Chris Braak's Blog, page 6

Chris Versus the Movies: A Brief Defense of Fight Club

I guess it’s the 15th anniversary of the release of Fight Club, so everyone is talking about it again I guess. Fight Club gets a bad rap these days, and there’s a feeling that maybe the Suck Fairy came and worked her magic, turning a film that a lot of folks kind of liked fifteen […]

Religious but not Spiritual, Part Four: Zen

Part of a series that includes: Atheism Materialism Mysticism So. I have been holding off writing this part while I thought about it, because I have had this fear that what I was saying was a basically ordinary thing, that only seemed complex or significant to me because of the process that I went about […]

Help My Friend Michael Scott

So, Michael Scott (not of the Office, a different Michael Scott) is a friend of mine.  He’s an independent filmmaker and VFX artist in California.  He’s kind of well-known for this pretty great series of lightsaber fighting videos he made: as well as for his enthusiasm for (and criticism of movies). On September 30th, he […]

On Linklater’s “Boyhood”

Cara Blouin Here is a quote from Manohla Dargis’ review in the New York Times of the movie “Boyhood,” by Richard Linklater, which — as I am sure you have heard — used the same actors over a decade to tell the story of the life of a single child: It’s no surprise that watching […]

Some Notes on Growth

It’s always hard to talk about “economic growth,” because people in general and Americans in particular tend to talk about things in this very Boolean sort of a way.  i.e.:  Economic growth is good, TRUE OR FALSE?  And if you say “true,” then you’ve got to support everything that “grows the economy” at all times, […]

Riot Girl Comics 5

Crazy Horse and his band of animals are dangerous, self-serving anarchists, ready and willing to co-opt any discontentment, outrage, or anger in order to sell more albums. Chelsea Cherry thinks their music is shit, but Crazy Horse insists that, since it’s an entirely new mode of punk music, you can’t judge it by comparing it […]

Riot Girl Comics 4

CHELSEA CHERRY Chelsea Cherry is Riot Girl’s friend, basically since birth. She is the smart one of the pair, with a persistent interest in fashion. She dresses in a sort of 1920s male dandy style, except that she also likes tall heels and makeup (Chelsea Cherry mixes and matches her gender signifiers, you don’t tell […]

Riot Girl Comics 3

THE REASONABLE MEN The Reasonable Men are an army of unstoppable robots of the law, that the Chamber of Commerce calls in when it starts to look like they’re losing control of the regular crowd-control police.   For the most part, they look like robot Bertie Woosters — tweed suits and straw boater hats — […]

Some Fights that Gamora Could Do in Guardians of the Galaxy Part Two

Guardians of the Galaxy did really well, so that means there will be a sequel (Guardians of the Galaxy 2: 2 Guardians, 2 Galaxy), and I think that is a great opportunity to correct what I perceive to be a glaring flaw in the first movie:  Gamora’s criminal under-utilization as the most badass character of […]

Chris Versus the Movies: Guardians of the Galaxy

Fine!  It was fine.  A fine movie.  It had some exciting space adventures, people flew around in ships and shot each other with lasers.  There was some kind of power-exploding MacGuffin, that was great.  The character stuff was for the most part exceptional.  Groot was there, he was awesome, Rocket Raccoon was awesome.  My favorite […]