Why Mars—and Curiosity Matter—Especially as NASA Faces Budget Cuts
The amazing men and women of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration landed the Curiosity rover on Mars last night. But the piece of writing that perhaps best encapsulates the wild joy at...
View ArticleFox News Doesn’t Think Olympic Gold Medalist Gabby Douglas Is Patriotic Enough
Gabby Douglas was the topic du jour for Olympic commentators throughout last week, but over the weekend, she became a centerpiece in another manufactured controversy at Fox News, America’s top outlet...
View ArticleOratorical Animal: Lies, Damned Lies, and the Romney Campaign
They are the only ones who can vote in the 3 days prior to the election . The Obama campaign filed suit, arguing that the change restricts voting and occurred too late before the coming election
View Article‘Breaking Bad’s Skyler White and the Difficulty of Leaving Abusers
I know that a lot of you think I’ve been too easy on Skyler White, the deeply morally compromised wife of violent meth kingpin Walter White on Breaking Bad. But her transformation from naive wife to a...
View ArticleElections a rich source for 'Campaign' director Jay Roach
Elections a rich source for ' Campaign ' director Jay Roach. August 9, 2012 By Michael Leave a Comment.
View ArticleOf Cover Images and Series Titles – blog*spot
issuess ~ with covering certain body parts up so Amazon and other retailers would not throw a fit over it. Then there was the other issue : "Oh, God, how am I going to find matching images for the...
View ArticleOlympic Movie Festival: ‘Stick It’
By Chloe Angyal So, you’ve spent the last two weeks watching Olympic gymnastics coverage, and now, it’s all dried up. You’ve just realized that you’re going to have to wait four more years until you...
View Article‘Breaking Bad’ Open Thread: Tarantula
This post contains spoilers through the August 12 episode of Breaking Bad.
View ArticleWATCH: Trailer For ‘How To Survive A Plague’
A new documentary profiles the young men and women who fought the government when it did little to nothing to address the AIDS epidemic.
View Article‘Antiviral’ and Celebrity Obsession
I think a lot about our relationship to celebrity and to culture, and while I think Antiviral, the first movie from Brandon Cronenberg (son of David) may get at the intensity of our obsession, I’m not...
View ArticleThe Influence of ‘Parks and Recreation’
In a long piece on Parks and Recreation as part of Deadline’s look at Emmy-contending shows, I was struck by this section on what made the show successful, and how it’s influenced the television...
View ArticleCosmopolis
I recommend Cosmopolis, David Cronenberg’s adaptation of the 2003 Don DeLillo novel of the same name, in the spirit that I might recommend Scandinavian-style salted licorice. It won’t be to everyone’s...
View Article‘Passion’ and the Return of Female-Rivalry-As-Lesbianism
Memo to Brian De Palma, and folks who want to follow in the footsteps of Darren Aronofsky. Sometimes, when women have competitive or power-imbalanced relationships, we solve them in ways that don’t...
View ArticleMy Personal Struggle With The Future Of Football
I suppose I grew up with football as much as, or more than, any other sport.
View ArticleDeath By Fiction In The ‘Innocence of Muslims’ Riots
It’s a twisty path we thread when we argue that popular culture has an impact in the real world. I believe, firmly, that what we see in movies and on television, what we read in the few books that...
View ArticleA Movie And An Argument With Alyssa and Swin
I’ve mentioned this on Twitter, though perhaps not on the blog: Asawin Suebsaeng, Mother Jones’ movie guy and I, are now doing a weekly podcast. Fittingly, because we spend a lot of time violently...
View ArticleWhy Iran’s Oscar Boycott Isn’t Really About ‘Innocence of Muslims’
Word comes from the New York Times that, a year after Iran won its first Academy Award for Asghar Farhadi’s A Separation , Iran will boycott the Academy Awards in protest of “Innocence of Muslims,” a...
View ArticleWomen Who Edit Magazines Make $15,000 Less Than Men
The latest numbers from Folio about who makes what in the world of magazine editing reaffirm what we already know: women make less money than men in comparable positions. Male editors-in-chief or...
View ArticleMonster Overload On ‘Mockingbird Lane’
Over at The Atlantic, I took a look at NBC’s reboot of The Munsters , Mockingbird Lane , and beyond that, the question of what monsters are for and whether they can have any actual impact when they’ve...
View Article‘Cloud Atlas’: In Search Of A Better World, And Better Movies
It’s difficult to write about Cloud Atlas , the sweeping adaptation of David Mitchell’s 2004 nesting doll of a novel, by Lana Wachowski, Andy Wachowski, and Tom Tykwer, if only because it’s doing so...
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