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Posts by zoe chevat

Power Grid

5 Modern Movie Trends That Were Started By Peter Jackson

by Zoe Chevat | 12:31 pm, July 18th, 2012

In honor of The Hobbit‘s wrapping, I took a little personal trip down memory lane to the last time I was this excited about the holiday movie offerings. LOTR — as it is commonly thought of by our lot — fulfilled plenty of our lofty expectations, and then some. It launched, and re-launched, careers, earned its place in cinematic history, and set off more than a few trends that we’re still seeing the effects of today.

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Essay

Remembering Where You Came From, and Other PR Nightmares: Colombiana

by Zoe Chevat | 12:31 pm, August 19th, 2011

An action movie with a strong, proven female protagonist is just the sort of fare The Mary Sue keeps an eagle eye out for. So, it’s no surprise we’ve been quietly buzzing in our cyberhive about the trailer for Colombiana. The forthcoming Zoë Saldana vehicle looks like fairly familiar and compelling territory; a wronged child of war-torn streets grows up to seek revenge from the other side of a sniper scope. At least, Colombiana’s trailer seems to be selling it as a light-fingered, race-shifted lift of La Femme Nikita, an unsurprising turn, since it’s being produced by Luc Besson himself.

The film could very well turn out to be a thrilling, action-filled ride, or it could be a sad, deflated pass at the same old genre elements. Only time, and actual viewing, will tell, so wait with us as we trim the hedges on our bets, and watch this space for our thoughts further down the pipeline. What’s concerning this reviewer, as I drive around encountering billboard after billboard sprung up like mushrooms in the night, is the marketing campaign.

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Power Grid

10 of Our Childhood’s Animated Films That Could Really Bear Closer Inspection

by Zoe Chevat | 12:55 pm, May 31st, 2011

Hollywood has historically had difficulty navigating the choppy waters of how to produce and market animation that is not sunshine, rainbows, and Aesop lessons; and the past twenty or thirty years have been no exception. On the flip side, plenty of video store employees have fallen on their own swords when deciding where to shelve the latest animation. Remember when explicit hentai like La Blue Girl (don’t look it up if you don’t know; it’s no-holds-barred tentacle porn) was put right next to volumes of Rainbow Brite? We do.

Mostly, though, the animation in our Power Grid was actually intended for kids. The directors of these films simply had a more…expansive view of what children could handle, which sometimes landed them in hot water with critics and outraged parents.

Come walk down memory lane as we recount some of the strangest, most innovative, and (occasionally) most unfortunately categorized animated works that hit the screen and VCR during our young years.

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Review

This Girl is Different: A Review of Hanna

by Zoe Chevat | 12:55 pm, April 14th, 2011

A super-soldiered little girl, raised in isolation, and trained to kill, is hardly a new trope. However, given the casting, the director, and the interesting font choices made by the PR team, I was game to see whether Hanna could pull some new tricks out of the clandestine conspiracy bag.

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Essay

Exploitation POW! : Why I Won’t See Sucker Punch, and You Shouldn’t Either

by Zoe Chevat | 12:55 pm, March 22nd, 2011

Editor’s Note: If I had the time to wrestle with the outrage that Sucker Punch engenders in me, I wouldn’t have any time left over to run a blog. Fortunately for me, Zoe Chevat did all the wrestling I could have asked for.

Don’t get me wrong; I love an excuse to slaughter allegorical giant samurai as much as the next Terry Gilliam fan. I like a good mecha fight, I don’t mind trading in my gothic fishnets for a bronze raygun every now and then, and I am certain that Jon Hamm‘s chin remains as chiseled as ever, no matter what size screen it’s on.

But I remain, knowing very few details beyond what I’ve seen in the trailer, disinclined to fork over a wad of sweaty single bills to see Sucker Punch.

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