Medium Mashup

Author: Ross Miller

  • Orange is the New Black Season 4 Review

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    Season 4 of Orange is the New Black is the best of the series. It fights back against criticism of the third season (which I actually liked) with a darker tone, a weightier central arc, and a renewed focus on the series’ central characters. And yet, simply calling this year’s run of episodes the best of an already-great show still feels like damning it with faint praise. This season is the most socially relevant piece of television released this year, and probably the strongest overall as well.

    Without going too far into specifics (although I will later in a spoiler-section), this season is far more concerned with race and power dynamics than previous seasons. The women’s prison setting of Orange is the New Black provides the perfect scenario to delve into such topics, which have been touched on in the past but never to the degree that they are here. The show’s complex characters and continued appeal to empathy help to reveal how complicated such matters often are. While a few characters are cast as outright villains, the ones who cause the most damage this year are ostensibly decent people, thrust into difficult positions that they are in no way ready for, or simply doing what they believe is right.

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  • The Conjuring 2 Review

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    I enjoyed watching The Conjuring 2. It’s competently made, features a few clever scares, and Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson lend the film a gravity that many horror pictures are missing. But the more I think about it, the more disappointed I am in the result. The first Conjuring film is one of the best horror features in years, a testament to traditional horror filmmaking and craft. In comparison, its sequel just feels routine.

    There’s a good reason for that: this film was very much rushed through production. It’s public knowledge that the demon-antagonist was completely redesigned just three months before the movie’s release, leading to a number of reshoots well into post-production. That sort of seat-of-your-pants filmmaking explains a lot about the movie, from the script, to the production, to the general lack of innovation on display.

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  • Inside Review

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    Despite having little-to-no promotion before its release, Playdead’s “Inside” has garnered lots of discussion and rave reviews. There’s a good reason for this: Inside is a great game, absolutely worth your time. However, because much of Inside’s joys come from its surprises, I have no intention of detailing the specific moments that make the game so interesting. Still, there’s plenty to say of Playdead’s technique here, and why Inside stands so high above other indie platformers.

    First of all, like Playdead’s previous game Limbo, Inside is a 2D platformer. However, unlike Limbo, Inside utilizes its foreground and background in much more significant and game-altering ways. It’s an interesting scenario, in which one must be aware of a three-dimensional environment while only actually interacting within two. This has a unique effect; it allows the environment to feel large and open, but also allows the developers to retain more control over the game and level design.

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  • Game of Thrones Season 6 Review

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    (This article contains spoilers for season 6 of Game of Thrones)

    For the first time in the history of the series, the writers of Game of Thrones really got to forge their own path this year. With only a few lingering plotlines held over from the books, we moved into uncharted territory, without the guidance and proven ability of original author George RR Martin. From the writers’ standpoint, this had to have been as intimidating as it was exciting; all of the season’s successes are attributable to them, but any of its failings are too. Had this year been weak it would have been an argument against them taking the reigns for themselves.

    Fortunately, that was not the case. Season 6 of Game of Thrones has been one of the most well-received of the series, with stunning set-pieces, major reveals, huge power-shifts, and characterization and dialogue that felt consistent with what came before. It wasn’t a perfect year, but showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss led with their strengths, making a show that was more propulsive than in years past.

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  • E3 and the Art of the Press Conference

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    The strange thing about E3, the biggest video game show on the planet, is how little a platform’s lineup actually matters. On paper, Playstation 4 fans are in a bit of a rough patch, as only one of its major releases is actually slated to release this year. However, Sony not only showed off a number of future titles at their show, they also managed to make those presentations stellar. By innovating and surprising audiences, Sony walked away from E3 as victors, even in the face of a competitor with two new consoles and several big releases over the next calendar year.

    It’s not that Sony’s games were completely unexpected. We’ve all known for some time that a new God of War was in the works, for instance, and it was well known that Kojima’s new company was developing for Sony and that Bend was working on their first console release. Even the biggest surprise of the night, a Playstation-exclusive Spider-Man game being developed by Insomniac, had been rumored in previous weeks and made sense given Sony’s ownership of the film properties. But the show was focused specifically on the type of material that fans wanted to see. There was no long aside about a dancing game, or a movie adaptation, or multimedia capabilities. Sony wanted to make sure we were excited about the games we would be playing in the future.

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