Drew Ayers
As contributor
As commenter
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Immortal actors?
Thanks for your comments/questions, Ethan. There's a lot to chew on here. My initial thoughts went to a probably implausible future where filmmakers don't need to recast roles. They can simply resurrect/reanimate actors in a form of digital immo ... -
Believability
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Jayson, and thanks for organizing this theme week! In terms of the "uncanny valley," I think technological advances and audience familiarity with digital techniques have made this less of a problem. Firstly, the ... -
Star Knowledge
Thanks for the questions, Monica. From a production standpoint, de-aging well-known actors makes the process easier, since there's so much imagery on which to draw. For an actor like Downey Jr., there's an extensive library of images from his yo ... -
Manufacturing Nostalgia
This is a great post to kick off the week, Hye Jin. In particular, I think we'll encounter these issues of creativity/conformity, childhood/adulthood, and IP licensing throughout the week. What especially resonated with me about your post was this id ... -
Productive Tensions
Thanks for a great post, Alan, and you've identified some productive tensions in THE LEGO MOVIE. In trying to make sense of the film, I've found it difficult to reconcile the positions the film takes in regards to the production of knowledge. On ... -
Gameplay
Nedda: The animation of the games is a lot like the animation in LEGO MOVIE. Much of the fun and humor comes from the characters' blocky bodies and jerky motion. The games are less "stop motiony" than the movie, but the characters break apa ... -
Relationship to TV
Thanks, Garret, for the great comment. The parallels you draw between TV reruns and the LEGO video games are quite apt. There's a certain comfort in (re)experiencing the safe and predictable, and TT's LEGO games certainly draw on this. The relat ... -
Superhero Comedy
As a fan of all things superhero--movies, TV shows, books, games--I've found that, particularly in the case of Warner Bros/DC, the games offer some of the best representations of those characters. DC's films and comic books (less so the TV shows ... -
Text-Paratext
Following Jonathan Gray, another interesting aspect of your post, Matthew and Catherine, is the blurring of distinction between text and paratext. Regarding NINJAGO and CHIMA, are they the text or the paratext (with LEGO being the "original" tex ... -
LEGO Fan Communities
Thanks for a fascinating post on LEGO fan communities, Garret. I don't know much about these highly specialized LEGO subgroups, so I was wondering if you could expand on a couple of things. Do groups like Classic-Castle work to differentiate themselv ...