Molly Brown holds a PhD from the University of Pittsburgh where she is a Lecturer in Film Studies and English. Followers and accolades welcome: @screengrabs
Columns
Friday, March 22 2013
Meryl Streep, Sex Goddess
Meryl Streep is portraying a string of desirous mammas, these days. In Mamma Mia, It's Complicated and Hope Springs, each of the leading ladies are mothers with grown children and a sexual appetite. A healthy one.
Thursday, January 10 2013
Movie Time Travel and the New Nostalgia
The new nostalgia signals the ultimate rejection of millennial anxiety, postmodernism, irony and the future. It longs for a post-industrial, green world. Of course, that suggests a vague and painful longing for something that never was.
Tuesday, November 20 2012
Color Television: What Diversity Looks Like in America Today
The buzz word from the 2012 presidential election is "diversity". It's a good story. The look of the Obama crowd had both the structure and randomness of a Jackson Pollock painting. It was the ol' melting pot writ large.
Wednesday, October 17 2012
How to Be a Film Snob: On 'High' (as in Getting) Culture
I was expecting Frederick Wiseman's cinema verite masterpiece for this column. Imagine my surprise when I was served up John Stalberg Jr.'s sophomoric High School, instead.
Wednesday, September 19 2012
Ethnographies of the Hipster: Miranda July's 'The Future' and 'It Chooses You'
It Chooses You provides a sketch of the deluxe hipster, one who hardly knows what to make of the poor, the underprivileged, the recently incarcerated, and others who are just plain weird, as opposed to quirky.
Reviews
Tuesday, February 26 2013
A Brilliant Bomb: 'Smash: Season One'
Camp audiences have long recognized the pleasures of "bad", of the delectably ridiculous. We delight in their extravagant nonsense. We get disappointed if they fall into realism or normalcy. We like it bad. In fact, amp it up, will you?
Wednesday, December 5 2012
'Memoir of the Sunday Brunch': Food, Family, Faith
Julia Pandl's memoir elaborates on memories of growing up amidst the sensibilities of her parents: her father’s frugality and work ethic and her mother’s passivity and Catholicism.
Thursday, September 27 2012
Bright and Tidy Messes* on Katie Roiphe's 'In Praise of Messy Lives'
Katie Roiphe's life is messy with an asterisk. It's as messy as one can get while they remodel their new house in the midst of divorce. As messy as one can get while staying up late, dating and not being crushed, but instead, ignited by the end of marriage.
Tuesday, September 25 2012
The Allure of the Tales of the Working Poor: 'Downton Abbey: Seasons One & Two'
No wonder the recession made popular a show about life in a mansion. The series allows audiences to fantasize about near-miraculous displays of wealth alongside the dreary life of those who sleep in tiny, dreary bedrooms in the massive place that is Downton Abbey.
Wednesday, September 5 2012
'The Lucky One' Gives Us a Recuperative History of the Iraq War
Taylor Schilling (as Beth, one of the many titular "lucky ones") may prance about in short shorts, but she competes with the sultry dangle of the weeping willows and the spectacular flirtation of the real estate and the roses.
Blogs
Wednesday, October 17 2012
The Impeccably Cute Delightfulness of Stuff: 'Moonrise Kingdom'
I propose a souvenir shoppe, also called "Moonrise Kingdom", a kind of "pottery barn" filled with purchasable goods reproduced from the movie's sets, props and costumes.
