A deep dive into the fantastic Iranian vampire fairy tale Western film "A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night," written and directed by Iranian-American filmmaker Ana Lily Amirpour.

A look at the 2011 film adaptation of Shakepeare's "Coriolanus," directed by and starring Ralph Fiennes. It's staged with a late 90s Balkan War aesthetic and is pretty awesome, both as a film and as an adaptation.

A deep dive into the obscure 1983 horror film "The Keep," directed by Michael Mann and the slightly less obscure 1981 F. Paul Wilson novel it's based on. The premise is great: German soldiers occupying a keep in Romania during World War 2 get slaughtered by a supernatural force. While the book is enjoyable and interesting (though it doesn't stick the landing). the film is a wreck, plagued with production problems and savaged in the final edit. This was a really fun one to th

A deep dive into the classic 1971 blaxploitation film "Shaft" and the 1970 novel it is based on. The film is good and very important to both film and pop-culture. The book is *really* good and it's interesting to see how different it is than the movie despite the events being largely the same.

On May 1, 2026 I saw Orlando Ballet's production of The Great Gatsby. Serendipitously, it hit right when I was writing a series of essays about adaption of stories into new mediums so I thought it would be fun to do a deep dive into it from this perspective. (It's also been a while since I've written about the ballet.) In preparation for the show I reread the novel which, hardly shockingly, is really good. I very much liked the ballet though it is pretty different than the

A look at two excellent standalone graphic novels set in the Aliens universe:: "Dead Orbit" and "Sacrifice"

On May 22, 2026 I attended an Opera Orlando production of George Frideric Handel's Acis and Galatea at the Timucua Arts Foundation White House. I very much liked it and I feel like it had a lot of the elements that make Opera Orlando charming and accessible. Collaboration with local arts organization? Check. Fun? Check. Great performances? Check. A little irreverent yet sincere? Check. I had never heard of this opera and, to be honest, I was only dimly aware of what

A deep dive into Gustav Flaubert's masterful 1856 novel "Madame Bovary." Spoilers: It's...masterful.

A look at Opera Orlando's 2026 production of the Pulitzer Prize winning "Silent Night," a 2011 opera about the Christmas Truce of 1914.

A look at two Japanese period films, "Ugetsu" and "Onibaba". Both deal with war and its consequence on regular folk. Ugetsu is explicitly a ghost story and Onibaba is about desperation and moral degradation with an ambiguous supernatural element.

A deep dive into James Gunn's 2025 film "Superman." Spoiler: I love this one. I think it's the best Superman film by a good margin and it's probably my favorite movie in quite a while.

A look at the writing, arranging, and paleontology of my Christmas song "The 12 Tyrannosaurs of Christmas"

The first in a series of 3 about the creation of the Lorem Ipsum Christmas EP, focused on the tracks "O Holy Night" and "Here Comes Santa Claus"

A look at the writing of my original Christmas song "Maybe Next Year (Christmas 1914)"

A deep dive into Superman as he appears in his Modern post-Crisis comics.

A review of Opera Orlando's 2025 production of La Boheme, along with some thoughts about the opera in general.

A deep dive into the very bad 2016 film "Batman v Superman." The second in a series about Superman in media.

My thoughts and analysis of Zack Snyder's 2013 film "Man of Steel"

A look at the fantastic 2025 delta blues / vampire film "Sinners." Some thoughts on the filmmaking and the themes.

A look at Opera Orlando's 2025 production of Scott Joplin's "Treemonisha"