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TheJoyFactory
Seeking joy in all the geek places. Join a scifi nerd, professor, and podcast dork on his journey to find and share joyful thoughts on all the genre goodness!
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Ape Lincoln: The Beauty and Terror of Planet of the Apes (2001)
Ape Lincoln: The Beauty and Terror of Planet of the Apes (2001)
As Palpatine would say: long have I waited to discuss this film! A film reviled for its infamously confusing ending, its gleeful…
shaunduke
Jan 16, 2021
10 Caribbean Books You Should Read At Least Once
10 Caribbean Books You Should Read At Least Once
As a fan of Caribbean literature who has spent quite a lot of his life reading and thinking about it, it seemed appropriate to finally do…
shaunduke
Jun 11, 2021
Brokeback Mountain (2005) and the Unbearable Violence of Gay Love
Brokeback Mountain (2005) and the Unbearable Violence of Gay Love
In 2005, the United States found itself in a renewed culture war over the place of homosexuality in society. Just two years prior, the…
shaunduke
Feb 13, 2021
So Much For Rules: The Zany Sports Massacre of Space Jam (1996)
So Much For Rules: The Zany Sports Massacre of Space Jam (1996)
In 1996, a young 13-year-old me didn’t so much drag my family to see as convince them by osmosis that this would be the most important…
shaunduke
Jan 28, 2021
Musicals Made 2020 Bearable; Long Live the Musicals
Musicals Made 2020 Bearable; Long Live the Musicals
If you’d asked me in 2019 whether musicals were “my thing,” I might have said something like “well, I do enjoy musicals from time to time…
shaunduke
Jan 17, 2021
Holiday Miracles (or, How I Tried Something New and Learned to Enjoy Christmas Novels)
Holiday Miracles (or, How I Tried Something New and Learned to Enjoy Christmas Novels)
I’ve never read a Christmas novel for adults before. In fact, I never considered reading one until I got bored in my local Target and…
shaunduke
Dec 31, 2020
Nostalgic Paris: Misery, Imagination, and Nostalgia in Midnight in Paris
Nostalgic Paris: Misery, Imagination, and Nostalgia in Midnight in Paris
Perhaps the most potent problem of our modern era is its obsession with nostalgia. In its least malignant form, nostalgia becomes an…
shaunduke
Dec 30, 2020
How to Be a Conservative Rabbit Tale: On Polly Horvath’s Mr.
How to Be a Conservative Rabbit Tale: On Polly Horvath’s Mr.
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, I requested a review copy of Polly Horvath’s then-new children’s novel, Mr and Mrs…
shaunduke
Jun 20, 2020
The AI Says It’s an Enemy: Relinquishing Control to the Machine in Yukikaze
The AI Says It’s an Enemy: Relinquishing Control to the Machine in Yukikaze
There is no shortage of television shows and films which place at center the question of human importance in the era of artificial…
shaunduke
May 19, 2020
It Didn’t Happen Like That: On the Dimensions of Historical Accuracy
It Didn’t Happen Like That: On the Dimensions of Historical Accuracy
If you’d asked me a year ago if I cared all that much for historical accuracy in fiction, I might have told you that it didn’t much matter…
shaunduke
May 15, 2020
A Tale of First Series: Heroism and Binaries in Record of Lodoss War
A Tale of First Series: Heroism and Binaries in Record of Lodoss War
Heroism is something I find myself coming back to a lot in these especially trying times. After all, we hear about heroes from time to…
shaunduke
May 8, 2020
Fragile and Varied Masculinities: Road Trip and the Odd World of the 2000s
Fragile and Varied Masculinities: Road Trip and the Odd World of the 2000s
The 2000s were weird, y’all. Really weird. If, like me, you’ve taken a strange trip down the road of 2000s romantic and (teen/college) sex…
shaunduke
May 5, 2020
Throwing Grendel to the Vikings: Reassessing a 90s Adaptation
Throwing Grendel to the Vikings: Reassessing a 90s Adaptation
Imagine, if you will, the 1990s. You’re making a movie. A movie that doesn’t satisfy your test audiences and requires numerous re-edits…
shaunduke
Apr 16, 2020
28 Days Later and the Delicious Comfort of Disaster
28 Days Later and the Delicious Comfort of Disaster
Living during a pandemic makes watching movies featuring pandemics particularly weird. Yet, there’s also something, well, comforting for…
shaunduke
Apr 11, 2020
Struggles in Heroism: On the (New) Star Wars Expanded Universe
Struggles in Heroism: On the (New) Star Wars Expanded Universe
It’s probably not a big secret that I have had “issues” with in its Disney years. There are a lot of things I love about the direction…
shaunduke
Mar 27, 2020
Snakes in SF/F/H (Or, Drumming Up Fear from Ignorance)
Snakes in SF/F/H (Or, Drumming Up Fear from Ignorance)
As someone who keeps reptiles and still occasionally searches for them in the wild, very few things annoy me more than the way genre films…
shaunduke
Mar 19, 2020
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