As I ponder what to do during my retirement, it often involves the usual sitting on a porch, yelling at kids to get off my lawn – whether they are there or not. In all honesty, I picture myself sitting in a very similar position to the one I am in now, a pile of books next […]
Natalie Portman, Annette Bening, and Julianne Moore have already established themselves as Best Actress contenders, but we can now add Jennifer Lawrence to the race as well for her performance in Winter’s Bone, a glimpse at how poverty not only constrains people economically, but also socially in a rural area where everyone’s struggle for survival is individualistic […]
Each year, a handful of people report that they have seen a vision of either the Virgin Mary or Jesus Christ. These apparitions take a number of forms: watermarks on walls, streaks on windows, iron residue, cookware, or pita. The question to be posed here is not “why have Jesus and Mary come to us through these […]
In the third act of the Paul Rudd, Sean William Scott vehicle, Role Models, Danny and Wheeler (Rudd and Scott) accompany Augie (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) to a medieval role play in order to overthrow King Argotron (Ken Jeong) and take control of his kingdom, winning the hand of Maiden Esplen (Alexandra Stamler). And initially, I saw this as […]
I’ve seen the entertainers of my generation, inebriated, intoxicated, plastered on multiple magazine covers, who sweat illicit substance; who marry for publicity; who annul to marry again; who sell “stolen” sextapes; who philanthropically adopt numerous children; who switch sexuality bi-weekly; who slander the system; who embrace the freedoms of capitalism; who flash the peace sign in subtlety; […]
Jan09
The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters — Perhaps You Could Have This Record for a Few Quarters More
In 1982, a mustachioed, mulletted kid set the high-score record on one of the Golden Age of Arcade Games’ Donkey Kong; in addition, this prestidigitation prodigy also achieved a record high score in Donkey Kong Jr. and was the first player to ever record a perfect game in Pac Man, wherein the player kills all enemies and […]
My mailbox purged forth two Netflix DVDs a bill and a statement as I opened it. Inside, the gag reflex for this mailus vomitus was a thicker-than-normal issue of Time Magazine, whose Person of the Year stared blankly at me as I wrestled the tightly would weekly from my bulimic mailbox. Green eyes stared blankly from a […]
“You must pay for everything in this world, one way or another. There is nothing free except for the grace of God.” So Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld) tells us in Joel and Ethan Coen’s reimagining of Henry Hathaway’s True Grit, which is based on Charles Portis’ novel. Unsurprisingly, the Coens do a fine job with this remake […]
Two of my guilty pleasures are Under Siege and The Rock, which might be the only Nicolas Cage movie that doesn’t make bile creep up my throat. However both of these movies have one thing in common: they advertise themselves as action movies, guaranteeing an adequate amount of dialogue to fashion semi-plausible plot lines and provide some […]
About six months ago, I sat in The Penny Farthing, a bar in the East Village of Manhattan, and four of us at the table waxed philosophical about what we would do should we encounter a wild animal, being that the abundance of squirrels, rats, and pigeons in Manhattan – and raccoons in deep Queens – suggests […]