Frayed Branches

[Warning: The following post will contain light spoilers for Avatar, Avatar: The Way of Water, and the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Major spoilers for Roman history.] One day in early January 49 BC--prior to becoming Rome's dictator--Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon. The shallow river is nestled into the northeastern side of Italy, jutting into the country by way of the Adriatic Sea. In the time of the Roman Republic, the Rubicon was a border marker of sorts. It separated the Roman providence of Cisalpine Gaul from the rest of Italy. Crossing the Rubicon river itself was no big deal, but for a Roman general to cross into Italy proper accompanied by a standing army was considered treasonous. This was due to an ancient Roman law that only allowed elected magistrates in Roman provinces to hold imperium  in the country. Imperium  being the right of a citizen--in this case magistrates--to control a military entity--in this case a standing army. A magistrate from a province who enter...

Does the image above make you nervous? Maybe you have no idea why you should be nervous. Why a Showtime original series titled Let the Right One In should make you feel slightly unsettled. But if you already know what I'm talking about--if you're familiar with one of the most revered Swedish films in the vampire genre--then the image above, by all accounts, should make you very, very nervous. Let the Right One In is a 2008 Swedish film based on the 2004 novel of the same name. The story follows 10-year-old Oskar, a shy young boy living in Stockholm, Sweden in the 1980s, who befriends Eli, a pale young girl of his age. Soon, however, it becomes clear that Eli is not all she appears to be. Because Eli is a vampire. The film garnered critical acclaim, winning awards left and right from Tribeca Film Festival, the Guldbagge Awards, and the British Academy Film Awards, to name a few. For many vampire fans, the film is considered a staple in the genre for its unique take on both vampi...

[Warning: The following post will contain spoilers for all of The Walking Dead , including its final season.] The Walking Dead is over, but it's also just beginning. That's how I felt as the final minutes of Season 11, Episode 24, "Rest in Peace," played on my television back in November. The revelation was both surreal and yet expected all at once. Because while The Walking Dead as a series had just wrapped up 12 years of storytelling in its last 90 minutes, the journeys of major characters from the show were far from over. Maggie and Negan were scheduled to go to New York in April 2023. Daryl was going to be mysteriously transported to France a few months later. And, at the tail end of the year, Rick and Michonne would make their glorious returns in a series recounting what they've been up to since leaving the show in earlier seasons. It's why The Walking Dead 's final season felt more like the start of something new rather than the end of anything that ...

[Warning: The following post will contain spoilers for the series premiere of HBO's  The Last of Us series.] I have never played The Last of Us . The only exposure I've ever had to the game was its gameplay reveal during E3 2012 and the opening scene on YouTube. That's it. The rest of my knowledge--that Joel and Ellie are two survivors in a zombie-like apocalypse that sprung from mutated Cordyceps that jumped from ants to humans--comes from cultural osmosis. I didn't know the plot of the game, what the characters were like, or what to expect from HBO's television adaptation of the critically-acclaimed action-adventure experience. I was in the dark, going into the series premiere on Sunday night only knowing what to expect out of the beginning of the episode. What I wasn't expecting was the way things were presented to me. I have to preface this with something important: The Last of Us Episode 1 is good. Not great, not perfect, but definitely not as bad as I expe...

  Breaking Bad Season 4: A Retrospective This entry is part of a series of retrospectives on the  Breaking Bad  universe. Click here  for the previous entry on Breaking Bad Season 3. [Note: As a series retrospective, this post will contain major spoilers from  Breaking Bad ,  its sequel film  El Camino ,  and its prequel series  Better Call Saul] It doesn't take long for Season 4 of Breaking Bad to not only establish itself as one of the greatest seasons of the series thus far, but also as a memorable, classic experience in semi-modern television. The fourth season of Breaking Bad picks up right where the third season left off. Walt is captured in the laundromat by Mike and Gus' other men. Jesse has shot Gale in the head, and is liable to be carted away soon by Victor. It quickly becomes clear that, even though they've committed an act of pure transgression against Gus Fring and his meth trade, the duo's true punishment will be the stay ...