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John Carter: A Disney Prince of Mars

It looks like John Carter didn’t make enough of a splash at the box office to justify a sequel. To tell the truth, I am more than a little disappointed, because I actually enjoyed the cheesy throw-back charm of a science-fantasy epic that didn’t feel the need for irony or wry self-awareness. However, it’s interesting to look at the movie as part of the Disney canon, and measured against the big Disney films released over the last couple of years (and planned through the end of this one). John Carter seems to fit alongside Tron: Legacy as part of a concentrated effort by the studio in recent years to shift away from their traditional “princess”-orientated features and to produce movies aimed at boys.

Boys are from Mars...

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Non-Review Review: The Sorcerer’s Apprentice

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is a movie that really works very much better than it really should. It’s clunky, predictable and standard box office fare, hardly designed to provoke or probe the extremes of the human imagination. It opens with a clunky exposition-filled narration which crams an entire franchise’s worth of back story into what should be a simple and straight forward tale, which even Ian McShane’s distinctive tones can’t completely elevate. From there on out, its by-the-numbers and fairly straight-forward. On the other hand, the movie has something that the vast majority of other summer blockbusters are seriously lacking in.

And that thing, my friends, is Nicolas Cage.

Cage certainly takes some balsy roles...

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