The Grim Reaper's Friend

Welcome to another review, this time of a movie. I've reviewed movies before, but never broken them down and rated every part, opting instead to focus on one aspect. This will be a full review, because this movie certainly deserves it.

I've seen Train to Busan twice, and each time I was highly impressed. On the surface it's your average zombie movie, but compared to the other zombie media I've seen (which admittedly isn't a ton), it rises above the rest easily. I wanted to break it down and show why I think that is.

Train to Busan is a Korean movie, so if you watch it, there are subtitles. I thought this would be a detriment in a zombie movie, but I was wrong. Both this and Parasite seem to indicate that if Hollywood doesn't watch out, Korean movies are going to surpass them in quality. Seriously, watch them both.

Ratings:
5: Amazing, above flawless.
4: Flawless, but doesn't really stand out.
3: Might have some issues,...

TGRF's Fan Fiction Chronicles - Entry #93

Greetings, readers. I'm aware we're approaching the proposed release date for the final entry in the tale of Dilmir, and because I'm definitely not going to make that date, I wanted to update you on where things stand.

First off, I'm just going to get this out of the way: my interest for Dilmir is just not there. I've always had an issue where once I know how the story will unfold, my interest in it starts to dry up. I'm guessing this is due to there being nothing left to create or invent. Since the creation aspect of writing is always what gets me interested in a story, this makes sense.

My lack of interest has meant pulling the story together has been slow. I've known the general flow of how things go together for about two months now, but I've been unable to actually write the story due to lingering issues which needed to be resolved. I think those are all squared away now, but working them into...

TGRF's Fan Fiction Chronicles - Entry #92

My brother considers himself to be learned in the realm of movies. He watches films purely for how well they are done, regardless of their content. I'm a bit of the opposite, preferring to watch for content, and being much more lenient if a film wasn't made perfectly, but was still enjoyable. However, as a writer, I also enjoy breaking movies down, particularly in the story area, and seeing where they succeeded and failed.

Last night, my brother roped the family into watching Whiplash, the movie Damien Chazelle reportedly made so he could make enough money to make La La Land. Now, the movie was good. Really good. No question about it. However, I felt fairly disconnected from the main character while watching, and I believe that came down to how the story handled character motivations.

This isn't a review of Whiplash, and I'm not going to spoil the movie. I will recap the main conflict though, both...

TGRF's Fan Fiction Chronicles - Entry #91

One thing which was present in both Dilmir and Curse was convenience. Especially around the climax, in both stories there's one small detail which I had no easy resolution for, and so just resolved, using the first idea which popped into my head. The result was a resolution which came out of nowhere, an undeniable feeling of convenience sabotaging an otherwise believable ending.

I definitely don't want this to be the case with the third and final story in the Dilmir trilogy. So, following some 'suggestions' posed by TAF, I heavily scrutinized my outline, doing my best to purge all hint of convenience or contrivance from it.

The writing for the story is underway by now, but I wanted to highlight the methods I found for dealing with convenience. Both because I believe what I've found will be highly useful to anyone else facing similar problems, and because when TAF invariably finds something I've missed,...

TGRF's Fan Fiction Chronicles - Entry #90

Development for the final installment in the Dilmir trilogy is well underway, and I wanted to let my readers know what changes they can expect compared to the previous story.

The Curse of Feylund was I think received moderately well. The general consensus seems to be that it was a good story, but the first one was better. There are of course a variety of factors which could contribute to this, but I feel the main one is that it was built on the skeleton of the original.

The new Curse is a very different story from the old Curse (both had the same title). However, I built the new one off of the same premise of the old one, even using bits of the same development. I shouldn't have done this, because the stories were ultimately quite different. The result was I believe a character who didn't fit the story being told. Dilmir remained passive and reactionary throughout the tale, and there was I believe...