Channel Surfing/Featured: Top of Home Page/Television ‘Doctor Who’: Casting a Woman as the Doctor Offers Fresh Perspectives and a New Kind of Role Model By Craig Owen Jones / 21 July 2017 The BBC's announcement of Jodie Whittaker as the first female Doctor has sections of fandom up in arms. Why all the fuss?
Channel Surfing/Featured: Top of Home Page/Television ‘Doctor Who’: “Thin Ice” Is a Welcome Addition to the Doctor’s 19th Century Adventures By Craig Owen Jones / 10 May 2017 In this episode the plotting is tight and well-judged, the interplay between characters snappy and natural-sounding, and we glimpse the Doctor's savage side.
Featured: Top of Home Page/Reviews/Television ‘Doctor Who’: Mackie Is the Best Thing About “The Pilot” Episode By Craig Owen Jones / 18 April 2017 Pearl Mackie turns in a warm, charming, and entirely compelling performance in the role of Bill in only her second TV appearance.
Books/Featured: Top of Home Page/Features The Sex Pistols’ Steve Jones’ Memoir ‘Lonely Boy’ Leaves One Wondering By Craig Owen Jones / 9 February 2017 If punk died the day the Clash signed to CBS, what were Rotten, Jones, Cook, and Matlock doing reforming the Sex Pistols in 1996?
Featured: Top of Home Page/Reviews/Television The Doctor (Finally) Returns to TV in the Serviceable “Doctor Mysterio” By Craig Owen Jones / 3 January 2017 The referencing that we've come to expect falls strangely flat: a mishmash of tropes, symbols, and callbacks that ultimately don’t lead anywhere.
Featured: Top of Home Page/Reviews/Television Animated “Power of the Daleks” Is a First Look at the Second Doctor’s Debut for Many By Craig Owen Jones / 13 December 2016 The animated version of a missing serial provides fascinating insight into a pivotal moment in Doctor Who's history.
Books/Featured: Top of Home Page/PopMatters Picks/Reviews ‘Scurvy’: Chronicling the Etiology of an Affliction By Craig Owen Jones / 6 December 2016 Jonathan Lamb's authoritative study affords an interesting perspective on one of history's most unpleasant afflictions.
Books/Featured: Top of Home Page/PopMatters Picks/Reviews As George Orwell Might Appreciate, This New Biography Abounds in Piety and Wit By Craig Owen Jones / 17 November 2016 As with Orwell’s writing style, very little goes to waste here, and John Sutherland's work is a remarkable achievement of synthesis.
Books/Featured: Top of Home Page/PopMatters Picks/Reviews ‘Masterpieces of Soviet Painting and Sculpture’ Can Hardly Be Bettered By Craig Owen Jones / 19 August 2016 It is to the credit of the editors that they cover as much ground as they do, and in such style.
Featured: Top of Home Page/Features/Media/Politics Brexit Blues: It’s the Anti-Intellectualism, Stupid By Craig Owen Jones / 12 July 2016 'Leave' campaign figurehead Michael Gove set the tone in early June when he claimed that ‘people in this country have had enough of experts’.
Books/Featured: Top of Home Page/PopMatters Picks/Reviews Ross Posnock Explores Why Artists so Frequently Renounce the Tenets of Their Art By Craig Owen Jones / 3 June 2016 Renunciation is a richly textured and highly original exploration of the artistic impulse.