As Rachael already found out when she tried to read it a few years ago, The Mortal Instruments (movie) didn’t start out with particularly great source material. Like a certain sparkly vampire story before it, City of Bones was under-written and under-imaginative, with occasionally funny characters and semi-intriguing plot, but completely undone by the author’s […]
The World’s End, the final instalment in Edgar Wright/Simon Pegg/Nick Frost’s goofily-name Cornetto Trilogy, is a funny, touching, and visually inventive late-summer masterpiece. It’s easily my favorite of the trilogy (surpassing Shaun of the Dead in actuality, although I don’t know that anything can replace the experience of first seeing Shaun of the Dead with […]
I don’t know how to put into words what I felt while reading The Art of Fielding. Not a particularly auspicious start for a book review, but I feel like the gaggle of introspective and confused characters who populate its pages would understand. On the surface, The Art of Fielding is about the ridiculous majesty […]
If you want a witty, well-informed take down of all the reasons Austenland fails as both a film and as a celebration of all things Austen, please go read A.A. Dowd’s awesome missive on the AV Club*. Although sometimes I find it really fun to deconstruct a shitty movie for all the ways it reinforces […]
A lot of coverage of the acclaimed Sundance film Fruitvale Station has centered on the Trayvon Martin connection. It makes sense. The tragedy that the film depicts shares DNA with the tragedy that captured America’s attention: young black man killed while unarmed, for seemingly very little reason. Hell, the two stories even share a “marijuana bag” […]
I’ve spent a lot of time this summer in a movie theater. Scratch that. I spend a lot of time EVERY summer in a movie theater. So trust when I say that Pacific Rim, Guillermo Del Toro’s robots versus sea monster opus, is the quintessential summer movie. It starts with the overwrought narration, provided by […]
I complain a lot about women in film and tv. I complain a lot about the lack of varied interpretation and interesting characters – about the fact that “women’s shows” are often relegated to a “lady business” ghetto while “men’s shows” are seen as real art. But while I obviously still think this is going […]
Last week, Stephen Colbert came back on the air after a one week hiatus and spent the first five minutes of his show in uncharacteristically honest form. With the exception of a few jokes, he vacillated between real, pained tears and heartfelt sentiment right until the moment when he gathered himself together and said “This, […]