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Superheroes In Storytelling: Various Notes
Love it or loathe it, the superhero is an ambivalent archetype in storytelling, useful to either bolster the conservative status quo, or subvert it.
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Chicken Little, Cassandra and Modern Horror
Chicken Little (mostly America) is also known as Chicken Licken or Henny Penny (mostly Britain). I hope the current generation of children don’t grow up thinking the 2005 animated movie version of Chicken Little has much to do with earlier versions of this story. The movie log line sounds okay on paper: “After ruining his […]
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Thelma And Louise Story Structure
Thelma and Louise is an iconic 1991 film, hailed at the time as feminist. I don’t fall into the camp who consider this a feminist film, but it is still one of my all time favourites. I know Thelma and Louise so well it makes an excellent case study in storytelling technique. While I was […]
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Million Dollar Baby Film Study
Today is Curmudgeon’s Day, according to Twitter. (Un)happy Curmudgeon’s Day! In that spirit I will take a close look at a film in which a curmudgeonly old man learns to soften up with the help of an earnest and humble young woman. I first saw this film around the time Million Dollar Baby come out and […]
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The Problem With The ‘One Big Lie Per Story’ Advice
There’s a rule of writing fantasy which all professional writers are familiar with. (No, I’m not talking about the dangling preposition.) Fantasy writers are allowed one big lie per story. As Michael Hauge writes at his Story Mastery website: The quality that gives every movie its emotional appeal: It isn’t the fantasy element of a […]
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Gravity (2013) Film Study
Gravity is a science fiction film from 2013, with a strong mythological, Christian influence.