Tuesday, June 21 2011
Reality, and Then Some, as Conveyed in ‘The Wire’ and ‘Oliver Twist’
The spoonful of sugar that The Wire employs in relating its harsh theme is all wrapped up in that medicine's themes of fatalism. The humor employed in Oliver Twist highlights the opposite: the needlessness of the system that allows orphans to starve to death.
In Praise of Silliness
They say you gotta laugh to keep from crying. A simple dose of pure silliness taken on a regular basis is much needed, these days.
Thursday, June 16 2011
Prince’s Parade: It’s Really All About the Music
A large part of what I love about Prince is his ability to take his influences and synthesize them into a whole that suits his fancy. So it's not so much that he brings a new dish to the table. It's more that he explores new ways to enjoy what's already there.
Tuesday, June 7 2011
David Foster Wallace’s Posthumous ‘The Pale King’ Explores Self-Consciousness As a Disease
The problem with The Pale King is not that it killed a great writer, but that a great writer’s own problems became the narrowing factor for what might have been his greatest work.
Monday, June 6 2011
Cinderella May Have Eaten Peggy Orenstein’s Daughter, But Who Ate Cinderella?
All the expertise in the world doesn’t prepare a parent to face the vagaries of American culture that lays itself pink, shiny, and bejewelled at the feet of a young girl.
Wednesday, May 11 2011
How Sherlock Holmes and Isaac Asimov Can Help Purge Your Social Media Addiction
Old books and even older movies can fend off the creeping anxiety of information overload.
Friday, May 6 2011
Christopher Newfield’s ‘Unmaking the Public University’
What happens to America's higher education system when humanists meet industrial (and now post-industrial) knowledge managers and technocrats?
Monday, May 2 2011
88 Highly Debatable Statements About ‘Reality’ in ‘Reality Hunger’
When I review a book, I like to dog-ear pages that contain interesting passages or noteworthy statements. By the time I was done with Reality Hunger, my paperback was so puffed up by pages that were doubled in width from dog-earing that it looked like I'd dropped it into a hot bath filled with Calgon and then left it to dry on a radiator.
Thursday, April 28 2011
‘Atheist Manifesto’ Combines Density with Levity
This brisk study encompasses vast learning, marshaled with much wit, considerable venom and steady argument, all doled out in differing amounts.
Thursday, April 21 2011
‘Electric Eden’: A Musical Retelling of the Elusive Past
Rob Young, editor at The Wire music magazine, conjures up the contradictions of sound technology harnessed to rural moods, and an urban audience longing for antiquarian lore.
Wednesday, April 20 2011
How TV Ruined Charlie Brooker
Everything the media told us we now had to question, because Charlie Brooker showed us the truth. But hearts were broken when television's biggest critic was seduced by the boob tube's charm.
Sunday, April 10 2011
‘The Brothers’ Lot’ Reaches Monty Python’s Heights of Nomenclature
Upon this ethical foundation for an entertaining tale, Kevin Holohan follows a satirical tradition which questions authority, undermines cliché, and upends the social order.
Friday, March 25 2011
Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love: The Films of Hal Hartley
Hal Hartley's films bridged the world of art school vibes and workplace routines, elite snottiness and pedestrian punches, suburban angst and critical thinking finesse, and mixed-up politics and prolonged personality crises.
Thursday, March 24 2011
‘Reading Jackie’: When Literary Choices Become Biography
Despite her love of books, Jackie Kennedy Onassis spent a lifetime trying to prevent people from writing about her, sometimes with the accompanying threat of legal action. Her entire life was led with one arm thrust outward, eyes cast downward, keeping the world at bay.
Monday, March 21 2011
When Did Trying to Be Good Start Feeling So Bad?
Now don’t get me wrong—of course I believe in saving the planet (at least until scientists determine if there are other inhabitable planets with better mobile phone service), but there's gotta be a limit.
Banksy’s Bare Wit-ness
Like Aristophanes in Ancient Greece, Mark Twain in 19th century America, or Ricky Gervais at the Golden Globes, Banksy’s visual humor chastises power in its multiple manifestations by hauling it before the court of public opinion for a well-deserved flogging.
Friday, March 18 2011
Holy Ignorance: When Religion and Culture Part Ways
When halal turkeys sell for Thanksgiving, "Happy Holidays" drowns out "Merry Christmas", Easter egg hunts replace Mass celebrating the Resurrection, and sacred Catholic terms in Quebec serve only as swear words, culture has parted ways with religion.
Tuesday, March 15 2011
‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’ at 34: Still Thrilling After All These Years
What makes Close Encounters of the Third Kind stand out to this day is that it isn’t the usual UFO tale of “us vs them”, like Spielberg’s later remake of War of the Worlds; rather, it's very much a story about Earthlings.
Friday, March 11 2011
Strong and Soft Opinions: Tony Judt, Public and Private
Like J.M. Coetzee's Diary of a Bad Year, Ill Fares the Land and The Memory Chalet reveal the diverse cross-pollination of public and private speech. Ill Fares the Land ostensibly contains the strong opinions, The Memory Chalet the "soft" opinions.
Wednesday, March 2 2011
Marxism: The Music Theory That Never Goes Out of Style
How fitting that a post-punk band from the late '70s, fascinated by the Marxist metaphysics of modernity, would re-emerge to remind us that nothing new has happened in rock in decades. Of course Thom Yorke might disagree...
