I’m of the persuasion that there are basically three types of superhero yarn. The first is the Chosen One, God on Earth, who defends the weak masses from fantastic threats–so, your Superman. The second is the descendent of noir, detective stories, a melodrama that can Read More …
Quick, think about the movie Independence Day. Now I don’t care whether you hate this movie or love it, some iconic image popped into your head just now. The saucers eerily hanging above cities. The Empire State Building being obliterated from the top down. F-18s Read More …
I never subscribed to the idea that The Godfather Part II was better than its predecessor. The first film gave us more iconic scenes and characters, and it had the meat of the story. It stood completely alone, a story about family and country, epic Read More …
Going into the first Captain America—a movie starring Chris “Fantastic Four” Evans and directed by Joe “Jurassic Park III” Johnston—my expectations were absolutely nil. Like everyone else, I’d been entranced by Iron Man and intrigued by the expansion of the Marvel Cinematic Universe with Thor. Bringing Read More …
Some would say that period stories depicting universal compassion and good faith are inauthentic. Todd Hayne’s Carol, based on the book by Patricia Highsmith, belies this notion. A drama about same-sex love in pre-Stonewall New York sounds like an inevitable high tragedy, but Carol employs this expectation and subverts Read More …
The Star Wars radio drama (available here) is a pretty fascinating artifact. Adaptation from one medium to another is always fascinating, but this is a rare case of a newly successful form of media (the blockbuster film) being adapted into and attempting to revitalize a dying Read More …
It’s October. With Halloween hot on our heels, we thought it appropriate to take a look at legendary horror author Stephen King’s best, worst, and strangest translations from page to screen. Baby, can you dig your man? I SHOULD HATE PET SEMATARY BUT I DON’T I REALLY Read More …
It was hard for me to know what to expect from The Martian. The book had been described to me—in a not entirely pejorative sense—as “engineering porn.” I wasn’t an enormous fan of Ridley Scott’s last sci-fi epic, Prometheus. I felt like I’d seen Matt Read More …
We at Deadshirt like to fancy ourselves pretty dedicated to popular culture with a combined knowledge of all things media that borders on the encyclopedic, but no one is perfect. There’s just too much music, too many films, too many comics, and way too many television episodes Read More …
Dark Horse’s eight-issue limited series The Star Wars is a fascinating exercise: a direct adaptation of the first complete draft of the screenplay that became Star Wars: A New Hope. The series is many things: a swan song for Dark Horse’s Star Wars franchise, a Read More …