Medium Mashup

Category: The Deep End

In-depth think-pieces about Movies, TV, and Games

  • Medium Mashup’s Best TV of 2015

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    Now that 2015 is coming to an end, we can look back on a year of great programming and begin to put it all into perspective! 2015 was a remarkable year not only for the quality of a few stand-out shows, but for the sheer breadth of great television. Unlike the aughts, in which one or two shows tended to dominate the discussion, there are simply too many great shows to simply pick a winner or two.

    So instead of choosing the absolute best shows on TV, I’ve split things up into “Network” and “Cable/Streaming” sections and added more categories. In addition to the mandatory comedy/drama, I’m also naming a best animated series, action series, and sci-fi/fantasy series. Finally, while I won’t be rewarding any specific performances or writers/directors, I will be giving a few nods to noteworthy individual episodes.

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  • The Glenn Problem: Why The Walking Dead’s Fakeout Was Doomed To Failure

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    (This post will contain major spoilers for the current season of The Walking Dead. I would recommend against reading it until you have watched S6 E7, “Heads Up”)

    Just this week, the whole “Glenn is dead” charade finally came to a close with a cold open featuring Glenn’s dumpster escape from a whole herd of zombies. If you’re just looking at the numbers, the twist was enormously effective: ratings went up as people tuned in week after week to see if Glenn had survived, and the internet was dominated with articles on Glenn’s fate.

    However, you’re not going to find many people who were happy with the way the show handled things. Lots of fans felt pissed off and jerked around by the move, and this sentiment can taint the way people feel about the whole half-season. But why did this twist upset people so much when surprise is so often effective in narrative? I’ve outlined five major reasons below. (more…)

  • James Bond Fridays: The Archive

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    Over the past year, I have occasionally participated in an event of my own making called James Bond Friday. It’s pretty much what you’d expect: I would watch a James Bond movie, slowly working my way through the entire series, and I would tweet about it.

    While going back over my tweets to refresh my memory on certain films in the franchise, I decided that some of these were pretty funny (possibly funnier out of context), and figured I’d share them all with you here!

    A couple notes. First of all, I didn’t livetweet EVERY movie in the franchise, but I did at least tweet SOMETHING for 16 of them. That’s a whole lot of tweets. Also, I’m copy/pasting these EXACTLY  how they were, typos, mistakes, and all. Given how quickly I was rattling these off, this means that there are a few things that are inaccurate (most of which I correct myself in future tweets), and lots of spelling and typing errors that I would normally be ashamed of on this site. But take this as it is: a glimpse into my mind as I watched 16 movies of varying degrees of insanity. (more…)

  • The James Bond Retrospective

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    Just last week, the latest movie in the Bond franchise, SPECTRE, was released. I’ll be reviewing that later this week, but one thing that really struck me about it was how the history of the franchise colors your feelings and expectations of the film. I love the Daniel Craig Bond films to death, but having recently watched through the entire Bond franchise, from Dr. No to Spectre, I now have an even deeper appreciation for what the more recent films have set out to do.

    This particular piece will set out to define what, exactly, makes a Bond movie a Bond movie by tracing the origins and evolution of the franchise. (more…)

  • Can Marketing Ruin A Piece of Entertainment?

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    This month, Guillermo del Toro’s Crimson Peak hit theaters, and some have been coming away disappointed. It’s not that it’s a bad movie (it’s quite good, actually), but that it’s not particularly scary. As protagonist Edith Cushing repeats throughout the movie, it is not actually a “ghost story,” but a “story with ghosts,” in which the “ghosts are metaphors.” It’s a Gothic romance, sort of a cross between classic Charles Dickens and a Hammer Film Production. But you wouldn’t know that from the advertisements, which heavily emphasize the horror aspects of the film.

    In the world of video games, a similar problem occurred last week with Halo 5. The promotional campaign focused on a head-to-head with dual protagonists Locke and Master Chief, with one executing the other. However, fans have quickly come to discover that the advertisements were a complete diversion, extremely mischaracterizing the story with inaccurate plot points and scenes which flat-out don’t exist in the title. Disappointment with the campaign story has been consistent in reviews and fan discussions about the game.

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