The Last Reveal

Perspectives on writing, screenwriting, stories, and films. For the unfamiliar, a "reveal" in screenwriting parlance is the placement of key, "revelatory" information in a story. Most times, the last reveal is the most important revelation of all. Since its heyday in the 1960s and 1970s, popular film criticism and analysis has declined almost to the point of extinction. With...1.) The arrival of special effects-laden blockbusters like JAWS & STAR WARS, and the resulting decline of the meaning-laden cinema which had predominated before them. 2.) The evolving availability of home-accessed films, the rise of video-streaming technology, and long-form meta-story television series like BREAKING BAD and GAME OF THRONES. 3.) The emergence of the Internet's vast data resources and egalitarian spectrum of opinion in the "blog-o-sphere," and its media-focused websites, which, then, resulted in the decimation of the traditional print media and its film-centered journalism. ...serious film and media discussion (outside of academia) has withered on the vine. THE LAST REVEAL may, therefore, be one of the last books of popular film criticism as it has been known.