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Bob Rehak's Blog about Special Effects, Videogames, Film, and Television

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Paranormal Activity 2

Posted on January 25, 2011 by Bob Rehak

I was surprised to find myself eager, even impatient, to watch Paranormal Activity 2, the followup to 2007’s no-budget breakthrough in surveillance horror. I wrote of the first movie that it delivered a satisfactory double-action of filmic and commercial engineering, … Continue reading →

Posted in Reviews | Tagged horror, sequels, transmedia

Tron: Legacy

Posted on January 2, 2011 by Bob Rehak

This review is dedicated to my friends David Surman and Will Brooker. Part One: We Have Never Been Digital *** If Avatar was in fact the “gamechanger” its prosyletizers claimed, then it’s fitting that the first film to surpass it … Continue reading →

Posted in Reviews | Tagged Avatar, CGI, clumsy sublime, nostalgia, Tron, Tron Legacy

Watching Avatar

Posted on December 30, 2009 by Bob Rehak

Apologies for taking a while to get around to writing about Avatar — befitting the film’s almost absurd graphical heft, the sheer surfeit of its spectacle, I decided to watch it a second time before putting my thoughts into words. … Continue reading →

Posted in Reviews | Tagged 3D, Avatar

Watchmen: Stuck in the Uncanny Valley

Posted on March 9, 2009 by Bob Rehak

[Warning: this review contains spoilers — and at the end, a blue penis.] One wonders if Masahiro Mori, the roboticist who introduced the term “uncanny valley” in 1970, now wishes he’d had the foresight to trademark it; after laying largely … Continue reading →

Posted in Reviews | Tagged comics, special effects, Watchmen

Counting Down Galactica (2 of 4)

Posted on March 6, 2009 by Bob Rehak

[This is the second of four posts counting down the final episodes of Battlestar Galactica. To see the other entries, click here.] I suggested in last week’s Galactica post that viewing the conclusion of a series “live” — that is, … Continue reading →

Posted in Essays | Tagged Battlestar Galactica, television

Counting Down Galactica (1 of 4)

Posted on February 28, 2009 by Bob Rehak

One advantage to serialized narrative of the type I’ve been discussing with my class on TV & New Media this term is the way such stories occasionally align with the flocking of audiences to make a kind of collective reading … Continue reading →

Posted in Essays | Tagged Battlestar Galactica, television, transmedia

Getting Granular with Setpieces

Posted on December 16, 2008 by Bob Rehak

Dan North has published an excellent analysis of the Sandman birth sequence in Spider-Man 3, using this three-minute shot as springboard for a characteristically deft dissection of visual-effects aesthetics and the relationship between CG and live-action filmmaking. His concluding point, … Continue reading →

Posted in Essays | Tagged comics, fandom, industry, special effects, transmedia

Crudeness, Complexity, and Venom’s Bite

Posted on August 4, 2008 by Bob Rehak

Back in the 70s, like most kids who grew up middle-class and media-saturated in the U.S., I lived for the blocks of cartoons that aired after school and on Saturday mornings. From Warner Brothers and Popeye shorts to affable junk … Continue reading →

Posted in Essays | Tagged animation, comics, nostalgia, spider-man, transmedia

Planet of the Apes

Posted on July 9, 2008 by Bob Rehak

As my attention shifts to one of the major goals of the summer — drafting a proposal for my book on special and visual effects — I’ve started to augment my movie-a-day habit with some classic FX titles. These are … Continue reading →

Posted in Reviews | Tagged nostalgia, Planet of the Apes, special effects

Indiana Jones and the Unattainable FX Past

Posted on May 23, 2008 by Bob Rehak

This isn’t a review, as I haven’t yet made it to the theater to see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (portal to the transmedia world of Dr. Jones here; typically focused and informative Wiki entry here). … Continue reading →

Posted in Reviews | Tagged fandom, Indiana Jones, nostalgia, special effects

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Bob Rehak is an Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies at Swarthmore College.

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