Essex 'splains

In this freeform episode, we go on wild tangents (surprising no one). We discuss everything from the settling of the Americas to social media's impact on business to space exploration before finally settling on archetypal masculine and femine stories.

Also, Erin spits fire.

I've been thinking thoughts. So instead of reviewing a movie, Erin & I wax philosophical about the entertainment business.

What decisions lead to poor quality productions?
How does a publication decide on their target audience?

We watched Bad Boys 4 and it was great! Dad TV at it's finest.

It out fasted & out furioused the Fast & the Furious.
...and if you've been listening, we love the Fast & the Furious...

Join us on the caper. I will even sing the bad boys song :D

Don't be a no man, be a yes man...but don't yes too hard.

In this episode, we discuss the grimdark comedy, Yes! Man. And in so doing, we uncover the way this movie is thematically well constructed. 

Hidden beneath it all, this 2008 wierdfest is remarkably relevant nearly fifteen  years later.

Yes, you read that right. Your friendly neighborhood Spiderman is a tale of woe, worse even than Romiette and Julio.

We continue down our grimdark path as we analyze the 2002 Spiderman movie in all its tragic detail.

Northern Viking joins us again for our darkest podcast yet!

What is grimdark? Who is grimdark? Why is grimdark?

All of your burning questions and more, answered in this episode!

Picking up where we left off with the discussion of theme in EP53, we examine the core determinate of quality: rhetoric. 

But Essex, you flippy floppy fop, didn’t you just say theme was the core quality metric? Yes! But new understandings bring new interpretations. 

So Essex reads another essay and talks about how stories journey into the depths of the human psyche and the complexity of the human condition.

Instead of our usual story analysis, we’re diving into the core element we have identified for a story’s quality: theme.

Essex reads an essay and fixes broken films with minor adjustments to the articulation and illustration of theme.

Spoilers for The Eternals.

Let's be honest, coming off the Endgame hype, it was pretty spoiled already. We analyze this movie that really could have been great, but man were there a lotta cooks in that tiny Bangkok kitchen.

We analyzed a book this time! Erin and I are reading the Sun Eater series by Christopher Ruocchio (good luck finding the accurate pronounciation of his name).  We really like a lot of things about the series, but it's not for the faint of heart...

Spoilers for Empire of Silence. Do I need to keep saying spoilers? I spoil everything. But I feel like it's polite. Like knocking before you enter someone's house before trashing the place.