Wednesday, April 28 2010
The Goldbergs: The Most Jewish Show on Television
This show is an example of "melting pot" art from the tail end of the Ellis Island era in popular culture, when the wide variety of accents heard in city streets was reflected on the vaudeville stage, on radio, in comics, and wherever pop culture served the mythology of the mainstream.
Tuesday, April 27 2010
The Illusion of Identity in Lars Von Trier’s Antichrist
Lars von Trier suggests that the terrible and the horrific are not to be found in the abnormal behaviour of an outsider, but within our relationships, and the play of domination and submission in everyday life.
Monday, April 26 2010
Cracking the Spine: The Lovely Bones
The author's 'heaven' is a concrete and unexpected place with"lumbering women throwing shot put and javelin"; whereas the filmmaker's interpretation changes 'heaven' to something like a garish, 3-D Hallmark card.
Friday, March 26 2010
Where the Wild Things Are
Even if its pleasures outweigh its disappointments, Where the Wild Things Are is another in a series of Spike Jonze’s ambitious but flawed projects.
Monday, March 22 2010
Georges Melies: The Most Important Filmmaker You’ve (Probably) Never Seen
It’s tempting to say that without Melies, there would be no Avatar, no vampire movies, no Star Wars or Star Trek, no special-effects extravaganzas, no docu-drama like Erin Brockovich, no animation, no Walt Disney, and no porn.
Thursday, March 11 2010
‘Girls’ Gone Wild
While following a storyline about the trials of a mother and daughter may not be demographically the most masculine thing in the world, neither is my unabashed enjoyment of ABC Family original movies.
Friday, March 5 2010
Reality with a Pinch of Salto
Salto, a masterpiece of Polish cinema, seems to contain much of Poland's tradition in distilled form, as well as being a perfectly Konwickian construction.
Wednesday, March 3 2010
Memorabiliaphilia: Nationalizing a Pastime
Baseball looms large, the way anything in a magnifying glass seems to gain size and importance.
Thursday, February 25 2010
Ghost Hunters: Paranormal Pop Culture for Normal People
Amongst the familiar mythologies in all of reality television, Ghost Hunters ranks in the top 10. Love the show or loathe it, it is popular culture and has earned a spot in the reality TV pantheon.
Tuesday, February 23 2010
Chéri: Out of the Boudoir
Frears and Hampton puts the viewer into Chéri in a very real and sensual manner, paying homage to Collette's luxuriant corporeal details.
Friday, February 19 2010
I Love You, Buddy Man
If the gift industry can create Valentine's Day, why can't the Rockist found Buddy Day? Prepare yourself for a weekend of 'Buddy Movies' and brotherhood.
Thursday, February 18 2010
Pop Gluttony
I am choosy about what I eat, but continue to chow down on an unfettered pop culture diet as the last great excess that won’t kill me.
Monday, February 15 2010
The Simpsons, ‘Radio Bart’ Part 2: ‘Ace in the Hole’ and Jessica McCllure
'Radio Bart' may not offer any solutions, but it manages to compress an extraordinary amount of media history, compassion, manipulation and cynicism into a sharp, quick and funny 20-minutes or so.
Friday, February 5 2010
Orson Welles: A Man of a Certain Ego
“The chief proof of a man’s real greatness lies in his perception of his own smallness. It argues... a power of comparison and of appreciation which is in itself proof of nobility.”
Thursday, January 28 2010
The Ice Storm: America Out in the Cold
Ang Lee captures the '70s on film the way Rick Moody captures the era in the book The Ice Storm. It's the midst of the sexual revolution, the Watergate scandal is erupting, and the country's social consciousness is changing.
A Little Human Magic in Recent DVDs
Either by coincidence or because I just happened to watch these all on a cold day when I needed a little warmth, the magic of the human condition emerged as a trend in these new DVD releases.
Friday, January 22 2010
Designing Consent
Industrial design aspires to the commanding heights of consumer society, building its policy prescriptions and dogmatic assumptions about what makes us happy directly into the objects available to us.
Wednesday, January 20 2010
Silent Revelations
Kino and Flicker Alley are the labels duking it out for silent supremacy, and the spectator is the winner.
Tuesday, January 19 2010
Unfulfilled Desires, Fulfilled Nightmares
As the new millennium accelerates we witness our world consumed by an international economic crisis fueled by unrestricted consumption and greed. Hence, the relevance of Stephen King's 'Needful Things'.
Thursday, January 7 2010
The Matrix: I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream
If the first act of The Matrix calls to mind eXistenZ, with Pikel licking Allegra’s bio-port and sucking gristle and skin from a gun, its third act is as antiseptic as a bad Star Trek rerun.
