Author Archive

By Amelia Blevins Every kid has dreamed of dressing up as their favorite super-hero to kick some ass and take some names. But no one was ever dumb enough to try it, because—let’s face it—it just wouldn’t work. Right? Wrong. Comic-book junkie and all-around high school nerd, Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson), has spent one too [...]

By Amelia Blevins Before you say anything, Repo Men is not a knock-off of 2008’s Repo! The Genetic Opera. There’s no singing here and no fodder for Hot Topic’s usual patrons. What it is, is an action satire on the dark, sci-fi and—yes, I’ll admit—overdone topic of organ repossession. Welcome to the world of science [...]

By Amelia Blevins Opening with the lyrics “it’s been a good year, a good new beginning” on the first track “Worker Bee,” indie pop-punk band Motion City Soundtrack’s 4th studio album, My Dinosaur Life, harkens back to its rougher earnest roots of debut album I Am the Movie, with lead singer Justin Pierre’s melodic vocals [...]

Sci-fi modes of transportation in TV and film By Amelia Blevins Did you ever wonder if that guy staring at you on the street was from the future? Or maybe you’re wondering if he’s even real—possibly a figment of your imagination or part of a plot against humanity? Or maybe you just think I’m weird [...]

By Amelia Blevins In 1966, the United Kingdom was rocked by a boat-full of pirates—rock and roll pirates.  Broadcasting from the North Sea, a motley crew of U.K. deejays, led by the “The Count” (Phillip Seymour Hoffman), spun outlawed rock albums from a rusty old boat. But of course Pirate Radio (originally titled The Boat [...]

By Amelia Blevins Meet Max. In Spike Jonze’s long-anticipated adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are, the only description for young Max (Max Records) is wild. As a young boy with a temper and feelings of neglect from his mother (Catherine Keener) and older sister, Max runs away from home to an imaginary [...]

9, Focus Features, 2009 By  Amelia Blevins Set in an unnamed dystopia, 9 is made up of all the usual suspects found in post-apocalypse thrillers, except for one unique addition: animate rag dolls known as “stitchpunks.” The film opens with the awakening of 9 (Elijah Wood), the last in a series of nine stitchpunks created [...]

By Amelia Blevins “No, you lift from the bottom and I’ll pull it up.” “Wait, what if we lay it down on its side and then I push it up?” “Make sure nothing falls out. I want these books the same way dad had them.” The whirr of a vacuum punctuates the conversation as the [...]

By Amelia Blevins After the entire world blacks out for 2 minutes and 17 seconds, chaos reigns as people waken to disaster and death.  Patients die when their surgeons cannot complete surgery, swimmers drown in the ocean, pilots crash their planes, unconscious drivers cause mass pile-ups.  In Los Angeles, FBI agent Mark Benford (Joseph Fiennes) [...]

Warner Brothers, 2009 By Amelia Blevins As Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are a Changin’” begins to play, director Zack Snyder sets the stage for the alternate 1985 that is Watchmen. The audience witnesses shots of familiar history that have been altered to include the unfamiliar presence of the Watchmen–masked vigilantes who, since the 1940s, [...]