Yearly Archives: 2015

Back to the Future

04 Saturday Jul 2015

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Say hi to your mom for me

by Thom Yee

Images courtesy of Universal Pictures.

Images courtesy of Universal Pictures.

It’s the thirtieth anniversary of Back to the Future!

That’s a big deal.

Really.

It is.

It was July 3, 1985 when Back to the Future first hit theatres, literally just over thirty years ago, and not only does that mean we’ve finally reached the year its sequel travelled forward to, with its flying cars and hoverboards and rehydrated pizzas, it also means that we’ve travelled as far forward in time since its release as Marty McFly travelled back in time to 1955 to ensure his own existence and re-emergence into an improved 1985 timeline.

Is that important? Does that mean anything? Did that sentence even make any real sense? It doesn’t matter. I don’t, uh… I’m gonna start over. Continue reading →

Inside Out

27 Saturday Jun 2015

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by Grace Crawford

Images courtesy of Pixar and Walt Disney Pictures.

Images courtesy of Pixar and Walt Disney Pictures.

To varying degrees, we’re all creatures of emotion. When I was younger I believed I had more right than anyone else to have emotions, and, more specifically, to channel those emotions in whatever way I saw fit. After all, what did the other kids in my class know about loss? What did they know about feeling unloved or unwanted?

In my young and narrow mind, I believed they knew nothing. And as other children do, I even went so far as to believe that I was the only one in the world, that no one else had feelings, that only I could experience the world as I did. I lacked empathy, or the basic understanding of others’ emotions and the will to feel the same way.

Empathy, as with most things, came as I grew older and as I learned that others did, in fact, have the same association with loss and rejection as I did. So did the ability to understand my emotions and the reasons behind them. It was no longer enough just to feel sad or angry: I had to know why I felt the way I did, which led to understanding, which led to (hopefully) not taking those emotions out on others.

But when I was a child, with emotions so much fuller and so much more untameable, this maturity was beyond my grasp. All I knew was that I felt angry, or fearful, or happy, and I didn’t know how to keep my emotions inside where adults told me they belonged. So instead of keeping it all bottled up, I let the inside out.

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Game of Thrones: Season 5

21 Sunday Jun 2015

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by Grace Crawford

Images courtesy of HBO.

Images courtesy of HBO.

Life has a habit of challenging us. It’s never easy or complacent; if it is, you aren’t doing it right. It likes to throw curveballs, to wrench up the works, to lay waste to all your carefully laid plans. And every so often, those complications bring us to the edge of a precipice: a place where your plans hold no weight and you have no idea what’s going to happen next.

Season 5 of Game of Thrones was one of those complications. And in true GoT fashion, it threw quite a few wrenches at its characters as well. (Goodness, I’m mixing metaphors.) So let’s dive right into my post-season review, which will gloss over a lot of the particulars in favour of some larger examination.

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Ex Machina

13 Saturday Jun 2015

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Fell in love with a girl robot. Again.

by Thom Yee

Images courtesy of A24

Images courtesy of A24

You suck.

You’re awful.

You’re just too slow.

You can’t do complex math in your head (if at all). You wouldn’t recognize a micro expression if your life counted on it (and believe me, it does). You probably can’t even remember your best friend’s phone number (even though you text them all the time, I would know).

Your brain is small and easily damaged. It doesn’t even have a connection to the Internet. It can’t be easily modified or upgraded. Or moved to a different body.

Continue reading →

The Emotional Consequences of Community’s Six Seasons #andamovie

06 Saturday Jun 2015

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Community never came home drunk. Community never forgot me at the zoo. Community never abused and insulted me. It’s Community. It’s comfort. It’s a friend I’ve known so well and for so long I just let it be with me.

by Thom Yee

Community images courtesy of Sony Pictures Television.

Community images courtesy of Sony Pictures Television.

This past Tuesday, the thirteenth episode of the sixth season of Community aired. Or more correctly, it was released On Demand and geo-locked to American audiences, forcing those of us trapped outside of American borders who still care to resort to piracy. Whether or not you genuinely believe in the inevitability of a Community movie or if you’re willing to admit that that whole meme was just a meta lens meant to comfort us through our darkest timeline, there’s no guarantee that Community will ever be back. How would a movie work? How could that movie possibly support a full theatrical run? Would it be broadcast instead? And what else is there to say?

There’s a very real chance this is the last thing I’ll ever write about Community. And that terrifies me. I hastily started writing my review for this past week’s final episode, “Emotional Consequences of Broadcast Television”, just after watching it, but eventually I realized I just couldn’t do it. I agonized over every sentence, every word, as I tried to fit more and more into a review clearly not structured to contain all of my concluding thoughts on a series that’s meant so much to me. Continue reading →

Tomorrowland

30 Saturday May 2015

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Fell in love with a girl robot

by Thom Yee

Images courtesy of Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

Images courtesy of Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

When I was a kid, by the time I was ten years old I had already been to Disneyland three times. And I don’t know why. For a kid from Edmonton, Canada, three times to Disneyland strikes me as a lot, almost like my parents were intentionally overloading the front half of our family vacations to prep me for future holidays that would never see us leave Canada again.

I liked Disneyland well enough, but I was a pretty cynical kid even during those pre-ten-year-old years, so most of my specific memories of Disneyland have more to do with the shock I felt at how much everything cost.  Probably the most vivid memory I have of my Disneyland adventures was the time I accidentally ruined the day’s pictures by exposing the film in our old Pentax. That one’s on you, Mom and Dad, did you really expect me not to be curious about pulling that ‘open’ tab on the back of the camera?! You could have told me what would happen! You… you could have told me… Continue reading →

GR Dailies: Community – Wedding Videography

27 Wednesday May 2015

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by Thom Yee

Community images courtesy of Sony Pictures Television.

Community images courtesy of Sony Pictures Television.

6×12: “Wedding Videography”

I realized that up until recently my Community reviews had regressed into a pretty stable formula:

  1. Make some odd, but broadly related statement;
  2. Lay out the episode’s premise;
  3. Talk about how the episode is kind of good but not really;
  4. Make reference to some bit of season one or two esoterica that’s long lost its validity;
  5. Lay out my complaints; and
  6. Conclude in a way that suggests profundity in the absence of having anything profound to say.

It was while writing my review of “Basic Email Security” that it really hit home how routine covering Community’s sixth season had become as that whole review spilled out almost fully formed, completely from the stream of consciousness I had during a quiet period at work. It took about fifteen minutes to write. That’s what Community had become at that point: routine. Continue reading →

Pitch Perfect 2

25 Monday May 2015

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by Grace Crawford

Images courtesy of Gold Circle Films and Universal Pictures.

Images courtesy of Gold Circle Films and Universal Pictures.

Sometimes I wonder what would’ve happened if I’d never become a writer. I like to pretend I could’ve been an artist, an actor, or a singer. (Never anything so pedestrian as a doctor or lawyer, if only because you don’t need good grades to go into the arts.) The only problem is, much like my boy Justin, I’m mediocre to middling at all of those things.

Even though — and maybe even because — I lack the kind of superstar power that could help me succeed in any of those fields, I love them like crazy. I love art, I love theatre, and I friggin’ love a well-sung piece of music. And you know what I really extra especially love? When that music is just voices and nothing else. Yes, this is me freely admitting that I like a cappella music.

Unfortunately, my radical, all-encompassing love for a cappella didn’t extend as far as Pitch Perfect 2, and I’m going to tell you in my usual exhaustive fashion exactly why that is.

Continue reading →