Author Archives: stationmaster

These Specials Are Underrated, Charlie Brown

Peanuts is awesome. Not only does it have a unique and extremely funny sense of humor, but its characters and images are like mythic archetypes that sum up aspects of the human experience. Do Sisyphus and his boulder represent the … Continue reading

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Another List of Great Screenplays

If you’ve been following this blog, you may remember I recently did a post about the scripts for the 2018 BBC miniseries of Les Misérables, which are available to read online. Sometime before then, I did a post about which … Continue reading

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Animation Station: Hand-Drawn Dreamworks Part 4

Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas (2003) I’ve made the claim that Dreamworks’s four hand-drawn animated films didn’t have a formula and I’ll stand by that, but it can be argued that they came in pairs. The Prince of Egypt … Continue reading

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Animation Station: Hand-Drawn Dreamworks Part 3

Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron (2002) Dreamworks’s third hand-drawn animated movie, which tells the story of a wild mustang in the yet to be tamed American West, presents me with one of the hardest challenges for a reviewer: something that … Continue reading

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Animation Station: Hand-Drawn Dreamworks Part 2

The Road to El Dorado (2000) Ted Elliot and Terry Rossio, the screenwriters for Dreamworks’s second hand-drawn animated film, have had their hands in kicking off some highly successful movie franchises, such as Aladdin, Shrek and Pirates of the Caribbean. … Continue reading

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Animation Station: Hand-Drawn Dreamworks Part 1

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you may have guessed that I’m interested in the art of animation. This month rather than blogging about adaptations, I’m going to be blogging about a series of animated movies, some … Continue reading

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The Taming of the Shakespeare

As anyone familiar with Shakespeare should know, his early comedy, The Taming of the Shrew, is about two Paduan sisters. The younger one, Bianca, is sweet, demure and charming at least on the surface. The elder, Katharina, is shrewish, angry … Continue reading

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The Highs and Lows of Andrew Davies’s Les Misérables

One of the things for which I’m most grateful to the BBC Writers’ Room.com is their release of the shooting scripts for all six episodes of Andrew Davies’s 2018 miniseries adaptation of Les Misérables. Each script contains a host of … Continue reading

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Cinderella (2015): My Favorite Disney Nostalgia Bait Movie

This isn’t exactly the most controversial choice for the best of Disney’s recent (and seemingly unending) line of remakes and updates of old material. I believe it was one of the better received ones. But it’s not a totally safe … Continue reading

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Aladdin (2019): My Second Favorite Disney Nostalgia Bait Movie

OK, I’ll cut to the chase. I find Will Smith’s Genie funnier than Robin Williams’s Genie. Note I said funnier, not more fun if I can make that distinction. Robin Williams’s Genie is probably more fun, but the only funny … Continue reading

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