Features
Thursday, March 17 2011
Joss Whedon 101: Firefly
There are few if any prematurely cancelled shows whose demise is more lamented than Firefly.
Wednesday, February 9 2011
Life, The Universe and Everything
Like Richard Feynman before him, Dr. Leonard Mlodinow has a gift that’s all too rare in physicists – he speaks Normal Person. The physicist and author of the New York Times best-seller The Drunkard’s Walk, Mlodinow has a knack for making the complicated issues that crop up in quantum physics understandable to everyday readers.
Thursday, November 11 2010
Why the Caged Bird Sings
TED Fellow Juliana Machado Ferreira's work focuses on bringing the latest advances in forensic science to bear against “crimes against nature. Her bete noir—and the driving factor behind her research—is the illegal wildlife trade that removes hundreds of thousands of animals, primarily birds, from Brazil’s ecosystem every year.
Monday, October 18 2010
The Brush and the Lens: Kurosawa As Painter and Filmmaker
As a painter and filmmaker, Kurosawa stuck to his own style, informed heavily by traditional Japanese painting as well as European impressionists and expressionists, another arena of art where he answered to both Eastern and Western influences.
Thursday, October 7 2010
What’s The Upside, Doc?: Interview with Behavioral Economist Dan Ariely
In The Upside of Irrationality, author, and self-described “social hacker", Dan Ariely calls attention to what he terms “the basic dilemma we have in life – there’s lots of stuff that’s really unpleasant for us in the short term, but really good for us in the long term.” And perhaps more importantly, he suggests what we can do to change that.
Reviews
Wednesday, February 9 2011
'Micmacs' Could Make Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton Squirm with Jealousy
In the highly stylized and inimitably executed scenes that owe as much to the Three Stooges and Rube Goldberg as to comedic luminaries like Keaton and Chaplin, Micmacs resembles nothing so much as watching a sporting event of the highest caliber, a quarterback on the hottest of streaks, hitting every pass, every note, and making it all look way too easy.
Wednesday, September 15 2010
Agatha Christie's Poirot: The Movie Collection, Set 5
In this collection of the latest Agatha Christie mysteries, everything is worth seeing, but the unorthodox adaptation of Murder on the Orient Express stands head and shoulders above the rest.
Friday, June 4 2010
Plunder: A Lot of People Acting Badly -- Rather Like This Documentary
Danny Schechter doesn’t seem to recognize that he’s pretty late to the whistle blower party here -- but that’s not the main problem.
Thursday, March 4 2010
Red Cartoons: Animated Films from East Germany
Billed as incisive political commentary from a bygone era, the pieces that make up this collection mostly amount to little more than bits of mostly tired schtick.
Tuesday, February 2 2010
Robot Chicken: Season 4
The minds behind Robot Chicken have discovered a formula that works: it's possible to be pretty damned funny in ten seconds.
Blogs
Thursday, August 12 2010
Psych-Horror Flick as Music Video, or Vice Versa: Animal Collective's 'Oddsac'
Musically and visually, Animal Collective's new "visual album" 'Oddsac' is unmistakably in the group's wheelhouse: unapologetically and uncompromisingly weird, possessed of a singular vision, and all the more compelling for it.
Saturday, January 16 2010
Ashley Greene on Her SI Swimsuit Spread and Life After Undeath [Video]
New Moon actress Ashley Greene sits down with PopMatters' Ian Chant for a discussion of soulsuckers, swimsuits, and Sundance ...
Friday, November 20 2009
Strahan on Football: A Video Interview with Michael Strahan
Former New York Giants superstar (and current in-demand sports commentator) Michael Strahan speaks with PopMatters.
