Storytelling
How Avengers: Endgame Fulfills the Emotional Arcs of Marvel’s Characters
Avengers: Endgame owes its success to one word: character.
Storytelling
Why Damien Chazelle’s First Man Feels So Empty
Why, despite some stellar filmmaking, does First Man fail to satisfy?
Storytelling
What’s the Mission: Impossible Franchise Really About?
Ethan Hunt is surprisingly bland for a lead character, but what really holds Tom Cruise’s Mission: Impossible franchise together are its recurring themes.
Storytelling
6 Ways to Interpret Skyscraper as Dwayne Johnson’s Defining Movie
The missing ingredients in Skyscraper accidentally define Dwayne Johnson’s true appeal.
Armchair Sociology
Why We Replaced Heroes with Antiheroes
From Superman to Iron Man, the difference between a hero and an antihero was always clear.. until now. Here’s what changed, and why it matters.
Business Advice
11 Surprising Facts About How Movie Box Office Works
How Hollywood and America went crazy over box office reports… and why the numbers aren’t always what they seem.
Armchair Sociology
What the Existence of Don Draper and Katy Perry Really Says About You
Why we need to stop living vicariously through our pop culture heroes and start living our own lives like we mean it.
Armchair Sociology
8 Ways to Lead a More Interesting Life
Facebook is making us boring. Our perpetual digital connectivity has warped our minds into believing that others are hanging on our every word… even when those words are all about our allergies, our retail woes, our opinions about pop culture, politics, and other inanities. In other words, the very stories Read more…
Armchair Sociology
The Popularity Paradox: Why Do We Hate Pop Culture?
I don’t know anybody who loves pop radio. I know people who listen to it ironically, as though they’re not comfortable admitting they don’t entirely hate Lady Gaga. And I know people who admit to liking just Lady Gaga, or just Usher, but still insist they “hate the radio.” But Read more…
Social Media
I Tweet, Therefore I Am… Empty?
What if our newspapers were filled with articles on how to write for newspapers? What if the only books we printed were books about how to sell books? What if TV shows consisted solely of monologues about TV? I doubt we’d have much use for them at all. So why Read more…