Jack Patrick Rodgers is a freelance writer based in Philadelphia. His work has been published in Slate, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and Geek Monthly. You can follow him on Twitter at RestlessJack or contact him via email at RestlessJack@comcast.net.
Features
Wednesday, October 14 2009
Await Your Reply: Dan Chaon Talks About Self-invention
Lost, indie music and Final Destination inspired Dan Chaon's latest novel, Await Your Reply -- all deal with issues of self-invention and how we conceptualize the self, he tells PopMatters.
Tuesday, September 15 2009
China's Factory Girls: A Conversation with Author Leslie T. Chang
Traditional and often sensational coverage of China is only a partial interpretation: the people themselves are being lost in the translation.
Wednesday, July 15 2009
A Glimpse of a Fast-changing China
‘Factory Girls’ and ‘The People's Republic of Capitalism’ give us a snapshot of the dramatic changes China is undergoing.
Wednesday, May 27 2009
Remembering the Orphan: Final Fantasy VIII
Warts and all, the ambitious push to expand video game storytelling found in Final Fantasy VIII deserves a closer look at this too-often neglected franchise entry.
Friday, April 27 2007
You Know His Name: A History of James Bond
James Bond was the perfect hero for Great Britain of the 1950s, still licking its post-war wounds and eager for a champion who defended old-fashioned values like upper-class snobbery.
Reviews
Friday, July 17 2009
Mad Men: Season 2
Our characters are noticing subtle changes in the air, but they don’t quite realize that the social conventions they’ve staked their lives on will be shattered by decade’s end.
Thursday, July 16 2009
Batman 20th Anniversary Edition
This is the template for the modern summer blockbuster which makes it, for better or worse, the most-influential film of the last 25 years.
Monday, March 16 2009
The Last Emperor
Maybe it takes a humanist like Bertolucci to see an emperor as an everyman, but anyone who has ever felt humbled by the heartlessness of fate can understand Pu Yi’s plight.
Friday, July 18 2008
The X-Files Revelations
Ten years later, Mulder and Scully return to the big screen to face their greatest mystery yet: whether or not they're still relevant in a world that's changed since they've been away.
Friday, June 13 2008
Lost in Beijing
This film knows that you can't buy happiness, but since real happiness is such a rarity, people will never stop trying.
