Marvel Universe Continues to Expand

It’s no surprise that Marvel’s new flick X-Men Days of Future Past put up some solid numbers for its opening holiday weekend, earning $111 million domestically and $302 million worldwide. Fans have come to expect greatness from anything in the Marvel Universe and they are very rarely disappointed (I’m looking at you, Fantastic 4 movies). While plenty of big budget action flicks also have solid casting choices and dazzling effects, Marvel Studios has pioneered a brilliant tactic when it comes to promoting future films and giving longevity to a franchise. By building the “Marvel Cinematic Universe,” the heroes not only star in their own movies, but also appear in each other’s storylines as well.

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Pop Culture Week in Review | 5/10-5/16 Batfleck

I’m getting this weird Groundhog Day type feeling… It seems like every week involves whispers about an upcoming project based on a comic book, the announcement of a new late night television show host, and Justin Bieber getting in trouble with the law.

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Pop Culture Week In Review 4/12-4/18

Between David Letterman announcing his retirement and CBS revealing just days later that Stephen Colbert would be his replacement, I felt like that was enough pop culture news for at least a couple of weeks. Miraculously, the world kept spinning and other things actually transpired in the entertainment industry. Read More

The Full Circle of Motion Pictures

In the 17^th century, people were dazzled by the first image projector, dubbed the Magic Lantern. It used the sun or a candle as the light source, a concave mirror, and a painted lantern slide to project images on a wall. Audience members could be convinced that spirits were being summoned or the dead was being raised from the grave. Today, kids are bored when they’re watching their favorite computer animated show on a smartphone that fits into the palm of their hand. We’ve come a long way in the technology of motion pictures. However, some of the recent fads in the medium aren’t actually new at all. They’re over a hundred years old.

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Pop Culture Week in Review 3/15-3/21

It was a busy week for the world of pop culture. Progress was made in legal battles, details of highly anticipated film and TV projects were announced, and Courtney Love tried to solve a mystery. As is the case with life, there were good things and bad things about the week. In the interest of ending on a positive note, let’s start by tackling the negative bits. I always was one to ask for bad news first.

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“New” Hollywood Movies Are Starting to Get Old

It’s normally a struggle to describe déjà vu to someone when you feel it. “It’s like, I remember you being here with me and we were doing something like this, but not… Ya know what I mean?” Rarely are we able to eloquently articulate the sensation of experiencing something that we sense we’ve already experienced before. The exception to that rule is if you were having this conversation on the way out of a movie theater recently. In that case, you could simply describe how there were striking similarities between the film you just saw and the TV show it was based on, or the previous film in the series, or the original version of the film that came out 10 years ago. I think the title to the seventh installment of X-Men movies sums it up pretty well.  X-Men: Days of Future Past. That’s what the movie industry feels like right now. The future releases were actually released someday in the past.

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The Changing Faces of Late Night

2014 is going to be a year of change. We might see a human organ produced by a 3-D printer, nations rise and fall, and hopefully the retirement of Justin Bieber. Despite these impressive technological and cultural milestones, there is an even greater transformation facing our nation – nay, the world. Yes, even greater than The Biebs playing shuffle board. Read More