Chick 1

I Can’t Wait!: Latest Hobbit Production Video

Chick 1 says:

To make up for no Troperiffic Tuesday this week, here’s another behind the scenes look at The Hobbit.  Yay!!

Posted on by Chick 1 in I Can't Wait! 1 Comment

Review: The Dark Knight Rises

Chick 1 says:

I think I’m in love…with Christopher Nolan.  Dense plotlines, complex characters, nuanced performances; those are the way to win this girl’s heart!  And Nolan delivers.  At one point I wondered if I were watching the perfect movie.  The answer is no; it’s not the perfect movie.  But it is fricking fantastic!

Not that this love will interfere with my slightly inappropriate crush on Joseph Gordon-Levitt. There was one point during the movie that I wanted to literally lick his face. (Is that too much information?)  Read more

Posted on by Chick 1 in Reviews, The 2010s 115 Comments

Quote of the Week

Yes, roast beef!  It is the Swedish term for beef that is roasted!

Count Olaf (Jim Carrey)

Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004)

Posted on by Chick 1 in Movie Quotes 692 Comments

Troperiffic Tuesday!: Heroic Blue Screen of Death

Chick 1 says:

If you’re unfamiliar with the Blue Screen of Death then you are a very lucky computer user…or a mac user.  The Blue Screen of Death appears when your pc is crashing to inform you that basically you’re screwed.  It’s Microsoft’s merry little way of saying, “You’re computer’s going away for awhile and you won’t be allowed to visit.”  When people are shocked they can go into a sort of Blue Screen of Death (hereafter known as the BSOD).  This trope is oftened used when the story is moving into the final act and it’s know as the Heroic BSOD. Read more

Posted on by Chick 1 in Tropes Leave a comment

Quote of the Week

Miss Caroline Krafft seriously needed to pluck her eyebrows. Her outfit looked like it was picked out by a blind Sunday school teacher. And she had some 99-cent lip gloss on her snaggletooth. And that’s when I realized, making fun of Caroline Krafft wouldn’t stop her from beating me in this contest. Calling somebody else fat won’t make you any skinnier. Calling someone stupid doesn’t make you any smarter. And ruining Regina George’s life definitely didn’t make me any happier. All you can do in life is try to solve the problem in front of you.

Cady Heron (Lindsay Lohan)

Mean Girls (2004)

Posted on by Chick 1 in Movie Quotes 99 Comments

Troperiffic Tuesday!: CPR (Clean, Pretty, Reliable)

Chick 1 says:

Whether you live or die in a movie or TV show depends on how secure your contract is.  But if you’ve been signed on for the sequel or the next season, then any medical emergency can easily, though dramatically, be solved through CPR!

In the real world, CPR stands for Cardiopulminary Resuscitation.  But in trope world it stands for Clean, Pretty, and Reliable.  What’s the difference?  In real life, CPR is an emergency procedure used to buy time for a victim until more advanced treatment can be given.  If someone’s heart and/or breathing stop then brain damage and tissue death can set in fairly quickly.  CPR gets the blood and oxygen flowing in an attempt to delay the damage until the patient can be revived.  But CPR alone usually does not revive the patient.  But not so in Hollywood! Read more

Posted on by Chick 1 in Tropes 70 Comments

Quote of the Week

Tim Allen and I saw the finished film (Toy Story 2) at the same time.  Of course we knew most of what was going to happen but when they played the Sarah McLachlan song we were just a couple of 40-year-old men sitting in the dark crying over an abandoned cowgirl doll.

Tom Hanks (Tom Hanks)

The Pixar Story (2007)

Posted on by Chick 1 in Movie Quotes 117 Comments

Troperiffic Tuesday!: Chekhov’s Gun

Chick 1 says:

Welcome back to Troperiffic Tuesday!  This week we’re looking at one of the basic tenets of storytelling, Chekhov’s Gun.  The trope is based on a principle espoused by Russian playwright Anton Chekhov.  Chekhov said it a variety of ways but it comes down to this, “If you have a gun on stage, it better go off before the end of the play.”

Chekhov’s Gun falls under the Law of Conservation of Detail which teaches writers to make every word, every bit of dialogue count.  If it doesn’t drive the story, don’t waste your precious time with it.  In movies you only have 90-120 minutes to tell a story, on TV only 22-43 minutes so every detail has to count.  Don’t introduce any element that distracts from the story. Read more

Posted on by Chick 1 in Tropes 7,449 Comments

Quote of the Week

Alas, our path is blocked by Momon’s Army of Evil, as well as her Navy of Moral Dubiousness.

Greyfarn/Professor Farnsworth (Billy West)

Futurama Bender’s Game (2008)

Posted on by Chick 1 in Movie Quotes 3,606 Comments

Troperiffic Tuesday!: Deconstruction

Chick 1 says:

I have a friend who is an engineer.  When he was a child, he took apart a telephone just to see how it worked.  That is a great example of what the Deconstruction trope is all about.  We take apart a trope, a character, a genre, or even a series to see what makes it tick.  Or what would happen if we did…this?  

Deconstruction is an idea that is used in many disciplines besides storytelling but the goal is the same; to gain a better understanding of something by disassembling it. One of the most popular types of narrative Deconstruction is to ask what would happen to this trope, character or plot device if the rules of Real Life applied to it.  As Deconstruction often, not always, comes across as darker it can sometimes be interpreted as an attack on whatever is being deconstructed.   But it can give us a better understanding of how things work and an even bigger appreciation for tropes, characters, and stories we already love.  Read more

Posted on by Chick 1 in Tropes 108 Comments