Blog Archives
Marley: The Movie, The Book, The Icon, The Man
[Image via Awards Daily] We hear it all the time: “The book was so much better than the movie.” It’s usually true. Filmmakers have so many storytelling devices at their ...
What Khodorkovsky May Teach Us about Nation (Re)Building
Image via Khodorkovsky-movie.com No one ever accused Ronald Reagan of being a genius(*). So when he implored Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this wall,” he couldn’t have known what he ...
What Joe Paterno Could Have Learned from Frost/Nixon
Back when news leaked out of Pennsylvania’s Happy Valley that an assistant college football coach had been accused of raping/abusing a number of prepubescent boys, the world began to ...
Death After Death — Some Blathering Related to The Artist
It is difficult to recover from one’s death. It’s unnatural, for one. Death is supposed to be final—the full stop. And the promises it brings of transition imply a new—or ...
J. Edgar – A Meditation on Heroes, History, Villains and Anti-Villains
The rapper K’naan has a song that begins: “Until the lion learns to speak/the tales of hunting will be weak” It implies an empathic view of history. And a simple one, ...
You Can Touch Us. We’ve Seen the Steve Jobs Movie
It is difficult to say anything about Steve Jobs that has not already been said. Unless, perhaps, you are Steve Jobs. And you are talking to us from 1995. That’s ...
The Interrupters: A Film about People Who Give a F**k
We open on a large, oak conference table parked in the center of a board room in Chicago. Black and Brown faces huddle around it in a series of stern ...
Burning Man – To Be or Not to Be a Terrorist
(image via Woodland Trust) 1995 offered numerous options for the American kid who preferred outrage over sloth. There were corporate scumbags in America to loathe. There were faceless Communist tyrants ...
Yo, That Kid Look Mad Familiar, Son.
Will Ferrell has a new movie out. It’s not very funny but it is pretty good. The goodness of it is derived, in significant measure, from a supporting character who ...
Deep and Pretentious Thoughts on the Nature of Mobbs
(image via AllMoviePhoto.com) On the weekend that Osama bin Laden was killed by US Navy Seal Team Six, Fast Five roared into American movie theatres to collect $86 million from ...
