fiction and creative non-fiction from Brennan Quenneville
I want to like Sideways, I really do. Alexander Payne's 2004 film, which tracks Paul Giamatti's Miles and Thomas Haden Church's Jack across a bachelor party tour of California wine country, spends much of its runtime celebrating writing and creation. It's just the kind of movie someone who writes a blog that is partially about [...]
When we first meet him, King Théoden of Rohan is in thrall to his laughably evil advisor, Gríma Wormtongue. Through the efforts of Gandalf, Théoden throws off the yoke of his oppressor and rediscovers his strength and his sanity. But, for all his bonding with Pippin and his gracious speeches to Eomer and Eowyn, he [...]
As I watched the Stranger Things 3 trailer for the 40th time, I had the same thought that occurs to my brain every couple of hours: With all due respect to my wife, I will never know a relationship as pure and loving as the Steve-Dustin bromance. For my money, Steve evolving from a self-important douche [...]
Deep in an ancestral crypt, a group of wizards gathers to uncover a nefarious plot. That sounds like an exciting premise, right? Spooky and mysterious and full of ambiguous power. Except that when that exact scenario unfolds in the latter half of Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, it falls completely flat. There are a [...]
At the climax of the 1986 muppet-dystopia Labyrinth, David Bowie's impressively-codpieced Jareth confronts Jennifer Connelly's emotionally ascendant Sarah in an Escheresque series of gravitationally impossible stairways. Frustrated by Sarah's continued rejection of his romantic overtures, Jareth makes one final attempt to subdue the object of his affection. He fails. But in the opening minute of [...]
Next week Solo: A Star Wars Story will be released to preposterous revenues and at least some amount of incendiary fan rage. A good chunk of this rage will assuredly complain that this newest installment in the prodigiously growing Star Wars cinematic universe undercuts the pre-existing material, introducing plot holes into a beloved story about space [...]
Earlier this week I saw Avengers: Infinity War. Having seen a grand total of four of the prior 18 (!!!) films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I knew only a few of Infinity War's characters by name (or sight) but as the movie very clearly designates all of its principals as either a "good guy" [...]
(SPOILER ALERT. This post, written after only one viewing of The Last Jedi, is absolutely spoilerific. I'm going to ruin the movie for you if you haven't already seen it, is I guess what I'm saying. Continue at your own discretion.) As The Force Awakens drew to a close, Rey stood atop the scenic island [...]
We've come to the part of the year where candy and sweets are everywhere, all the time. You pretty much won't be able to escape cookies and pies and chocolate flavored toothpaste until after New Year's Day at this point. Wait. Chocolate flavored toothpaste? Seriously? That's really a thing? God, we are truly a disgusting [...]
The idea of truth serum - a tonic that compels its drinker to speak the truth when questioned - has a long and storied history. So why is it that when I think of truth serum I only ever think of one incarnation of it, the veritaserum of the Harry Potter universe? Oh, that's right. [...]
Songs & Stories 