Like criminals, screenwriters can be a superstitious and cowardly lot. Can you blame them? They’re trying to break into an industry that has very few clear guidelines on how to do so, constantly shifting professional requirements, and an almost sociopathic sense of entitlement. It is, and I am not exaggerating, easier to get into the […]

As a college kid, even more so than now, I was deeply unlikable. That’s normal and it’s always been normal. After getting booted out of high school, we all take our first trembling steps toward adulthood. We all make stupid mistakes that, in retrospect, were easily avoided. We all want the adults around us to […]

There aren’t many fictional characters that have as many character facets as Batman. You could go in a number of different directions beyond horror if your story involved Dracula — comedy, romance, action for starters. I think the same could be said for Sherlock Holmes. If you compare just Robert Downey Jr’s action-oriented take with […]

Wither the werewolf revolution?  For a while there, vampires were all the rage. If you wanted bloodsuckers, you had oodles of choices. The painfully emo creatures of the night in Interview With the Vampire, the rampaging hell-beasts in From Dusk Til Dawn, the Swedish nosferatu in Let the Right One In and so many more. […]

It takes a minute to find your rhythm on the bike, but it happens. It’s not something you think about consciously, but a number of tiny adjustments take place. After you adjust your hands, after your breathing normalizes, you don’t think about how you need to shift your weight on the upcoming turn. You just […]

When done right, gimmick movies can be really cool. These are movies that futz around with either how a story is told or where a story is told. For example, Memento is a gimmick movie in that it tells the story backward, yet it does so in a coherent manner. Beyond the gimmick, it’s an […]

As you read this, somebody is working a soulless customer service job. They’re getting screamed at by a customer with an almost sociopathic lack of empathy. They’re trying their best to help while getting paid a shamefully low wage. They have a head full of chaos, but there’s a part of them that the disposable […]

It’s hard to be a jockey. On its face, you might think to yourself, “It’s a job where you ride a horse. How difficult could it possibly be?” Well…let’s talk about that. To start off, jockeys need to be light. On average, they usually weigh between 108-118 pounds, and maintaining that weight is critical. If […]

Every coming-of-age story is the same story, even though it’s always a different story. If you’re reading this, you’ve either transitioned into adulthood or you’re going to transition into adulthood. You’re going to take the first tentative steps into a world that, at least from the outside, appears to be filled with sophisticated and intelligent […]

Most of the time in movies, people enter the criminal underworld because they’re evil. John Doe in Seven is a gimlet-eyed psychopath who kills people to satisfy a twisted moral code. While Neil McCauley in Heat isn’t a gibbering madman, he’s still evil, just more low-key about it. As much as he goes on about […]