tale of 1983, he made Black Christmas in 1974. Black Christmas was one of the very first mainstream North American slasher films and was created on a very small budget. Bob Clark had to make due with anything he had, and lucky for him, he had Christmas.

When we look at stills from Black Christmas, we see a lot of negative space. That negative space is ominous and makes a regular Christmas scene scary.

In the first image, we see Peter, who is a red herring character and at this moment is being alluded to as a killer. So in your head, you see a killer who has been harassing these girls and ruining the Christmas spirit with all these acts of wrongdoing. And this disruption is visually shown through the juxtaposition of the Christmas tree and lights with the negative space with his body and the blackness of the night surrounding him.

The way the Christmas horror aesthetic works is through taking something innocent and contorting it until it becomes frightening.

Santa vs. Krampus

Santa as we know him was modeled and created in 1930 to sell Coca-Cola in the Christmas season. Because of this advertisement, the mainstream media portrays Santa as the embodiment of good, so we end up believing it. There are hundreds of movies where Santa saves the day because of this marketing, but Christmas horror upends what we see as good and what we see as bad.

In traditional Germanic folklore, Santa has a demon brother named Krampus and both figures embody justice, reward, and punishment. If you are good, Santa will give you the gifts you asked for. But on the other side of the coin, the risk with his brother is very high, and the reward is very low. If you are bad, Krampus will whip you with bundles of birch sticks and/or throw you into a bag and take you to a hellscape. In my view, Santa and Krampus are the same.

Traditionally Santa Claus was often depicted as a pope-like or clergy-like figure—indicating that he was close to God. And Krampus was depicted as a demon/devil. Now that Santa is not associated with religion, there is no need for a devil character. So now the Santa character that we have now both punishes and does good. It’s like Krampus and Santa have become one in our popular culture.

Now in modern Christmas horror, Krampus and Santa are interchangeable. They play the same role. You can look at this movie poster for Krampus (2015), you can see both iconography of Krampus and Santa to serve one purpose: to terrorize our imaginations.

What Christmas horror does is to strip the wolf of its sheep’s clothing—to reveal a darker truth: a Krampus inside the Claus

Conclusion

I’m not trying to deny the holidays are a good time, but the reason we see so many disturbing and scary stories told during this season is because of the reputation Christmas has. The choirs, the gifts, and the joy are all amazing things, but these things can also be exploited by creative minds. And that’s how you get a Christmas horror story, by twisted association.

Ready or Not: Camp in modern horror done right

One of my favorite movie franchises is Scream, and I have been worried about the fifth installment of the horror classic since it was announced at the beginning of 2020, but now that we know that it is being worked on by the people at Radio Silence Productions, most of my worries have been eliminated. Radio Silence’s last project was the incredible 2019 film Ready Or Not, and my love for this movie makes me more confident in the new Scream film coming in 2022.

The Concept

Ready Or Not uses a gothic mansion as a backdrop for a black comedy about a filthy rich family that hunts loved-ones for sport. We find our main character Grace marrying into the Le Domas family. To be inducted into this family every new member has to play a game. There is one game that you must play to the death, and Grace ends up in this sick game of Hide And Seek. The concept works because everything supporting the film is great: the humor, the acting, the writing, and the music. All of these things come together to make a classic horror vibe.

How it does the horror vibe justice

Ready Or Not creates a vibe that makes you feel unsettled but intrigued. The soundtrack in a horror movie is very important, and this movie’s main song matches it’s vibe. The presentation and sound is old and creepy, but the dialogue and characters are funny, which keeps the audience’s emotions sliding between fear and hilarity. This movie is reminiscent of the campy mystery films (like Scream) that came before it.

How it does horror fun

This film is fun and serious. It has a gothic mystery vibe and the tone of the classic comedic slashers we all love. It starts as a wedding dramedie. In a comedic montage, Grace’s soon-to-be inlaws insult her behind her back as she gets ready to walk down the aisle. We see that they don’t like her, so when the second acts starts and then when they have to kill her, it is believable that they would take pleasure in hunting her because of the way the first act establishes their animosity towards her. It brings great humor into a petrifying scenario.

Conclusion

In Ready Or Not, there is perfect balance, and it shows how a good horror-comedy movie should be crafted.

Kanye’s Runway (Film): Short Analysis

2020 has left me with a short attention span and no new content to analyze and review. This has led me to look at older projects from artists I enjoy. Recently, I have been thinking a lot about Kanye’s career and his magnum opus My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. Politics and controversy aside, Kanye is incredibly talented, and the vulnerability he presents in each song is unique for an artist of his status. In anticipation of his upcoming album and short film Donda, I want to a throw-back to his short film Runaway (2010), which accompanied My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.

In its simplest form, this film is about a man named Griffin who falls in love with a half-phoenix half-woman creature, who falls from the sky. I know that sounds stupid but it is a very good short film. And the reason this should be revisited in 2020 is because this film shows the strange and at times confusing mind of Kanye West. Looking at this we can see this tortured genius’ fall from media approval.

There is a lot to dissect, but I am focused on one scene from the middle that encapsulates the reading of the film. In this scene we see Griffin at a high society gathering with his girlfriend The Phoenix. The scene is shot at an angle reminiscent of the last supper. As The Phoenix picks at her food like a bird, there are a few lines of dialogue that I think are very important. The man sitting next to Griffin begins making unsolicited and condescending comments about The Phoenix.

The man: Your girlfriend is beautiful.

Griffin: Thank you.

The Man: Do you know she’s a Bird?

Griffin: No, I hadn’t noticed.

The Man: Like a monkey in a zoo.

After this exchange, Griffin storms off and starts playing the titular song Runaway. The most popular versions of this film begin with Kanye storming off and end when the song ends, but when we examine the whole scene we get to see the context for his behavior.

I’ve noticed that this is a pattern with Kanye; the media only shows us the rants and the outbursts, not what precipitated them. This fits with the theme because it is about how he envisions his fame to be, his beautiful dark twisted fantasy. This shows us a lesson about Kanye—and people in general. However complicated he may be, taking things out of context will always make someone look bad. We can see Kanye as an example of the way we talk about and diminish mental health right now. Instead of supporting him, we joke and dismiss him.

The great thing about this film is you can interpret it in any way possible. I see it as an ironic commentary on the media and perceptions of the tabloid lifestyle that Kanye ended up living when he married into the Kardashian family. In this film and album, he explores what he ended up becoming: one of the most polarizing figures in the music industry.

Community: A Perfect Ending

WARNING: THIS POST DISCUSS SENSITIVE TOPICS READER DISCRETION ADVISED

Most TV shows go on way too long and end up being disappointing or confusing. It’s way easier to do a bad ending than to end a show appropriately. This is why there are so many terrible finales to beloved shows. But the ending of Community is the best finale of a sitcom that I’ve ever seen. It operates on a formal level and an emotional level, and the result is a satisfying conclusion.

At its core, Community is a very meta show, and the ending stays on brand. Most of the episode takes place in a bar where the study group meets to celebrate the end of the semester and the fact that they have saved Greendale Community College. In this episode, the characters know it’s the finale, but they afraid of the future, so they play a game of imagining scenarios for a hypothetical season 7. Each character send-off is the pitch that they make for season 7, and each pitch reveals details about the characters.

Community is very much a show about confronting morality, and this is also shown in the series finale. Behind the pitches, is the character Jeff confronting that his community is maturing and leaving. In Season 1, Jeff’s goal was to get his bachelor’s degree in law and move back to being a lawyer again, but in the finale, he realizes that he will forever remain a teacher at this community college as his community drifts away, and this really gets to him physiologically.

The meta nature of the show continues in the finale with the characters acknowledging the theme song. For such a silly show, the idea of the theme song ringing through Jeff’s head is very unnerving, and the repetition of the theme song calls into question the existence of the show itself—

“I can’t count the reasons I should stay

One by one they all just fade away”

When Jeff hears that Annie is leaving, he hears the theme song ringing in his head as he imagines everyone leaving him behind and he questions the reasons he should stay and one by one they all just fade away. Jeff knows he missed his chance with Annie so when she moves he pitches to himself a world where Annie is his wife and they have a son, this dream falls apart on him when he realizes that he doesn’t know what she wants.

Community Finale: Dan Harmon on Jeff and Annie, Movie ...

Jeff realizes that even Abed—the character obsessed with being in a TV show—will leave him behind. Abed looks at life through a meta-lens, so when he moves on and develops as the show goes on, Jeff is confused and continues to see him still as the meta television-obsessed kid as he was in Season 1, but in the finale it’s clear that Abed is moving on and starting his life.

The audience is a character in most sitcoms, and at the end of most sitcoms, it often feels like you as an audience member are being left behind while the characters go on to do bigger and better things. But with Community, it is the character Jeff that gets left behind while the audience and other characters move on and move forward.

Their work is done, and Jeff realizes that he will be the last to leave and move on. The last thing that Jeff says to all his college friends is “I love that I got to be with you guys, you saved my life and changed it forever. Thank you.” Even though this is Jeff’s last verbal statement when he is saying goodbye to Abed and Annie at the airport, he hugs Abed twice, and I believe this is his way of saying thank you. In the pilot, Abed invites everyone to the study group and tricks Jeff into becoming a better person. Because of this, Jeff owes his life to Abed. In the first episode, Jeff dismisses Abed and wants him to leave in the finale he is thankful he stayed. When we first encountered Jeff, he was a terrible and manipulative person, but through the study group has a grown to be a better person.

5 Times Community Was Heartwarming (& 5 Times It Was Sad)

And the song that plays in the last scene shows Jeff wanting time to stop and for the show to go on.

“Oh, there’s a river that winds on forever

I’m gonna see where it leads

Oh, there’s a mountain that no man has mounted

I’m gonna stand on the peak

Out there’s a land that time don’t command

Wanna be the first to arrive

No time for ponderin’ why I’m-a wanderin’

Not while we’re both still alive”

Jeff’s dilemna is a mirror of creator and writer Dan Harmon’s internal state. The episode tag is a commercial that displays the cynical view that life is a game and that we are not created by God but instead by a cosmic joke. The discretionary warning, voiced by Dan Harmon, quickly turns into a meta-emotional-breakdown.

Dice not included, some assembly required. Lines between perception, desire, and reality may become blurred, redundant, or interchangeable. Characters may hook up with no regard for your emotional investment. Some episodes too conceptual to be funny, some too funny to be immersive, and some so immersive they still aren’t funny. Consistency between seasons may vary. Viewers may be measured by a secretive obsolete system based on selected participants keeping handwritten journals of what they watch. Show may be cancelled and moved to the internet, where it turns out tens of millions were watching the whole time. May not matter. Fake commercial may end with disclaimer gag which may descend into vain Chuck Lorre-esque rant by narcissistic creator. Creator may be unstable. Therapist may have told creator this is not how you make yourself a good person. Life may pass by while we ignore or mistreat those close to us. Those close to us may be those watching. Those people may want to know I love them but I may be incapable of saying it. Contains pieces the size of a child’s esophagus. —Dan Harmon (last scene of Community)

This ending takes the sitcom mold and snaps it with the inevitability that time will move on. As I realize that I have to move on and grow up, I identify with this ending greatly. You make friendships and relationships over a few years and then you have to move on. My favorite endings are bittersweet endings because they replicate the bittersweet qualities of life.

In the end, life goes on.

#sixseasonsandamovie

Best Of Worst Of: Community

TV shows are uneven, and at certain moments, the quality dips. If someone turns on the TV and happens to catch a bad episode, they’ll be turned off to the whole show, and vice versa. I want to analyze this phenomenon and compare the best and worst episodes of the same show to demonstrate how wonderfully inconsistent TV can be.

Community ran from 2009-2015, and it always stood out as a subversive parody of sitcoms. Many episodes went over budget to the point of cancellation in 2014 before the show was revived by Yahoo Screen in 2015. The show stars Donald Glover, Joel McHale, Danny Pudi, Alison Brie, Yvette Nicole Brown, Gillian Jacobs, Ken Jeong, Jim Rash, and Chevy Chase. This show takes place in a Colorado community college but it is actually a parody and study of the tropes of the TV and film that came before it. In this inaugural edition of Best Of / Worst Of, I will be comparing “Remedial Chaos Theory” (best episode) and “Intro To Felt Surrogacy” (worst episode), two drastically different episodes in quality.

“Remedial Chaos Theory” (S3E4) is brilliant. It is about a housewarming party for characters Troy and Abed, but when the pizza is delivered downstairs, Jeff throws a die to see who will answer the door, and the story splits into six different timelines. In every timeline (except for the sixth), we see little inconsequential details that all blend together, and in the sixth and darkest timeline we see these details come together in such a way that everything that could go wrong, does go wrong. This creates many Chekhov’s guns that fire in various other timelines. It is a masterclass in storytelling. It is a shame that an episode like this was not appreciated at the time of release. This episode is a 10/10.

The central message of the episode might be that we are all operating within a framing device

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/162059286561202756/

“Intro to Felt Surrogacy” (S4E9) is terrible. It is about the study group experiencing an awkward moment. When the dean notices that they are behaving strangely around each other, he makes them participate in puppet therapy, and a Sesame Street-style puppet show starts. They go on a hot air balloon for some strange reason and crash, eat drug berries in the jungle, and tell each other their darkest secrets. In the end, nothing changes. It’s alarming how this episode has no logical plot and just seems to be an excuse for Community to do a puppet episode. This is one of the worst episodes of television history. This episode is a 4/10.

Intro to Felt Surrogacy | Community Wiki | Fandom

Community is usually very good, but if you watch “Intro to Felt Surrogacy” you will not be impressed. This is true with all television and it is fascinating to see the differences between a good episode of television and a bad episode of television. “Remedial Chaos Theory” (Best Of) and “Intro to Felt Surrogacy” (Worst Of) are the perfect examples.

The Social Network Review

The Social Network is a 2010 drama by David Fincher starring Jessie Eisenberg and Andrew Garfield. The film tells the “true” story of the creation of FaceBook, how Mark Zuckerberg slithered his way to the top of the world and screwed over the ones who helped him along the way. This is a very epic and dramatic story, but is it all true, or is it just a dramatization? Aaron Sorkin is known for realistic and nuanced characters. Although Zuckerberg denies aspects of this film and the depiction of his character, there is something about it that feels natural and we all know that truth is stranger than fiction.

The Social Network puts you in the shoes of a genius psychopath growing his project that will eventually control the world. You see him make decisions that only a business-robot would make, yet you can’t argue with him that it would be the best for his company.

From the very beginning, Facebook was founded on an invasion of privacy when a college-age Mark Zuckerberg hacked into Harvard’s servers and stole images of other students. The film also explores how he may have plagiarised the idea of Facebook and screwed over his best friend and business partner Eduardo Saverin. The relentless invasion of privacy displayed in The Social Network echoes what has to come to pass now. This is even shown in the ominous and monotonous soundtrack and design.

The most enjoyable aspect of the film is the dramatic relationship between Mark Zuckerburg and Eduardo Saverin because unlike other films of its type, this story is real. The historical accuracy also puts the movie in a box because if Sorkin were to change too much then the characters and story would not be realistic and this would in-turn damage the movie’s quality and believability. Despite this, The Social Network succeeds at being a realistic yet fun and intriguing film while remaining very relevant to this day.

I WILL GIVE THE SOCIAL NETWORK A 9/10

Quarantine Binge List

In 2020, we need entertainment more than ever before because of the truly insane events occurring at this moment. We need entertainment to distract ourselves from the terrible things happening in the world and to inspire our creativity to get through these tough times. I want to give you an escape, so I edited together a quarantine binge watching list to help you escape and most importantly to entertain you in this time of need.

COMEDIES

Birdman: or the unexpected virtue of ignorance

An actor will try anything to revive his career

The Disaster Artist

The true story of the making of The Room—the worst movie of all time

Keanu

This comedy about a kitten kidnapped by a gangster ends up exploring cinematic stereotypes

Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping

A mockumentary documents the life of a popstar named Conner4real

Tropic Thunder

A group of actors film a movie, but when fact and fiction are blurred, they don’t realize if the bullets being fired are fake a real

The Truman Show

A child is adopted by a TV studio and realizes his life is a lie

HORROR

28 Days Later

A man wakes up after 28-day coma, and everything has changed

2001: A Space Odyssey

A mind-bending experience about human’s first real stride into space

The Alfred Hitchcock Collection

Five of Alfred Hitchcock’s most iconic films: Rear Window, Vertigo, North by Northwest, Psycho, and The Birds

Alien

Space crew stuck on a ship as an Alien takes them out one by one

Aliens

The remaining survivor from that ship leads a group of Marines to the theorized last pod of Aliens

Candyman

Someone investigating an urban legend gets lost between fact and fiction when her terrifying research subject materializes

Evil Dead

A cabin in the woods is invested by Deadites (zombies)

Evil Dead 2

A redo of Evil Dead except with slapstick humor

Get Out

A young black man goes to visit his girlfriend’s white family, and events take a turn for the worse

Halloween 1 & Halloween 2018

Babysitter survives a killing spree on Halloween, and she has been waiting for the killer’s return for 40 years

Jaws

A shark plagues the coast of Amity Island

The Lighthouse (2019)

How crazy would you go if you were quarantined on an island with someone you despise?

Midsommar

After something traumatic happens, a woman goes on a trip with her friends to Sweden, but events take a sinister turn, and the locals turn against her

Nightcrawler

A very productive and strange person gets hired by a news program to drive around LA with a camera with the motto, “If it bleeds it leads”

Nightmare on Elm Street

Don’t fall asleep, or dream demon Freddy Krueger will kill you in your dreams (and in real life)

Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors

The one survivor of Freddy’s killing spree becomes an intern at a hospital, and when patients start talking about someone in their dreams, she finally comes to terms with her past

Ready or Not
Every time someone marries into this family, they have to draw a card, and, of course, our hero Grace draws the hide-and-seek card, which starts a hunt for her head

REC

A camera crew catches an outbreak in an apartment complex

The Sixth Sense

A kid has the ability to see dead people and develops a special relationship with his psychologist

Scream Franchise (sadly including Scream 3)

This meta franchise investigates whether or not the media is responsible for real-life violence

The Shining

The worst-case scenario for a family in quarantine

The Thing (1982)

My personal favorite movie. A research team is trapped in Antarctica, and suspense grows as anyone could be a shape-shifting alien

Trick or Treat

A set of stories on Halloween are strung together by a murderous entity named Sam

Unbreakable

A man survives a train crash and then finds out he is, in fact, Unbreakable

A family is going to santa cruz but a secret about the mother comes out and it ruins this vacation

Wes Craven’s New Nightmare

When the crew of a new Freddy film starts dropping like flies, it is back to the drawing board and a new script is drafted, but the scenes written start happening in real life

The Village

An entity stalks an old-timey village, but there is something more sinister at play

GUILTY PLEASURES

Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare

Fully embraces the camp of the Freddy franchise. It’s not good, but it’s still better than Nightmare 5

Halloween 6

Takes everything good about the original Halloween films and replaces it with curses and cults. It’s still fun to watch. (The producer’s cut is bearable)

Killer Clowns from Outerspace

The highest quality film in the “Guilty Pleasures” section; the title says everything

The Room

The best worst movie of all time. This is a transcendent viewing experience

Spider-man 3

A convoluted story with three different villains, this movie is truly so bad it’s good

ACTION

The Dark Knight

The most mature Batman story that has ever been told

Django Unchained

The titular character, Django, is freed by a bounty-hunter and joins him to free his wife and get revenge. Amazing performances by Jamie Foxx and Christoph Waltz

Inglourious Basterds

Not a traditional action movie, this film focuses on an alternate timeline of WWII. It has Quentin Tarantino’s smart and witty dialogue and is very entertaining

Spider-man 1 & 2

These movies are entertaining, and they humanize Spider-man in a way that has never been seen before in an action movie

Spider-man: Far from Home

This is a self-aware commentary on fake news and how convoluted the Marvel cinematic universe has become. It’s the best MCU movie because it acknowledges how messy the timelines have become

Spider-man: Into The Spider-verse

Truly entertaining and a technical marvel, this film is a big step towards racial equality and representation in cinema

DRAMAS

12 monkeys

A man goes back in time to stop a virus

BlacKKKlansman

A true story of a black man going undercover as a member of the ku klux klan

Forrest Gump

America in the 60s and 70s, as told from the perspective of a disadvantaged man with big dreams

The Godfather 1 & 2

Deep insight into a crime family

Joker

A man shunned by society finally snaps.

La La Land

Two people with big dreams realize that it may be too late for them

Once Upon A Time In… Hollywood

The story of a washed up actor trying to rejuvenate his career

Parasite

A family is secretly living in the same house as one of the richest families in Korea

Pulp Fiction

Four stylized stories linked together by one nonlinear narrative

Reservoir Dogs

When a perfect crime isn’t so perfect

Whiplash

A student’s desire to be one of the great drummers of the 20th century turns into an unhealthy obsession.

TRIGGER WARNINGS

Clockwork Orange – Horror

A group of teenagers wreak havoc on the city of London until the consequences catch up with them

Deadpool – Comedy action

A fourth-wall-breaking superhero movie starring the titular character Deadpool

Horrible Bosses 1 – Dumb Comedy

Three friends really dislike their bosses (and attempt to murder them)

Looper – Action

An assassin goes back in time on a hit job only to find out the target is himself

Superbad – Comedy

Three bros buy alcohol for the last high school party of the year

This Is The End – Comedy

A Hollywood party gets interrupted by the apocalypse

The Wolf of Wall Street – Comedy

A true story of Jordan Belfort’s rise and fall to power

Breaking Bad – Drama

A chemistry teacher diagnosed with cancer starts cooking and selling meth

Brooklyn 99 – Dumb TV

Like the Office except goofier and set in a police station

Dexter – Horror dramedy

A serial killer that kills terrible people happens to work for the police department

Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond – TV Documentary

Shows how Jim Carrey outlandishly became Andy Kaufman in his Golden Globe winning performance

Key & Peele – TV

Keegan Michael Key and Jordan Peele star in this socially aware, Emmy-winning sketch show.

Killing Eve – drama

Explores the obsessive relationship between an M15 officer and a psychopathic assassin

The Office (unfortunately with Season 8) – TV

Shows how outlandish and crazy personalities react in a mundane place

Ozark – Drama

If you could disappear would you? This Netflix original series analyzes the new American Dream

Parks and Recreation – Comedy

The Office except from the perspective of bureaucratic idiots with big dreams

The Twilight Zone (Both 1959 and 2019) – Horror

Socially aware scifi/horror anthology

THE MASTERPIECE ZONE

Alien

The Alfred Hitchcock Collection

Birdman: or the unexpected virtue of ignorance

Get Out

Halloween

Inglourious Basterds

Key & Peele

The Lighthouse

Nightmare on Elm Street

The Office

Once Upon A Time In… Hollywood

Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping

Pulp Fiction

The Room

Scream

The Shining

The Sixth Sense

The Thing

Truman Show

The Twilight Zone

Unbreakable

The Wolf of Wall Street

A Study Of The Academy’s Bias Against Horror

When Louis B. Mayer founded the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 1929, his goal was to create an unbiased, all-inclusive award show in the spirit of film. Unfortunately, the Academy Awards have not been inclusive and are political and biased. The Academy consistently votes for comedies, dramas and musicals, but the one genre they don’t recognize is horror. Year after year, countless dramas take home the big awards, but when a horror film wins, it is like a lunar eclipse. People have ignored horror because of its camp-filled roots and that precedent needs to expire because the horror genre has come a long way as an art form since the 1980s.

Horror has evolved, but the Academy has not

Many people think that horror is just an excuse for blood, but it’s actually a way to convey emotions, create allegory, and evoke the feeling of dread. A film like The Shining is truly a work of art and shows a deep understanding of important themes like privilege, domestic violence, and addiction. The Shining provides a different experience for everyone who watches it; it means something different to everyone because of how open it is for interpretation. However, the mainstream media tends to think of horror films as being uncomplicated stories of a killer murdering dumb teenagers for no reason until “the Final Girl” outsmarts the killer and ends up killing him. That preconception has its origins in cheesy 80s movies, but modern horror has evolved as a new way to tell stories in a metatextual fashion. In the last twenty years, filmmakers in this genre have proven their ability to shed light on issues that have been largely ignored by mainstream cinema. Issues like racism, sexism, and assault are depicted in these films in order to evoke terror in the audience by showing how twisted the real world is. Meanwhile, the Academy has shown no interest in even acknowledging these issues by instead honoring films like Green Book, in which a white man is portrayed as a hero and saves a black man. Horror has evolved, but the Academy has not. Moreover, when horror occasionally wins at the Oscars, there is always a catch.

When Horror Movies Do Win

When horror movies do end up winning, it is almost always for awards like “Best Costume Design” or “Best Visual Effects.” According to storiesforghosts.com, 10 horror movies have won effects or costume-related awards. Every single year dramas win other more prestigious awards, which reveals bias. The only horror movie to win an Academy Award for Best Picture was the 1991 classic The Silence of the Lambs. That was 29 years ago. We need to understand that this is a genre that has and will be used for telling masterful stories. In today’s society, a movie about a failing marriage (Marriage Story) gets nominated six times, but a movie about racial profiling told as a story of a family going to Santa Cruz (US) gets no nominations simply because it belongs to the horror genre.

What Was Snubbed

At the most recent 2020 Academy Awards, The Lighthouse (a horror film) was nominated for achievement in cinematography but lost to 1917, an action film. In my opinion, The Lighthouse was cinematically brilliant and deserved this award, but the real problem was that the 2019 film US was totally snubbed at the Oscars. The film entails the story of a family going on a vacation to Santa Cruz California. Once they arrive, a dark secret about the mother (Lupita Nyong’o) is revealed when doppelgangers of her family emerge hellbent to kill them. On the surface level, this film is a scary bloodfest, but on a deeper level, it serves as a story of distrust, acceptance, and guilt, and suggests that we are our own worst enemy. It appears that when it comes to horror, the Academy does not pay attention to the nuances and small details. US was not nominated for any Academy awards, even though the writing exceeds levels of metatextuality last tapped into in the silver age of horror back in the ’90s. Lupita Nyong’o’s performance is masterful and very impressive; she plays two different people: the mother and her doppelganger. These two performances are vastly different, and Lupita Nyong’o portrays these characters in such a brilliant way that it is unfathomable she was not nominated for an Academy Award. This demonstrates that an amazing performance in a horror movie will be overlooked for an award because of institutional bias. But the neglect of horror by the Academy does have some logic to it.

On the other hand

The Academy members are aging out, and this helps us understand their bias against horror. According to hollywoodreporter.com, the average member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is 62 years old. According to health.harvard.edu, the prime age of memory for a human being is your 20s. Why is this important? When the average member of the Academy was in their 20s, horror was sexually explicit, gore obsessed, and terribly written. With this in mind, it is easy to understand the Academy’s prejudice against the horror genre. Now horror movies have evolved, but the memory of films like The Slumber Party Massacre (which is objectively bad in terms of writing, direction, and acting) have understandably left a bad taste in the Academy’s mouth. Horror definitely has a bad reputation, but it’s the Academy’s job to keep up with the times and give awards to movies that deserve recognition and represent the changing culture of film and the world.

Conclusion

Ultimately, the horror genre has been neglected for too long and deserves more recognition from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for the artform that it is. Using horror, filmmakers can tell inspiring and important stories that transcend the confines of traditional storytelling—movies that could not be made if it was not for the artistic brilliance of allegory. As an audience, we have to support independent projects because if the Academy won’t, then it falls on our shoulders to let storytelling be accessible to anyone who wants to say something important. In addition, the best way to get important ideas into the mainstream conscience is via the art of film. The horror genre does this in the most skilled way because audiences don’t realize they have received this message since it is so cleverly masked. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences should give horror the attention it deserves, but in reality, it is not about the award, it’s all about the experience. In the immortalized words of Alfred Hitchcock, “Give them pleasure. The same pleasure they have when they wake up from a nightmare.”

The Office Analyzed: Season 2

In Season 2, The Office finally finds its groove. You can think of Season 1 as a six-episode mini-series, and Season 2 as when The Office (U.S.) really begins. The writers responded to fair criticism of Michael Scott’s character and the bleakness of the work environment. British audiences could handle something that depressing, but American viewers demanded something more light-hearted. Thus the writers reimagined the character of Michael Scott with two rules: 1) make Michael 10% more likable and 2) make the other characters treat Michael 10% better. The result is a successful character makeover which is also apparent in the way Steve Carrel is styled. In season 1, Michael has a combed back stringy hairdo, a fake bald spot, and a tightened collar that creates an appearance of a double chin, but the rest of his clothing is oversized to make him appear overweight. But in Season 2, his hair looks great and his clothes fit him well. This makeover is also in the writing, his character takes on greater dimension. This is evident in certain episodes like “Office Olympics” (S2, E3) when Michael goes out to buy his condo, the rest of the office plays games while he is gone. Jim hosts a closing ceremony and awards Michael with a gold metal for closing the deal on his condo. The last shot of the episode is Michael crying because he thinks he is finally being recognized for all his hard work he has done for the Dunder Mifflin Scranton branch. And at this moment the ensemble cast recognizes Michael as their leader.

The ensemble cast is what holds this show together, they are witnessing Michael grow just like the audience. Just like Michael the ensemble develops as a whole and gels with each other to propel many storylines further later in the show. Even though I find Michael’s maturation to be the most interesting element of the series, Season 2 is mostly focused on the love story between Jim and Pam with the antics of boss Michael Scott gluing the story together. Michael has a strange experience with his superior Jan Levenson, which damages both careers. This is very recognizable in the standout episode “Casino Night”.

In the episode, “Casino Night” the whole story of season 2 crescendo into a laugh filled heartwarming season finale. This episode continues Michael and Jan’s relationship, Jim Confesses his love for Pam, and gambling related antics happen. This episode is the beginning of a drama filled love story that is continued in season 3, this episode reinforces the new Michael as a “Hero”. This episode is summed up by something Michael says, “Love triangle. Drama. All worked out in the end, though. The hero got the girl.”

In my mind there are no bad episodes of Season 2, but here is my ranking:

22) The Carpet (S2 E14)

21) The Secret (S2 E13)

20) Michael’s Birthday (S2 E19)

19) Take Your Daughter To Work Day (S2 E18)

18) Performance Review (S2 E8)

17) Valentine’s Day (S2 E16)

16) Boys and Girls (S2 E15)

15) The Fight (S2 E6)

14) Dwight’s Speech (S2 E17)

13) Christmas Party (S2 E10)

12) The Fire (S4 E4)

11) Sexual Harassment (S2 E2)

10) The Client (S2 E7)

9) Office Olympics (S2 E3)

8) Booze Cruise (S2 E11)

7) Drug Testing (S2 E20)

6) Conflict Resolution (S2 E21)

5) Email Surveillance (S2 E9)

Michael realizes that he can read his employees emails and sees that he was not invited to Jim’s barbecue. Also Michael does improv with Ken Jeong.

4) Halloween (S2 E5)

Michael has to let someone go by the end of October, of course Michael waits until halloween. Michael fires someone in costume.

3) The Dundies (S2 E1)

Michael hosts an award show for his employees and he crosses the line. This is the first time Michael is humanized by having hecklers make fun of him and you actually feel for him.

2) Casino Night (S2 E22)

This episode is the standout but is not the best of the season, Michael hosts a charity casino in the warehouse and many big things happen between main characters (Mostly Jim and Pam) and it is basically a perfect storm of drama comedy and intrigue.

1) The Injury (S2 E12)

Michael burns his foot on a grill and pretends to be handicaped. Michael’s overreactions make this episode the best of the season and one of the best of the show.