“Full Metal Jacket”: a Brilliant Dark Vision of Man

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Duality, Contradiction, and Oxymoron in Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket is often described as a film split in two: boot camp and battlefield, Parris Island and Vietnam, order and chaos. The split is real, but runs deeper than plot or structure. The film is built from duality and contradiction at … Read more

Starship Troopers in a Strange Land are a Harsh Mistress

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Three novels by Robert A. Heinlein side-by-side: "Starship Troopers", "Stranger in a Strange Land", and "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress"

There may be no single author in science fiction more persistently misread than Robert A. Heinlein. He is a militarist, a mystic, a libertarian firebrand; he writes novels that venerate duty and others that dissolve it, texts that praise hierarchy and others that work to dismantle it. Starship Troopers is cited by conservative politicians for its advocacy of earned citizenship; The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is direct rebellion. In between, Stranger in a Strange Land was adopted by free-love communes as spiritual scripture. The contradiction seems total. How could one author plausibly inhabit all these roles at once—much less within a single decade?

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Introducing My Science Fiction Novel “LANTERN” – a Completed First Draft

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Science Fiction Novel #2 is In the Can!

I’ve completed the first draft of my second science fiction novel, LANTERN.

I started writing it in December 2023, and over the past two years it grew into something larger and more ambitious than anything I’ve attempted before. At roughly 175,000 words, the full story now exists on the page, from its opening premise to its final consequences. The sandbox is full. A few rough castles are standing. Now comes the work of carving and refinement.

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“One Battle After Another”: a Complete Satire of Polarization

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Split image showing two opposing characters from One Battle After Another. On the left, a woman in a military jacket (Perfidia Beverly Hills) speaks tensely into a pay phone, her face half-lit in blue neon. On the right, a stern older man (Colonel Lockjaw) stands behind a chain-link fence under harsh white light, his expression rigid. The contrasting color tones and framing emphasize their ideological opposition and mirror-like symmetry.

Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another turns America’s ideological fever into satire— and dares us to see the joke’s on us.

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From Fairy Tales to Facsimiles: Fizzling Disney Magic

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Why Live-Action Remakes Feel Fake and Hollow

I. Introduction – The Experiment That Broke Disney’s Spell

Disney’s live-action remakes of original animation began as an intriguing question posed in the language of modern filmmaking. What might it look like to re-stage an animated classic using today’s cinematic tools: digital effects, live-action framing, modern sound? The 2015 Cinderella answered with a polite flourish. It kept the bones of the original but dressed them in new fabric, nodding toward elegance and restraint. It felt like a thoughtful curiosity, charming in its own way, like a balloon released gently into the air.

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“A Real Pain” and the Burden of Survival

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Jesse Eisenberg’s directorial debut walks us through memory, grief, and the unresolved distance between family members

Late in A Real Pain, the film offers the hallmarks of an emotional climax. The childhood home of a Holocaust survivor, rediscovered by her two American grandsons. The camera lingers, the characters pause, a symbolic gesture is made. And then—nothing. No cathartis. No monologue. Just a stretch of quiet that first feels unresolved, until you realize it isn’t. The silence is the answer.

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Introducing Project Drake: A Sci-Fi Novel in Progress

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Follow the development of Project Drake, a new near-future science fiction novel about space elevators, family legacy, and the search for meaning.

Designing the New Logo for Plot and Theme

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As Plot and Theme will be devoting more time to forms of storytelling other than movies, the need for a fresh logo arose, one that could aptly represent this expanded scope. Simplicity was the guiding principle in designing the logo. A clean, uncluttered design is not only visually appealing but also communicates the core values … Read more

How to Edit Your Manuscript: a Case Study with “Viral Agents”

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This year, I’ve spent most of my writing time editing the manuscript for Viral Agents. In this post today, I’ll walk you through my editing process, making note of the rationale behind each step of the approach. This is still a work in progress, of course, so I will refrain from spoiling anything in the story. Plus, since the novel isn’t actually published yet, I can’t say that this approach has been successful from the perspective of actually producing a work fit and capable for public consumption. But, the process is underway, and I stand by it for now. Let’s get going.

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Plot and Theme’s Top Ten Films of 2022

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People love lists, and none more than ones subjectively ranking assorted items (preferably related somehow). It is in that spirit that I have compiled my Top Ten Films released in 2022, especially now that I have seen some of the prestige films released near the end of the year. There are still quite a few … Read more